The College of Science congratulates 17 faculty on receiving promotions and/or tenure this year.

Countless hours of consideration and analysis goes into every promotion decision. The College relies heavily on the expertise and perspectives of departmental staff, department heads, department committees, peer teaching committees, College of Science Promotion and Tenure Committee, external reviewers and students to get our deserving faculty through this process.

Thank you to everyone that helped to make this possible for our well-deserving faculty.

Congratulations to the science faculty in the college who have just completed this process with success!

Chemistry Department

Marilyn Mackiewicz will be promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry and granted indefinite tenure, effective September 16, 2023.

Integrative Biology Department

Carmen Harjoe will be promoted to Senior Instructor I of Integrative Biology, effective July 1, 2023.

Lindsay Biga will be promoted to Senior Instructor II of Integrative Biology, effective July 1, 2023.

Mathematics Department

Amanda Blaisdell will be promoted to Senior Instructor I of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Clayton Petsche will be promoted to Professor of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Chris Orum will be promoted to Senior Instructor I of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

David Wing will be promoted to Senior Instructor II of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Elise Lockwood will be promoted to Professor of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Johnner Barrett will be promoted to Senior Instructor I of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Liz Jones will be promoted to Senior Instructor II of Educational Opportunities Program and Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Mary Beisiegel will be promoted to Professor of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Michael Gilliam will be promoted to Senior Instructor I of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Sara Clark will be promoted to Senior Instructor II of Mathematics, effective September 16, 2023.

Microbiology Department

Shawn Massoni will be promoted to Senior Instructor I of Microbiology, effective July 1, 2023.

Physics Department

Evan Thatcher will be promoted to Senior Instructor I of Physics, effective September 16, 2023.

Paul Emigh will be promoted to Senior Instructor I of Physics, effective September 16, 2023.

Statistics Department

Katherine McLaughlin will be promoted to Associate Professor of Statistics and granted indefinite tenure, effective September 16, 2023.

Thank you!

Thanks to all of the committee members who served on the College of Science Promotions and Tenure Committee this year.

• Andy Karplus, Chair and Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics
• Chong Fang, Professor of Chemistry
• Ethan Minot, Professor of Physics
• Holly Swisher, Professor of Mathematics
• Kate Field, Professor of Microbiology
• KC Walsh, Senior Instructor II, Physics
• Lesley Blair, Senior Instructor II, Integrative Biology
• Lisa Madsen, Professor of Statistics
• Michael Freitag, Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics
• Oksana Ostroverkhova, Professor of Physics
• Sally Hacker, Professor of Integrative Biology

Oregon State University Assistant Professor Swati Patel and two colleagues, Padi Fuster and Robyn Brooks, wanted to do something to counter systemic inequities in mathematics. In response, they founded the Math For All conference at Tulane University in New Orleans in 2020.

“We created this conference to try to build a more positive and welcoming culture in mathematics,” Patel said. “We thought of a conference that would be an open and friendly space for people to gather and talk about math, math education and how it relates to diversity, justice and inequity.”

Math For All is now a national conference that hosts regional programs annually throughout the country, including a satellite location at Oregon State where 40-60 people attend in Corvallis for free, thanks to generous donor support and scholarships. Attendees learn how mathematics applies to everyday life and experience a sense of belonging to a powerful scientific community. Talks and discussions tend to cover everything from human rights in data science to the mathematics of paper folding.

OSU's satellite conference often welcomes people from local community colleges and other universities, drawing mathematicians from undergraduates to instructors and faculty members.

Breaking down barriers in mathematics

Organizers ensure the conference is structured to promote dialogue between attendees, encouraging them to bridge the gap between their mathematical interests and other human interests that may spark commonality between them. One year, attendee nametags sported the person's unique interests like math as art, trivia or social justice.

“It makes me very happy when undergraduates feel comfortable in this space to ask questions. It takes courage to do that,” Patel said. “It’s not easy to raise your hand and ask a question to a speaker.”

Oregon State graduate student and co-organizer Leah Sturman said in 2023, the first guided discussion included an activity where participants matched important mathematical theorems to the actual societal impact.

Participants then split into groups and developed flowcharts that related those theorems to another branch of math they were familiar with. The activity asked the question, “What does my math mean for people around me?” Some groups decided to relate the theorem to a tool they use themselves, such as illustrating how the Pythagorean Theorem relates to GPS.

“Mathematics is far more doable than a lot of people think,” Sturman said. “It is not nearly as impenetrable or scary as people’s guts tell them. I’ve seen people who think they are bad at math actually be really good at it.”

