Facilities and capabilities

Extensive resources accelerate research throughout the university

WSU’s centers and institutes unite scholars across disciplines to solve tough problems. Partnerships with industry and academia exponentially speed the pace of discovery. Core instrumentation facilities and high-performance computing provide advanced equipment and data-processing capability to WSU’s entire research community.

Discovery across 11 colleges

Each of WSU’s 11 colleges brings a unique arsenal of resources to the front lines of research challenges.

Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences

Explorations contribute to a safe and abundant food, fiber, and energy supply while enhancing the sustainability of agricultural and natural resource systems. With extension offices in every county in Washington, the college plays a vital role in making the benefits of the University’s research available to the entire state.

Noteworthy facilities include the nation’s largest on-campus organic farm, an on- campus orchard, climate-controlled plant growth facilities, farms for seed and crop experimentation, and dairy and beef research centers.

Arts and Sciences

Research is wide-ranging, advancing the frontiers of knowledge in such enduring issues as sustainability, health, security, sociocultural systems, and natural environments.

The college’s facilities and research units run the gamut from the Institute for Shock Physics to the Museum of Anthropology.

Business

Research in the Carson College of Business fosters academic and economic advances that improve the function of organizations around the globe.

The Center for Behavioral Business Research explores behavioral and consumer issues that ripple through organizations worldwide.

Faculty researchers in the School of Hospitality Business Management rank among the most productive in the world for articles contributed to scholarly journals, according to the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research.

Communication

The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication explores communication relative to politics, science, and health. The Murrow Center for Media and Health Promotion Research helps individuals and health professionals use media effectively to make informed and healthy decisions.

Three nationally acclaimed media outlets are housed in the college:

Education

Scholars find new approaches to improve teaching, learning, and benchmarking results.

In the Learning & Performance Research Center, award-winning faculty perform assessments for government agencies, school districts, corporations, and testing companies, and conduct methodological studies.

Scholars in the Department of Educational Leadership, Sport Studies, and Educational/Counseling Psychology spawn advances in cognition measurement, kinesiology, and program evaluation.

Research in the Pacific Northwest Center for Mestizo and Indigenous Research and Engagement has the potential to improve social, economic, educational, and political conditions for Latino/Mestizo and Native/Indigenous communities worldwide.

In the Neurocognition Science Laboratory, researchers draw from neuropsychology, neuroscience, and psychometric theory to examine factors that may impede or enable learning across the lifespan.

Engineering and Architecture

The Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture solves critical problems in energy, environment, health, and security.

Within academic departments and across disciplines, researchers do world-leading work in the following areas:

Honors College

Interdisciplinary research is fundamental to the Honors College undergraduate curriculum. Honors students conduct research for a senior capstone project that integrates the knowledge they have built during their freshman through junior years.

Student research projects examine such topics as cancer diagnostics, catalysis, genomics, epigenetics, advanced materials, and autonomous vehicles.

Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine

The recently formed College of Medicine, based on the Spokane campus, conducts biomedical research in a number of fields, with internationally recognized work in neuroscience, molecular biology, and biochemical genetics.

Together with the University’s longstanding expertise in pharmacy and nursing education, the College of Medicine is the bedrock upon which the University’s medical school will be built.

Nursing

Patient-focused research at the College of Nursing aims to transform and improve health care for everyone. Areas of nursing faculty expertise include rural mental health, substance abuse, addictions, geriatrics, environmental health, transitional care, underserved populations, cultural competency in nursing, and childhood obesity. Environmental health and sustainable health care are also priority topics.

The College of Nursing is one of 10 schools chosen to participate in a national study evaluating the effectiveness of patient simulations in nursing programs.

Pharmacy

A thriving research program emphasizes novel drug targets, the pharmacology of drug interactions, drug discovery, and the potential of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics in personalized medicines. College of Pharmacy discoveries help solve and treat numerous medical problems, among them:

  • Cancer
  • Drug metabolism
  • Rheumatoid arthritis and inflammation
  • Tobacco cessation
  • Immunology and immunotherapy
  • Aging
  • Diabetes

A $1.9 million grant from the Health Sciences and Services Authority of Spokane County makes the College’s advanced facilities available to local researchers.

Veterinary Medicine

The College of Veterinary Medicine operates one of the best equipped teaching hospitals in the world. Clinical faculty members often collaborate with research faculty. The college’s research on the basic processes of infectious diseases, neurobiology, physiology, and immunology informs new approaches to the control and treatment of both animal and human diseases.

Research areas include:

  • Food- and water-borne diseases
  • Neurobiology
  • Cardiovascular medicine and physiology
  • Immunology and infectious diseases
  • Microbial genomics and proteomics

The Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab provides diagnostics, disease surveillance, and outreach in order to safeguard animal health, the food supply, and public health.