The College of Science is proud to announce its 2016 Alumni Award recipients: alumnus and professor emeritus Ken Hedberg for the inaugural Lifetime Achievement in Science Award; Gretchen Schuette for the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award; Ben and Elaine Whiteley for the Distinguished Service Award; and Scott Clark for the Young Alumni Award.

The awards publicly recognize alumni or friends of the College of Science for distinguished personal and career accomplishments and for exemplary contributions to society that bring credit to the College and to OSU.

“We are proud to honor these outstanding alumni and friends who have enriched so many lives through their professional achievements, impact and service," said Sastry G. Pantula, Dean of the College of Science.

"They have improved our communities here in Oregon and around the world through science while strengthening our College and OSU.”

The College celebrated the accomplishments of these distinguished individuals with a gathering of about 125 faculty, campus leaders, students, alumni and friends at its annual award ceremony and dinner at the Memorial Union's Horizon room.

Congratulations to these outstanding alumni for their scholarship, leadership and service to science at Oregon State University!

Check out these photos from the Alumni Awards Ceremony and dinner.

Physics and mathematics alumnus Scott Clark (’08) is the recipient of the 2016 College of Science Young Alumni Award thanks to his extraordinary professional accomplishments achieved so early in his career. Named one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 in 2016 from among 15,000 nominees, Clark is in good company: he is one of 600 of America’s best and brightest young entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders.

Clark grew up in Tigard, Oregon, and attended Central Catholic High School in Portland before arriving at Oregon State to study mathematics and physics. He is a very proud fourth generation Beaver; his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents graduated from OSU. Clark’s parents majored in journalism during the 1970’s and his father served as the editor of the Barometer.

Clark is deeply appreciative of his parents for encouraging his interest in mathematics and science, even though they didn’t have a background in the subjects.

“While I was in high school, they presented me with Feynman’s lectures in physics on my birthday,” remarked Clark.

OSU was a natural pick for Clark: his family had extensive ties to OSU and the university had a reputation for strong physics and mathematics program. He was a high-achieving undergraduate student, earning three bachelor's degrees in physics, mathematics, and computational physics in just four years.

Clark participated in undergraduate research and received funding through the National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program to study quantum physics at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, Germany. At the Max-Planck Institute, Clark got to combine physics and computer science for a project on extreme value statistics for chaotic quantum systems. “It was my first taste of getting some of the biggest computers in the world to solve math and physics problems,” recalled Clark.

Clark says his educational goal has always been to explore ambitious interdisciplinary projects that hold the possibility of large-scale social and scientific impact. It is a goal that was supported and encouraged in the science and math programs at OSU. Yet another REU award enabled Clark to work on a project in computational biophysics as they applied to protein folding at the University of California, Davis. While still an undergraduate, Clark published the results of this research in a well-regarded academic journal.

Clark fondly recalls his courses in numerical analysis, computational physics and the rigorous training he received in the Paradigms in Physics major. “They were all incredibly useful and satisfied the intellectual breadth and depth I was seeking.”

While at OSU, Clark worked closely with mathematics professor Malgorzata Peszynska on his thesis, “Finite Element Modeling on Uncertain Surfaces,” that was supported by an Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity (URISC) award at OSU.

“The exposure to high-level research I got with Malgorzata gave me the ability to tackle complex problems at the interface of mathematics, physics and computer science. It solidified my desire to go to graduate school and helped me understand how research was done in the real world,” said Clark.

After graduating, Clark earned a Ph.D. in applied mathematics at Cornell University. While completing his degree, Clark observed researchers/domain experts often tweaking what they had built via trial and error often in the final stage of their research. So he developed MOE, a global, black box optimization engine for metric optimization, to solve this problem. Later he used this technology to optimize machine learning models and A/B tests at his first job at Yelp.

“It is extremely rewarding to unlock academic research and bring it to the real world,” said Clark.

