College of Science Research and Innovation Seed (SciRIS) awards fund projects based on collaborative research within the College of Science community and beyond.
Lab work plays a critical role in many scientific fields – which is why this year, as classes moved online, Oregon State’s science labs moved quickly to adapt.
The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a surging interest in science and medicine, attracting a new generation of students to a career in medicine. Enrollment in the College of Science’s pre-med program at Oregon State University has also remained high, with numbers averaging 90-100 pre-med students annually since 2019.
The College of Science awarded two interdisciplinary teams funding to pursue promising leads in mental health and cancer research. One team will investigate the role of the gut-brain axis on sex differences in anxiety, and another will explore ways to develop an synthetic version of HHT-- a rare plant alkaloid that is showing great promise in the development of new medicines for multiple forms of cancer.
Five faculty and scholars from the College of Science are among this year’s award recipients at University Day, OSU’s most prestigious annual awards for research mentoring, scholarship, teamwork, teaching and service.
The Science Research and Innovation Seed awards were given to four multidisciplinary research teams working on cancer diagnostics and materials science.