After the activity, co-organizers posted these flowcharts on the wall for other people to see throughout the day.

“In the second session, we had a little bit more discussion around the thought behind the flowchart activity,” Sturman said. “You know, how can we be conscientious and choose to do mathematics that has a positive impact on society?”

The topics discussed are always varied, so attendees can see how mathematics impacts society as a whole, including the communities they are a part of. This enables everyone to bring their own experiences to the table, as the organizers intend.

"When I went to college, I don't ever remember having a space when I was an undergrad where the conversations like this were being facilitated and were encouraged."

Four-dimensional tissue self-assembly, integrated river health and ultra-tiny spectrometers: The 2022 College of Science Research and Innovation Seed (SciRIS) award recipients will use collaboration to fill critical knowledge gaps across numerous scientific disciplines to drive real-world impact.

The SciRIS program funds projects based on collaborative research within the College of Science community and beyond. There are two tracks through the program: SciRIS (Stages 1-3) and the SciRIS individual investigator award (SciRIS-ii).

SciRIS Stages 1-3 funds teams in three stages of increasing funding to support training, research and capacity-building, accelerating work toward external funding opportunities. SciRIS-ii funds individual faculty to establish research relationships with external partners, enabling them to demonstrate the feasibility of their ideas and quickening the pace of scientific discovery.

SciRIS-ii Awardees

The following three scientists received SciRIS-ii awards: Bo Sun, Clayton Petsche and Ethan Minot.

Associate Professor of Physics Bo Sun’s research aims to lay the foundation for programmable four-dimensional tissue self-assembly. Current technologies have been unable to harness these naturally occurring processes to assemble dynamic tissue structures for biomedical and therapeutic applications. Four-dimensional tissue self-assembly is critical for many physiological processes including acute wound healing and in lethal tumor metastasis.

Sun and his collaborator, Yang Jiao from Arizona State University, will be building on eight years of collaborative research in the field of cell mechanics and cell migration that has resulted in eight publications.

Associate Professor of Mathematics Clayton Petsche will use his SciRIS grant to help three graduate students complete sub projects within the realm of arithmetic dynamical systems. The research will be entirely student-focused and will help establish their research credentials before entering the postdoctoral job market.

Professor of Physics Ethan Minot will use his award to bring ultra-miniaturized spectrometer technology to Oregon State and pursue follow-up opportunities.

In 2022, with co-authors from Finland, Minot was part of a study published in Science that resulted in a powerful, ultra-tiny spectrometer. Contributing to a field known as optical spectrometry, their discovery could improve everything from smartphone cameras to environmental monitoring.

Minot plans to bring the technology to Oregon to grow the new field of research.

SciRIS Stage 1 Awardees

Four groups of scientists received SciRIS Stage 1 awards up to $10K.

Associate Professor of Statistics Yuan Jiang, along with Anna Jolles, professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, received a SciRIS Stage 1 grant for a project which will help fill a knowledge gap and provide crucial tools to understand microbial community dynamics.

The team will develop a novel analytical pipeline that harnesses longitudinal microbiome data to define the ecological roles of host-associate microbes. Although the accumulation of microbial communities is essential to animal health, there are few statistical routes adequate for characterizing microbial community dynamics through time.

Integrative Biology Professor Anna Jolles and Carson College of Veterinary Medicine Professor Claudia Häse will use their SciRIS Stage 1 award to study eco-evolutionary host-bacterial-phage dynamics. Collaborating with a researcher from the University of Louisiana, the group will be using the Pacific oyster and shellfish pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus as a model system.

In a project entitled “Bioinformatics for integrated river health,” Integrative Biology Professors David Lytle and Anna Jolles, along with Justin Sanders from the Carson College of Veterinary Medicine, will bring together expertise across disciplines to provide an integrated approach to understanding river health. The group will combine expertise in bioinformatic and genetic methods for characterizing aquatic invertebrate communities, aquatic parasite and pathogen communities, and fish microbiomes. Samples will come from the lower Colorado River, an ecologically and culturally significant ecosystem.

Biochemistry and Biophysics Associate Professors David Hendrix and Colin Johnson, along with Professor of Chemistry Claudia Maier and Patrick Reardon, director of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility at Oregon State, received a SciRIS Stage 1 award to create a pipeline of computational and experimental methods for the prediction, identification and functional characterization of microproteins. Previously dismissed due to their small size, microproteins are now thought to play significant physiological roles including pathological roles in cancer progression.

Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund

Researching Parkinson’s disease, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics Alysia Vrailas-Mortimer received a grant from the College of Science Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund for a project entitled “Why is a fly a good model to study my grandmother’s tremors?”

Similar to the SciRIS-ii, the fund is focused on assisting individual faculty efforts to establish research relationships with external partners for projects specifically related to health science.

Using fruit flies, Vrailas-Mortimer’s goal is to determine how a stress response protein protects against Parkinson’s-associated iron-induced oxidative damage. Parkinson’s affects over one million people in the U.S. and her research could provide the basis for future therapeutic strategies.

The College of Science gathered on Feb. 22 to recognize and celebrate our high-achieving faculty and staff at the 2023 Combined Awards Ceremony. The evening celebrates the best in the college, from excellence in teaching and advising, service and administration to inclusive excellence, to outstanding achievements in research.

During the teaching, advising and mentoring portion of the evening, many of the awards were determined based on student nominations. Mentors were praised for their creative teaching styles, engaging personalities and willingness to go above and beyond for students both inside and outside of the classroom.

Congratulations to all the award recipients!

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

The College of Science is excited to welcome eight new faculty members this fall. They bring diverse expertise in gravitational wave astronomy, applied topology, cancer treatment, age-dependent diseases and more. As researchers and teachers, they will help the College produce a high-quality science education that is equitable, accessible and inclusive of all learners while advancing scientific research and knowledge.

Mathematics Professor Malgorzata Peszynska has been named the inaugural Joel Davis Endowed Faculty Scholar.

Honoring late College of Science Professor Joel Davis, the award supports a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics who focuses on numerical analysis research.

Davis worked at Oregon State University for 31 years, serving on the Faculty Senate and the Mathematics Department Advisory Committee. Tragically, two weeks after retiring, Davis died in a bike accident in Corvallis in 1995.

Jerry Jacoby, one of Davis’s former students, wanted to honor his mentor by creating the award. He earned three OSU degrees, including a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics.

“Although I never met him, Joel Davis must have been an incredible professor who affected many students. I feel humbled to receive this award,” Peszynska said. “It will be wonderful to explore the opportunities this award creates.”

Peszynska has been at Oregon State for 19 years. During that time she has received numerous awards including the College of Science Champion Award, the Joel Davis Faculty Excellence Award and the Graduate Faculty Award.

Her research includes applied and computational mathematics modeling of real-life phenomena, such as flow, transport and other coupled processes. Her interdisciplinary projects have included the fields of hydrology, oceanography, statistics, environmental, petroleum, civil and coastal engineering, physics and material science.

From 2019 to 2021, she served as a program director at the National Science Foundation in the Computational Mathematics program.

Internationally, Peszynska was elected a 2020 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was honored for her “outstanding contributions to multidisciplinary mathematical and computational modeling of flow and transport in porous media.” She was also awarded the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Career Prize in Geosciences in 2021.

The faculty scholar award committee noted Peszynska’s extraordinary record of accomplishments in research and success educating and mentoring students at Oregon State and beyond.

“My motto is ‘Pay it forward,’” Peszynska said. “I am sure I’ve had supporters, many of whom I didn’t know who they were. I can’t pay them back directly, but I can pay it forward to the students and other junior computational scientists and to the computational mathematics community.”

The committee also pointed out Peszynska’s numerous leadership roles in national and international arenas. She has served leadership roles within the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Association of Women in Mathematics, Mathematics Department Graduate Committee, Oregon State President's Commission on the Status of Women and Oregon State Faculty Senate Committee.

Peszynska will hold the faculty scholar position for three years.

Throughout her graduate and doctoral education in mathematics and as an academic faculty member, Vrushali Bokil recognized that in many academic places, she was the only woman or the only woman of color in the room.

As her career progressed, her lived experiences highlighted the problematic nature of the underrepresentation of women and minorities in mathematics and science as a whole.

Bokil is working to make the sciences more welcoming and accessible to all. On August 1, she will continue fostering scientific excellence and inclusivity in her new role as interim dean for the Oregon State University College of Science. Bokil will be the first woman and the first woman of color to be interim dean of science at Oregon State University.

In collaboration with the Science community, she is eager to implement the College’s soon-coming strategic plan, crafted in a College-wide effort over the last year, that aims to enhance research and innovation, increase outreach and engagement, improve access to science education and develop the next generation of science leaders.

“I have every confidence that Vrushali Bokil will do an outstanding job serving as interim dean,” said Roy Haggerty, previous College dean.