Clark was one of the first Ph.D.’s hired at Yelp, where he applied his academic research to developing the black box optimization system that helped Yelp improve its web analytics, resulting in higher click-through rates and an enhanced user experience.

In 2014, Clark left Yelp and co-founded, SigOpt, a software company that uses machine learning and complex algorithms to optimize user experiments for websites and other applications.

The startup offers a Cloud-based optimization platform that amplifies research by tuning it in place, boosting business objectives. Industries, data science professionals and websites use the software to optimize their products and accelerate projects. The software is used widely by globally recognized leaders across insurance, credit card, algorithmic trading and consumer packaged goods industries. To date, SigOpt has raised $8 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, Data Collective and others.

Clark’s advice for science majors is to seek out interdisciplinary training in college because it is highly valuable in the job market and provides the confidence to apply skills to different businesses. “An interdisciplinary layer to your work gives a lot of dividends in industry.”

Blake Erickson knew he wanted to study science at OSU, the only university he applied to. But he didn’t decide on chemistry as a major until he tried biology and biochemistry/biophysics for a couple of years first.

Becoming a chemistry major as a junior required Blake to double up and take two experiential chemistry courses while also working in a lab. But he didn’t mind. In fact, he enjoyed applying what he was learning in the classroom to what he was doing in the lab simultaneously.

Blake cites his love of math as the key to his success in chemistry.

Inspired by his mentor and biology teacher, Mr. Doug Beardsley at Reynolds High School, Blake developed a passion and aptitude for science.

He was drawn to OSU for its strong research reputation in science plus the fact that it wasn’t too far from home. A first-generation college student, Blake was one of a small percentage of students going to college from his high school.

“Going to college wasn’t expected at my school,” explains Blake. “It was a large high school with mostly low-income students and strong programs focused on jobs in industry. It was very vo-tech focused.”

Supported chiefly by College of Science scholarships, Blake also has student loans and works a minimum-wage job to pay for college. However, he received the College's Merrill Family Foundation Scholarship for the 2015-16 school year and did not need any unsubsidized student loans.

When asked about the biggest challenge he faced as a student, he responded, “Definitely monetary. I had to be careful and I struggled a bit in the summers. There was no safety net.”

Blake offers students facing similar issues the following advice: “Try to have a rough plan early on in high school. Surround yourself with people in circles who are going to college.”

He points to two experiences that shaped his undergraduate education and solidified his career path in science: Working in a research lab under his mentor, Emeritus Professor Joseph Nibler (BS, ’63), and becoming a Teaching Assistant.

His advisor Christine Pastorek helped get him into a research lab. He was thrilled for the opportunity to work in Dr. Nibler’s lab, where he learned various spectroscopic methods and which sparked his interest in molecular spectroscopy.

As the only student working in Nibler’s lab, Blake was fortunate enough to work alongside the senior chemist renowned for both his excellence in research and teaching. Nibler served as a mentor and provided inspiration and confidence to the young chemist.

“Blake has been an absolute delight to work with. He is very bright and both quick and eager to learn,” said Nibler. “He is easily equal to some of the best graduate students I have worked with over the years, and I am confident he will do well at Berkeley and in his subsequent career.”

As a result his experience in Nibler's lab, Blake honed his research skills and even had a paper accepted and published in an academic journal, a rare honor for an undergraduate. Through a collaboration with Nibler and three other researchers, Blake was listed as primary author on a paper, “High-resolution infrared studies of perdeutero-spiropentane, C₅D₈,” to appear in the July 2016 issue of Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy.

Although “perdeutero-spiropentane” or molecular spectroscopy research is something his family and friends may not understand, they are extremely supportive, applauding his hard work and perseverance. Their cheerleading from the sidelines matters.

As a Teaching Assistant for Physical Chemistry (“P Chem”)—a course many students find daunting with its discussion of quantum theory, atomic and molecular structure and spectroscopy, Blake has found he has a penchant for teaching. Helping people understand and even enjoy chemistry has been a transformative experience for him.

