The College of Science is launching a transformative program to support and strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship that will enable us to better identify, validate, and develop the commercial impact of basic research. Innovation Days will bring together faculty, faculty research assistants and research associates to discuss and learn about moving basic research ideas and discoveries from the lab to commercial applications and practical solutions.

Co-hosted by the College of Science and the Office of Commercialization and Corporate Development (OCCD), Innovation Days will host its first session on January 7, 2019, 2:30-5 pm followed by a reception from 5-6 p.m. The deadline to register is December 14, 2018. Additional sessions to follow on February 4, April 1 and April 29.

Innovation Days is designed to build awareness and engagement with experts who will help advance and propel the OSU innovation enterprise. Workshop participants will learn about resources to:

• Leverage basic research and research funding opportunities toward application
• Increase the impact of basic research through patents and commercialization
• Validate broader impacts of research projects to enhance proposal success
• Connect with local innovation ecosystem and identify pathways to translate research to application
• Create opportunities with industry
• Integrate invention disclosures, patent applications, and company formation into day-to-day work to advance your career

Facilitators represent and support the many pathways available to successfully transfer technology and commercialize scientific research. The workshop series includes: Berry Treat, director of OCCD, who will provide an overview of his office and how it supports the research to industry pathway; Joe Christison, senior intellectual property and licensing manager at OCCD, who will introduce participants to technology transfer at OSU; Katie Pettinger, commercialization catalyst at OSU Advantage Accelerator, who will discuss startup support available to OSU researchers; chemistry professor Rich Carter, who will share his success story as an inventor; and Chris Stoner, senior industry contracts manager, OCCD, who will discuss the development of appropriate and effective research agreements with companies.

The spring 2017 Milne Lecture features Michael I. Jordan, the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He will discuss “On Computational Thinking, Inferential Thinking and Data Science."

Does the term “data visualization” sound like a dyed-in-the-wool twenty-first century phenomenon? If the phrase only conjures images of computer generated infographics, that constitutes just a snapshot of the long history and tradition of data visualization.

Associate Professor of Statistics Sarah Emerson gave a presentation at the Corvallis Women in Data Science (WiDs) satellite event on February 3, 2017, which was organized by the Department of Mathematics. Emerson presented her talk on sparse methods for clustering as part of the Applied and Computational Math Seminar. The presentation was a satellite event of the second annual 2017 WiDs Conference at Stanford University.

The College of Science celebrated its 2017 Winter Teaching and Advising Awards with faculty, advisors and students on February 27, which recognized excellence in teaching and advising, both hallmarks of our College. We are deeply committed to the success of all our people—faculty, advisors, staff and of course, our students. We want everyone in our OneScience community to thrive, not just survive.

Enjoy the photos from the event below.

Dean Sastry Pantula welcomed everyone and Associate Dean Staci Simonich emceed the event. Guests included Interim Provost Ron Adams, who was presented with a special award acknowledging his service and dedication to the College and to OSU and to representatives from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), a year-round resource offering professional development courses as well as individual consultations for faculty.

CTL advances excellence in teaching at OSU and beyond by providing a forum for discussion and hands-on activities supporting evidence-based methods and practices. The Center helps faculty who want to transform their curriculum, transcend traditional academic boundaries, incorporate more experiential learning, innovate with a hybrid or “flipped” classroom, or simply polish what’s already working well.

Watch this video to hear science faculty discuss how a professional learning community with CTL impacted their teaching.

Congratulations to all of our nominees and award winners! They exemplify deep commitment, skill, effectiveness and impact in teaching and advising, which helps build strong leaders in science. They are truly transforming lives.

2017 Award Winners

Olaf Boedtker Award for Excellence in Academic Advising

Nominees: Brock McLeod, Integrative Biology; Geneva Anderson, Microbiology; Elise Lockwood, Math; Sandra Loesgen, Chemistry

Winner: Kari van Zee, Biochemistry and Biophysics

Instructor and advisor Kari van Zee is dedicated to preparing undergraduate and graduate students for a variety of careers in the life sciences and for life-long learning in STEM. She has also been heavily involved in outreach to Oregon high school students and teachers and is Program Coordinator of STEPs (Scientists and Teachers in Education Partnerships).

Loyd F. Carter Award for Outstanding and Inspirational Teaching in Science, Undergraduate

Nominees: Viviana Perez, Biochemistry and Biophysics; Bob Mason, Integrative Biology; Lindsey Biga, Microbiology and Biohealth Sciences; David Koslicki, Mathematics

Winner: Juliann Moore, Statistics

Instructor Juliann Moore fell in love with statistics as a psychology undergraduate at Oregon State after taking upperlevel statistics courses with Jeff Kollath, and went on to pursue an M.S. in Statistics, graduating in 2011. While a graduate student, she worked as a teaching assistant and fell in love a second time, with teaching! Now in her dream job, Juliann has enjoyed being involved in iteratively improving statistics classes, particularly statistics 201. The improvements have had a positive impact on student grades, reducing the DFW rate (the rate at which students receive D-grades, F-grades or Withdrawals) by 14%.

Loyd F. Carter Award for Outstanding and Inspirational Teaching in Science, Graduate

Nominees: Lindsay Biga, Integrative Biology; Sean Burrow, Chemistry; David Hendrix, Biochemistry and Biophysics

Winner: Sarah Emerson, Statistics

Associate Professor Sarah Emerson is a highly dedicated and effective teacher who has thrice received the Outstanding Teaching Award for “Significant Contribution the Educational Experience of Statistics Students” from the department’s students. She has been closely involved with developing the curriculum and the course contents for the department’s newly launched master’s program in Data Analytics.