Discovering mathematics

At the age of 15, Bokil decided she wanted to be an astrophysics professor. With a family history of academics, it seemed like a logical choice. While receiving her undergraduate degree in India, a passionate mathematics instructor drew her attention away from the sky and she was hooked.

She earned her Master of Science in Mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1996 and her doctoral degree in mathematics from the University of Houston in 2003. Before coming to Oregon State, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Research in Scientific Computation at North Carolina State University.

Part of the Oregon State faculty since 2006, Bokil is currently the College of Science associate dean for research and graduate studies as well as a professor in the mathematics department. Since July 8, she has been serving as the acting dean of science. Her general research interests include computational and applied mathematics, numerical analysis and mathematical biology.

Bokil is currently a co-PI on two National Science Foundation funded projects in computational mathematics. Her primary research is in the field of computational electromagnetics, which uses computational tools to study electromagnetic wave propagation in different materials. The research can be applied towards designing new materials and understanding in a computational setting what materials are best suited for different applications.

She is also working with an international team of researchers on several problems in mathematical ecology involving the construction and analysis of deterministic and stochastic models for applications in population dynamics, epidemiology and spatial ecology.

In 2019, she received a College of Science Research and Innovation Seed (SciRIS) grant to use modeling techniques to understand the spread and control of plant diseases caused by co-infecting viruses. She has also been funded by the Thomas Jefferson Fund of the FACE Foundation to conduct Transatlantic research, working with a French collaborator, in this area.

She acknowledges that she couldn’t have done any of this alone.

“I’ve been very lucky, I’ve had amazing mentors and collaborators all my career, throughout undergraduate, graduate and beyond,” Bokil said. “I can see that a lot of the things that made today happen, would not have happened if I hadn’t had those mentors, if I hadn’t had those opportunities, if I hadn’t had that access, so I just want everyone to have the same opportunities I had.”

Stepping into the role as interim dean, inclusivity, collaboration, access and equity will remain a top priority.

In 2021, Bokil was the chair and lead of the College of Science Diversity, Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Working Group. This group led the development of the College’s 2021-2024 Diversity Action Plan (DAP) Embedding Equity, Access & Inclusion. The DAP highlights five goals for the College including equitable hiring, forming an inclusive climate, and innovative access to learning and research experiences.

“If I think about everything I’ve done, I would say the success of my students has been really gratifying."

Bokil is also an ADVANCE Faculty Fellow, ADVANCE Seminar graduate and Train the Trainer graduate. Funded by the National Science Foundation, ADVANCE aims to help further the study and practice of equity, inclusion and justice for women faculty and others from historically underrepresented groups.

Her work with ADVANCE was part of the reason she received the inaugural College of Science Inclusive Excellence award in 2019.

If you ask her what her proudest achievement is, her answer is simple.

“If I think about everything I’ve done, I would say the success of my students has been really gratifying,” she said. “That my students have gone on to be successful, that to me says I’ve done the right thing as a professor.”

After student success, her work creating collaborative networks that foster opportunities for underrepresented groups is a source of pride.

Bokil is a member of the Association for Women in Mathematics, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and serves these organizations by working on employment and career opportunities for students and strategies for women to address harassment and inequities.

“It’s really important to improve the status of women in mathematics and science generally speaking by networking and increasing the collaborative networks that women have access to so they have access to opportunities,” she said.

Increasing the representation of women in STEM is part of the highly competitive Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science (ELATES) program at Drexel University.

Bokil was selected as a 2021-2022 fellow, one of 47 women faculty from over 35 different institutions across the U.S. and Canada

ELATES is a full-year, part-time fellowship that provides training and development for faculty and administrators.

Participating in a learning community with six other women on the West Coast, was Bokil's favorite part. The group met once every week throughout the program and has continued to provide support after completing the fellowship.

As interim dean, Bokil will work to transition the College smoothly as the national search for a new dean begins. Another priority is the release and implementation of the new College of Science Strategic Plan. The plan will launch in the fall and integrate and embed the Diversity Action Plan.

“Students can expect me to want to see them,” she said. “I really want to hear how they are doing and hear what their lived experience on campus is as they come in and transition through the different stages of their careers.”

When Bokil isn’t meeting with students and faculty or researching the numerical solution of wave propagation problems, you can find her playing classical guitar with her two school-age boys.

This coming fall the Mathematics Department will be welcoming two new tenure-track assistant professors, Nicholas Marshall and Chad Giusti, and two new postdoctoral scholars, Bella Tobin and Zachary Hilliard, into our community. A third tenure-track hire, Dr. Xueying Yu, will be joining OSU in September 2023 after completing her current postdoctoral visit at the University of Washington.