“I really loved teaching it. I liked sharing my passion for it and trying to get students to enjoy it a little bit,” said Blake.

With a love of teaching, solid research experience and strong academic record, Blake plans to pursue a doctoral degree.

Following in his mentor’s footsteps, Blake will pursue a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in the fall of 2016 at the University of California, Berkeley. Nibler earned his Ph.D. there 50 years ago.

“I am grateful for this opportunity. [Dr. Nibler] helped guide my decision to pursue a graduate degree at Berkeley,” said Blake, who was also accepted at Stanford University. He received a fully funded scholarship and research stipend from UC-Berkeley.

A career in academia, teaching others and contributing to the overall wealth of knowledge through discovery and research, suits the aspiring chemist.

“It’s important to educate people, especially the public, about science. Otherwise they will be resistant or scared off. This will harm society,” remarked Blake. “Everyone contributes [to science]. It’s not just a few people doing science.”

Reflecting on his four years at OSU, Blake would offer the following advice to his 18-year-old self:

“To enjoy the process and learn along the way. It’s just as important as the outcome. I couldn’t have started as a chemistry major. I had to have the other experience that got me there.”

The College of Science is graduating a record 596 students with baccalaureate degrees in 2015-16, including 73 honors baccalaureates. This represents a 34% increase from last year. In addition, we are graduating 47 master’s and 50 doctoral students--the highest number of Ph.Ds in recent years. We are proud of all of our graduates!

The class of 2016 represents nine majors in the life, physical, mathematical and statistical sciences. They exemplify the College’s commitment to excellence in science education, inclusion and to geographic, economic, ethnic and intellectual diversity.

Graduates receive all the vital ingredients of an outstanding education: outstanding classroom teaching, research opportunities, internships and transformative experiences, such as study abroad, leadership and experiential learning. These experiences can transform great students into extraordinary leaders in science.

Our graduates venture out into the world as researchers, community leaders, teachers, physicians, veterinarians, pioneering scientists and informed, engaged citizens. They are a part of our OneScience community committed to having healthy people, living on healthy planet, in a healthy economy.

“We are extremely proud of our students and look forward to their future accomplishments, leadership and contributions to science,” said Sastry G. Pantula, dean of the College of Science.

“Our College’s mission is to advance science. And we do that through our graduates—the next generation of global leaders in science.”

Science students gain invaluable experience, critical thinking and soft skills as a result of the integral role research played in their education. In recent years, OSU has attracted attention for the number of opportunities it provides undergraduates to participate in research and has been ranked among the top 50 research universities in the nation.

Katherine Banowetz stands out as the only woman in her senior year physics class.

Nationwide the representation of women in physics remains low, and according to the American Physical Society (APS) women accounted for only 20% of bachelor’s degrees in physics in 2015. At OSU, there are only a handful of women physics majors.

Katie is unfazed by her distinctive status in the field and plans to power ahead as a physicist after graduation. She will begin a Ph.D. in medical physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she will focus her research on creating better MRI scans to detect and diagnose cystic fibrosis. Katie hopes to work as a radiation physicist in a clinical setting after completing her doctoral studies.

She attributes some of her confidence and passion for the subject to the presence of women professors in the OSU Physics Department.

“I always felt very supported because there were role models. We have a really high percentage of women physics professors compared to other schools,” said Katie. “The first professor who taught me in the Paradigms in Physics curriculum was a woman.”

Katie was introduced to science and math early as a child by her parents and fell in love with them. Her father, a USDA biology researcher, would often take young Katie to his lab where she would gaze at the equipment and observe lab procedures and experiments.

A native of Corvallis, Katie took some time to find her way to OSU Physics. First she attended Macalester College in Minnesota for a year and then transferred to OSU because she thought she would get “a better science education at a research university.”

“At Macalester, my advisor said, ‘You are taking all math and science classes, but you are at a liberal arts school. That’s weird.’ And I replied, ‘That’s what I want to do.’"

