Although data science and engineering aim to improve our lives — and have done so in many ways — the threat of misuse of our private data and of intrusion into our personal affairs is very real.
In the summer of 2012, Zachary Dunn climbed onto the roof of a red-brick schoolhouse in Lela, a small village in southwestern Kenya. A crowd of children milled about on the ground, watching him attach a small weather station to the peak.
Schools in Kenya have become crucial partners with TAHMO by installing weather stations and collaborating with sister schools in Europe and the United States. In Corvallis, Adams Elementary School installed a Decagon weather station last September and has just started communicating with the St. Scholastica Primary School north of Nairobi.
A recent graduate of the Oregon State University Advantage Accelerator/RAIN Corvallis continues to drive its business forward — including all the way to the White House.
Through the Biological Informatics and Genomics (BIG) initiative, Oregon State is building expertise to apply the latest research results to human health, agricultural crops and other pressing needs. Each new faculty member combines experience in biology, math and computational science.
When Margaret Burnett was growing up in the 1960s, being a female with a gift for math led to one likely career: teaching. She didn’t see herself in front of a classroom, but when a neighbor got a job with IBM after majoring in math in college, Burnett saw an opportunity. As an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio, she would rush home to do her computer programming homework. “It was like a new puzzle. I loved it,” she says.