WSU Research Highlights

March 2018

WSU e-bandage combats drug-resistant bacteria, wins defense innovation award

Chemical Engineering Professor Haluk Beyenal and his team have developed an electrochemical scaffold to combat drug-resistant bacterial infections, for which they have been awarded the TechConnect Defense Innovation Award.

Greg Yasinitsky nominated for Pulitzer Prize in Music

WSU’s Greg Yasinitsky, Regents Professor of Music, has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Jazz Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. The composition premiered in January 2017 with the Baton Rough Symphony.

WSU joins National Nuclear Security Administration Center of Excellence

WSU will be working with the University of Notre Dame as an Actinide Center of Excellence for the US DOE National Nuclear Security Administration. The Center will be funded with $12.5 million to conduct research on experimental and computational approaches to analyze nuclear materials. The project is led by Sue Clark, Department of Chemistry, and Neil Ivory, Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering.

WSU digital archiving project receives prestigious Mellon grant

The Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation will develop a culturally responsive online platform and process for ethically curating Native American materials within cultural, linguistic and social protocols, supported by the Mellon Foundation. Director Kim Christen will

Dramatic decline in genetic diversity of Northwest salmon charted

WSU biologists analyzed Chinook salmon DNA from bone samples found in ancient garbage piles and compared the samples with those of current fish. They found that Chinook have lost two-thirds of their genetic diversity. Although the researchers did not identify a particular cause, this information is an important baseline and possibly the first step in identifying methods for bringing Chinook stocks back to previous levels.