Katie kept searching for the right academic fit after she arrived at OSU. Interested in the role of physics in healthcare, she spent one term studying radiation health physics in the Department of Nuclear Engineering.

However, Katie quickly tired of her classes on nuclear reactors and decided a broader education in physics was in her best interest.

“I missed the modern physics classes and the problem solving I had at Macalester,” said Katie. To learn more about human biology and healthcare, Katie did coursework in anatomy and physiology at OSU.

It turns out Katie was right about the clear advantages of studying science at OSU. She had a fantastic summer research experience last year working on the world famous Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project in Hanford, Washington.

OSU Physics majors have access to a variety of exciting Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) that provide them meaningful exposure to an area of interest and can jump start their careers as researchers. Banowetz described her research experience at LIGO as profoundly transformative one that strengthened her identity as a young scientist.

“LIGO is such a big collaboration, and I was on a site with hundreds of scientists from all over the world. I really enjoyed it because the program let me interact with other women in physics. It was really eye-opening to see what you can do with physics and how a large-scale research operation works.”

As a research intern, Banowetz studied the effects of external environmental signals on the interferometer and wrote a computer program to calculate these effects. She is currently writing her senior physics thesis on her LIGO research.

Her most rewarding experiences within the Physics Department have come from her coursework in the rigorous and highly regarded Paradigms in Physics undergraduate curriculum. Katie enjoyed the intensive physics classes and the collaborative group problem solving. She believes they have given her the skills to succeed in her profession.

Outside the classroom, Katie found ample opportunities to pursue her deep interest in public service and helping people. She cherishes her experience as a member of Delta Delta Delta, the amazing relationships with her sorority sisters and the opportunity to raise money for cancer research at St. Jude Children’s Hospital.

“Just being able to give back that way has made my life a lot better,” said Katie.

She offers the following advice to future science majors:

“Try to do as much research as you can. Look for summer research. It makes you more interested in what’s going on in your classes, you feel connected to what you have done. It gives you more experience in the field than other people and that will come in handy.”

Honors College and mathematics major Johnathan Van Why has landed a job at Google months before graduation. He will start as a software engineer at Google’s Mountain View headquarters (Googleplex) in California.

It is a highly impressive feat if you consider Google’s hiring statistics: They receive more than two million applicants a year and only one in 130 applicants gets a job, according to Forbes and Staff.com. Therefore, it is approximately 10 times harder to get a job at Google than it is to get into Harvard University. Not to mention the fact that the multinational tech giant is consistently rated as the most desirable company to work for on a global scale.

Johnathan’s case is made more exceptional by the fact that he did not apply for a job at Google, but sort of stumbled into its recruitment process.

An Albany, Ore., native, Johnathan says he has been passionate about mathematics and programming since the fourth grade. Enthusiastically involved in robotics research in OSU’s School of Engineering from his high school days, Johnathan made up his mind to pursue a Ph.D. in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.

But one day in the summer of 2015 changed his plans for life after graduation. Johnathan, who is an avid and frequent programmer, was doing a programming-related search when a black box with white text popped up with the question, “Would you like a challenge?” Thinking it was a game, Johnathan hit ‘yes.’ Thus began the gradual unfolding of the Google recruitment dragnet.

Johnathan eventually realized he was being evaluated as a potential hire by Google. He faced off a series of programming challenges of varying levels of difficulty over a 10-day period.

"I was able to select mathematical challenges and I have a solid knowledge of programming. So between the two, I was able to do well at the challenges.”

Confronted by one of the most difficult problems in his set of programming challenges, Johnathan was able to solve it rapidly. A recruiter contacted him shortly after that.

“It would have probably been difficult for a computer science major. But it was a basic math problem, which I completed in 21 minutes and sent it off," said Johnathan.

As Google is wont to do with job candidates, Johnathan went through onsite interviews at Googleplex as well as two phone interviews before receiving an enthusiastic job offer.

