The reliability of a weather station is subject to the wanderings of wildlife. Frogs crawl into rainfall collection buckets. Insects build nests in air tubes. Rodents chew through wires. And that’s on top of damage from dust, high winds, ice and hail — or simple equipment failure.
If science were the Pacific Ocean, Kylie Welch would be halfway to Japan by now. With the persistence of a long-distance swimmer, she has plunged through a double major in biochemistry and anthropology, worked in an oceanography lab and traveled abroad. Still amazed by new experiences, the Oregon State University senior sees herself as a connector between science and the public, between the machinery of biology and the richness of culture.
When it comes to water, Lauren Smitherman doesn’t mind getting a little personal. As a graduate student in Water Resources Science at Oregon State University, she asked people in rural Oregon for permission to collect samples of their drinking water. Assured of confidentiality, most people welcomed her into their kitchens where Smitherman ran a stream of cold water from their faucets for a few minutes before filling a plastic bottle.
Maneuvering a tiny boat over thundering ledges in places like Oregon’s Opal Creek Wilderness is no more dodgy than facilitating a series of community meetings in a tiny Coast Range town.
Through the science of geomagnetics, an Oregon State University senior from Beaverton is peering into the structure of the Earth’s crust with an eye on how the continent is put together and what that might mean for our future.
The first-year student in civil and construction engineering has already helped to design a water filtration device that took second place at a regional competition in Idaho. When not in class, she works in Oregon State professor David Hurwitz’s driving simulation lab.