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Scientists

Summer 2017

On the surface…

Cancer, that malignant force that maims and kills as it rampages through bodies and lives, may have met its match in the person of James Wells ’79 PhD. Wells speaks quietly but with urgency. You have to lean in to not miss anything.

Wells is explaining that cancer’s derangement of our lives actually begins at the surface of individual cells. The complex chemical ecology of the cell membrane surface deserves its own term of art, so Wells dubs it the “surfaceome.” “The cell membrane is the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth of a cell,” he says.

Cancer cells, in order to avoid detection by the … » More …

Alumni Association award
Spring 2015

Alumni Achievement Awards

 

Gaymond ’63 and Cindy Schultz of Reno, Nevada, were honored last November for their contributions to the telecommunications industry and for mentoring students in the WSU Harold Frank Engineering Entrepreneurship Institute.

Gaymond Schultz received the WSUAA Alumni Achievement Award for the significant impact and influence he has had in telecommunications and computers as well as his substantial service to the WSU Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture and its executive leadership board.

Originally from Davenport, Schultz majored in electrical engineering at WSU. He went on to found Stratacom, Vina Technologies, and Seaport Imaging, a leading manufacturer of image processing equipment and software.

Cindy Schultz … » More …

Summer 2010

WSU Big Ideas, Discoveries, Creations, Conceptions, People (a suggestive list)

The Uniqueness of Pacific Northwest Flora and Fauna
C.V. Piper

Largely self-taught as a naturalist, Piper believed he needed to classify the flora and fauna of the PNW so other scientists could better understand the uniqueness of area. Published Flora of the Palouse Region (1901), Flora of the State of Washington (1906), Insect Pests of the Garden, Farm, and Orchard (1895), and many other books, including works on hay, soybeans, and other crops.

Allopolyploid formation as a mode of speciation
Marion Ownbey

Ownbey’s work on Tragopogon (goat’s beard, salsify, or oyster plant) on the Palouse was a first, seminal … » More …

Videos: Meet the Scientist – Cynthia Haseltine and microbiology research on Archaea

Our DNA suffers damage all the time-from cosmic rays, exposure to chemicals, simple wear & tear-and is constantly being repaired. But when something goes wrong in the repair process, says WSU microbiologist Cynthia Haseltine, “bad things happen.” Among the worst of those bad things is lymphoma, a cancer of white blood cells.

In a series of four brief video clips produced by Adam Ratliff and Cherie Winner for Washington State Magazine Online, Haseltine describes how she’s working to understand the process of DNA repair and the causes of lymphoma, with the help of a microbe that has an unusual lifestyle and an uncanny resemblance to … » More …

Spring 2006

A Genetic and Cultural Odyssey: The Life and Work of L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza

Anthropology embraces four disparate subfields: archaeology, physical anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology. Few people today are able to make significant contributions to more than one of these. This book celebrates a career marked by signal contributions to all four, and to genetics as well. Born Luigi Cavalli in Genoa in 1922 and, following his father’s death, formally adopted at age 27 by his maternal stepgrandfather, Count Sforza, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (hereafter, Cavalli) has come to be a leading figure in anthropological genetics—a field which he in fact has helped define. His accomplishments have been recognized by election to the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) and … » More …