When asked if certain mathematics courses at OSU played a role in his success, Jonathan responded, “I am very glad that I had computational number theory. Problems in that area would repeatedly show up in the online challenges as well as in the interviews.”

Mathematics also played a vital role in Johnathan’s undergraduate research career. He conducted controls research for legged robots and was part of a team that developed software for the multi-university ATRIAS robot project. As the only math major in the robotics lab, Johnathan realized he had unique strengths in a roomful of mechanical engineers.

“Anytime something math-related would come up, I knew what I was doing. Computational number theory, modular arithmetic, multivariable calculus, differential equations and linear algebra—all of them helped me write most of the software that runs the robot and in controls and optimization research.”

Johnathan notes that his interests in mathematics, robotics and programming dovetailed in very rewarding and meaningful ways as an undergraduate as well as helped him succeed in his job interview.

“An undergraduate degree in math is a foundation to work on other stuff. You can either go to graduate school or you find another field that relies on math and you get to be the math person on the team. It is so useful in so many fields,” added Johnathan.

His parting advice for incoming mathematics majors: Do research.

“One of the things that math majors are not as essentially involved in as they should be is research. It is hard for an undergraduate to find a research topic in math,” said Johnathan.

“But look beyond math. For instance, in an area like robotics, math undergraduates can jump in and make significant research contributions.”

Please join us and other OSU mathematics alumni and friends at JMM 2016 in Seattle for an OSU Math Alumni Reception on Thursday, January 7 at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel in the Capitol Hill room on the 3rd floor from 5:00 -6:30 pm. We look forward to celebrating your successes at a reception in your honor featuring hot and cold hors d'oeuvres, sustainable local cheeses and beverages.

This is a great opportunity to connect and catch up. We have lots of departmental and college news to share and want hear about what you are doing these days.

If you aren’t attending JMM, we hope you consider attending or even participating as an industry speaker or panelist in the future. One of our strategic goals is to foster strong connections among academic, industry and government mathematicians and scientists. JMM is also a good place for you to cultivate strong connections with academia and industry and to grow your professional network.

Find out about OSU faculty and alumni who are presenting at JMM this year!

The College of Science gathered together its community of faculty leaders, distinguished professors, students, campus leaders and friends to honor these distinguished individuals at its 2015 Alumni Awards: David Vernier (MS, General Science, ’76) for the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award; Christine Vernier for the Distinguished Service Award and Stephen Meyers (MS and Ph.D., Chemistry, ’06, ’08) for the Young Alumni Award. The event was held at The Vue in Corvallis in November.

Read more about our award winners.

The College of Science celebrated our extraordinary scholarship students at our annual spring Scholarship Dessert. For the 2015-16 academic year, the College awarded scholarships of more than $700,000 to more than 250 students for merit, need and undergraduate research experiences. The Scholarship Dessert—a festive occasion—connects students, their families, advisors, faculty and many alumni/friends whose generous support funds these awards.

The celebrations continued throughout the day with a special lunch and dinner where students and alumni shared their own perspectives with each other about gratitude and the power of scholarships as well as the meaning and impact derived from investing in future leaders in science.

For a complete list of our scholarships, visit: science.oregonstate.edu/scholarships.

Please tag yourselves in the photos!

Science Scholarship Recipients

The Department of Mathematics celebrated Mathematics Awareness Month in April with the Milne and Gilfillan Lectures. The theme of the nation-wide math awareness month was Math Drives Careers. Careers in mathematics have received considerable attention in recent years and a number of surveys rank the job title of “mathematician” as the most satisfying occupation. In fact, mathematician was listed as the top occupation of 2014 and most hiring managers assert that quantitative skills are essential to careers across the spectrum of business and industry. The various events surrounding mathematics awareness at OSU are intended to advance interest in the mathematical sciences within Corvallis and further professional development of the department’s undergraduate students.