Summer 2019
2019 Regents’ award
Chemical engineer and Washington State University Regents' Alumnus Award recipient Thomas Graedel and colleagues pioneered sustainability research with the new field of industrial ecology. » More ...
Chemical engineering
Winter 2017
Fighting infection a new, old way
Before antibiotics were invented, people often used silver, a known antimicrobial that can also be toxic, to tackle infections.
Researchers in the early 1900s also noticed a mysterious and inconsistent effect from using a mild electric current to kill nasty microbes.
Both methods were problematic, though, and were quickly abandoned with the advent of antibiotics, which killed bacteria so effectively throughout the twentieth century.
Now, as the efficacy of conventional antibiotics wanes, Washington State University researchers are reinventing old ideas to fight bacterial infection.
At their lab in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Amit Bandyopadhyay and Susmita Bose have developed a nontoxic … » More …
Spring 2004
Extreme Diversity—in Soap Lake
Soap Lake is surrounded by dark shores, sheer rock walls, a primeval
landscape. Its waters have long been thought by some to cure certain
maladies. It is also home to strange, hardy organisms that live nowhere
else. » More ...
Summer 2009
Bring on the boron
Lai-Sheng Wang has an impish smile, an infectious laugh, and a high-powered research program that studies matter a few atoms at a time.
He uses massive machines to create tiny clusters of atoms. Wang’s clusters aren’t mere lumps. As the magnetic models stuck to his file cabinets show, they are as geometrically elegant as a snowflake.
Wang came to the public’s attention three years ago when his team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland became the first to make golden buckyball, a hollow cage of 16 to 18 gold atoms. He has also worked on clusters of aluminum, another element with a long … » More …