Nicholas Marshall received a PhD in Mathematics from Yale University in 2019. Since September 2019, Dr. Marshall has been a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University supported by the NSF fellowship. Dr. Marshall does research work in the intersection of harmonic analysis, geometry, and probability with applications in data analysis, machine learning, and wavelet approximation theory. In Summer 2018, Marshall worked as a research mentor for Summer Undergraduate Mathematics Research at Yale (SUMRY), where he mentored a group of three students on a research project in spectral graph theory. While at Princeton, Dr. Marshall participated in the Horizons Seminar whose goal was to provide a conversation with thought leaders who are transforming mathematics through diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Chad Giusti received his PhD from the University of Oregon in 2010 under the supervision of Dev Sinha. After three postdoctoral fellowships including one at the Warren Center for Network and Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania, he has been an assistant professor at the University of Delaware. Prof. Guisti works in topological data analysis, focusing on topological neuroscience, computation and coding in neural systems; the development of topological, algebraic and geometric methods in applications; and, the topology of configuration spaces. He is currently funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the National Science Foundation. Prof. Guisti has mentored one postdoc, two masters students, advised six undergraduate research projects, and is currently mentoring five PhD students and two postdocs. In the spring of 2019 he developed a new graduate mathematics course in topological data analysis. At University of Delaware Prof. Giusti helped his department with the creation of a graduate student mentoring program. In 2021 he participated in the University of Delaware Prison Education initiative.

Bella Tobin received her PhD from the University of Hawaii in 2019 under the supervision of Michelle Manes, and has been a post-doctoral fellow at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Tobin does research in arithmetic dynamical systems and number theory, with a particular interest in classifications of post-critically finite maps and dynamical Belyi maps. Dr. Tobin was a faculty co-sponsor of the Oklahoma State Student Chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics, a co-organizer of the Distinguished Women in Mathematics Colloquium Series at Oklahoma State University, and has organized ”Be A Scientist Night” at the Honolulu Institute for Human Services.

Zachary Hilliard graduated with his PhD in Mathematics in 2020 from Washington State University. His earlier degree was from Washington State Universities in Tri -Cities in 2014, and he was an intern at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory from 2011 to 2016. His PhD work was on analysis and numerical modeling of Cahn-Hilliard equation for modeling refugee flow and mammal migration. Although Dr. Hilliard is interested in most topics related to analysis, his primary passion is in differential equations; especially finite element methods for parabolic partial differential equations. Outside of math, he likes to draw and play volleyball. During 2020 through 2022 he has been teaching and coaching volleyball at a private school in Virginia, but is looking forward to working at OSU.

With areas of distinction in marine science, materials science, data science, biomedical science – and other research areas, OSU faculty and students are fighting climate change and moving the world forward to a greener future – whether that is through harnessing new materials, interpreting complex data or reimagining how organisms can adapt to changes. We share just a few examples in this three-part series.

Oregon State University scientists are rapidly rising to the challenge of our changing climate, supported by hundreds of graduate and undergraduate researchers who are committed to leaving a better world than the one they inherited. In part three of this series, we examine some of the data-driven research that is helping usher in a new era of climate policy and action.

Mathematics and statistics are two of the quickest-growing fields in the country, and it's not hard to guess why. As technology advances, mathematical modeling or statistical analysis can provide a faster, more reliable way to examine lots of data. In practice, these skills can provide critical insight to collaborative projects or inform policymakers on the most environmentally sound decisions.

Wildlife behavior

Making green energy safer for wildlife

Professor of statistics Lisa Madsen and statisticians from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have come together to develop methodology to estimate the total mortality of bats, birds and other small creatures on wind farms and solar facilities. The Endangered Species Act requires that wind farms pay particular attention to endangered or threatened species such as golden eagles, brown pelicans, whooping cranes, condors and Indiana bats, which are killed when they accidentally collide with turbine blades.

Madsen and her colleagues have developed complex statistical tools that estimate the actual number of carcasses when they are undetectable for any reason by taking into account a host of predictor variables such as searcher efficiency, variations in plot sizes and location of inaccessible areas.

The software package, created by the team, will be utilized by government agencies as well as Western EcoSystems Technology, Inc., which has already begun to implement the software to assist their clients. The project has also attracted attention from environmental and government agencies in Canada, South Africa, Portugal and Scotland among others. In addition, the USGS statisticians have conducted workshops demonstrating how to use the software to estimate animal mortality at wind and solar energy facilities.