Fred Horne Award for Excellence in Teaching Science

Winner: Bill Bogley, Mathematics

Professor Bill Bogley is an inspirational teacher who learned early on to drop his formal lecture notes and become a "participant" in the class, working Socratically from a few written objectives and responding spontaneously from there to students' reactions and questions. This interactive style of teaching helped his students "become the kind of thinkers who can work on a problem while they are walking across the quad or eating breakfast - consciously or unconsciously." Bogley is also a very early online ed-preneur, who in 1996 with co-author Robby Robson, developed what is arguably the world's first complete web-based course in differential calculus, the basis for OSU's online course until 2010.

Pursuing a graduate degree or certificate in statistics? Versed in data analytics? A numbers junky? You are more than in luck. Statistics-related jobs are predicted to grow 34% between 2014-2024 for a net increase of more than 10,000 jobs. "Statistician" was ranked the number one job in both STEM and business in the U.S. News & World Report rankings for 2017.

The College of Science will treat science students, faculty and staff to dinner and a movie followed by a lively discussion on Tuesday, January 31. The movie is “Hidden Figures,” the 2016 Oscar-nominated biographical film about pioneering yet little known female African-American mathematicians at NASA.

Based on the book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Sheerly, the film depicts the incredible and inspiring NASA careers of Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson who started working in the Jim Crow era. Johnson was a physicist and mathematician, who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury, the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon and many other early NASA missions. Jackson went on to become NASA’s first black female engineer. Vaughan was the first African-American woman to supervise a staff at NASA.

The film shows how the three women overcame racial discrimination and other social obstacles to contribute in vital ways to NASA’s various missions at a time when black women and men were still being subjected to segregation and barred from higher education and high-skilled jobs.

After the movie, the College will host a pizza dinner and an hour-long discussion exploring issues raised by the film that go beyond NASA and the field of mathematics and connecting with many of the College’s initiatives around diversity, equity and inclusion.

If interested, faculty, students, faculty and staff can RSVP to Michael Lopez at LopeMich@oregonstate.edu

Movie: Carmike Cinema at 4:10 pm, January 31, 2017 (Tuesday). Please arrive 15 minutes early.

Discussion and Dinner: Kidder 128, 6:45 p.m.—7:45 p.m.

How can universities better prepare students to meet the urgent needs of the 21^st century? What best practices can help enhance and equalize student success, especially among those from diverse backgrounds? These are just a few of the topics William "Brit" Kirwan, a nationally recognized authority on mathematics reform and other critical issues facing higher education, explored as part of a special lecture hosted by the College of Science on Tuesday, January 24, 2017.

Watch a his lecture on YouTube.

Dr. Kirwan is currently the executive director of the Transforming Post-Secondary Education in Mathematics project, and Chancellor Emeritus of the University System of Maryland (USM). His talk “The Student Success Imperative: Challenges, Opportunities, and Responsibilities,” came at an opportune time given the state and national dialogue taking place.

Kirwan presented evidence-based strategies and pedagogies, on both a university-wide and classroom-level, that provide hope for greater and more diverse student access and success, even in a time of diminishing public investment in higher education. He also highlighted key trends, including making smart use of new technologies, developing an active learning “emporium model” and defining alternative pathways for degree requirements in mathematics, among others.

Nationwide, colleges of science, where foundational courses are taught in mathematics, statistics and sciences, play a critical role in student success, and ultimately in college completion. Kirwan offered a clear picture of how universities and faculty must evolve quickly to increase students’ quantitative literacy, driven by the reality that math is the single largest roadblock for many to affordable degree completion and because in today’s data-driven world, mastery of mathematical and statistical concepts has become essential for success in highly desirable STEM disciplines and careers.

Many contend that mathematics and statistics can make us better thinkers. Kirwan explained that math is not just a linear winnowing process to weed out the (white, male) Einsteins from the masses, but a fundamental tool for all that should be opening more doors than it closes.

The College of Science extends a warm and hearty welcome to the 200 participants of the 2016 International Indian Statistical Association (IISA) Conference August 18-21. The conference kicked off with a lively and convivial wine and cheese reception at the Hilton Garden Inn Thursday evening.

Earlier in the day, graduate students from OSU and other universities participated in four short pre-conference short courses taught by visiting statisticians from Columbia University, Northwestern University, the University of California at Los Angeles and SAS Institute.

With a theme of “Statistical and Data Sciences: A Key to Healthy People, Planet and Prosperity,” the conference offers attendees more than 50 panel discussions on statistical innovation and applications in areas, ranging from big data to genomics, climate science, public health and biomedical science. Featuring talks by many award-winning and distinguished statisticians from varied professions, the conference is a unique, landmark event in the field of statistical sciences in Oregon.

Statistics faculty and researchers from the College of Science and across OSU participated at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Chicago this week. Many presented invited talks at JSM 2016, one of the largest statistical events in the world with over 6,000 attendees from 52 countries.

Dean Sastry Pantula spoke on three panels on diversity and mentoring andnhe served as a mentor to several students at the JSM Diversity Workshop and Mentoring Program this year. Dean Pantula is an impassioned advocate for increasing minority representation in statistical education and the sciences, and has been a dedicated mentor to young statisticians for the past 30 years.

Pantula was honored for his outstanding and extensive service to the statistics profession with the 2016 Paul Minton Service Award from the Southern Regional Council On Statistics (SRCOS) at the JSM.