OSU Research Matters 2020

Research, scholarship and creative activity at Oklahoma State University

THE FUTURE OF FLIGHT

OSU SCIENTISTS ARE DEVELOPING A NEW HYBRID PROPULSION SYSTEM TO EXTEND THE REACH OF DRONES.

From the Desk of the Vice President for Research

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s I enter my sixth year leading the research enterprise at OSU, I found the introductory letter for this year’s Research Matters magazine to be the most difficult I’ve ever written. On one hand, literally nothing in the realm of OSU research is “normal” right now. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has altered virtually every aspect of research (along with everything else!) at OSU. So, the typical levers that a research VP tries to pull to enhance the amount and impact of our research are either nonexistent or else dramatically altered.

On the other hand, the challenges related to the pandemic — and those related to our collective attempts to cope with it — have seemed to bring out the very best in the OSU research community.

Whether it is OSU faculty leading a multi-institutional effort to develop novel methods to target and destroy cancerous tumors, leveraging OSU research expertise to establish a COVID-19 testing laboratory on the OSU campus that has played a major role in Oklahoma’s response to the crisis, or drone researchers working with tribal groups to create new technology applications, the continued excellence of our faculty and student researchers even in these unusual times remains truly impressive. And there is a theme that runs through it all: partnerships.

Tackling big problems, problems that matter to Oklahomans and citizens of planet Earth, means partnering the talents and energies of OSU experts with those of experts at other universities, in the private sector, and within all levels of government to create real solutions.

Now that I think about it, nothing about OSU research is ever “normal.” The people and the projects that make up the OSU research enterprise have long been, and certainly continue to be extraordinary.

Even since we wrapped up the contents of this magazine in order to send it to press, there will have been additional partnerships undertaken and breakthroughs achieved that will have to wait until our next issue to be highlighted.

OSU research matters — now more than ever.

V. Burns Hargis President Kenneth W. Sewell, Ph.D. Vice President for Research OSU Research Matters is published annually by Oklahoma State University and is produced by the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Editor Harrison Hill Copy Editor Dorothy Pugh Art Director/Designer Paul V. Fleming Contributing Writers Victoria Berry, Derinda Blakeney, Brittany Bowman, Christina Elliott, Harrison Hill, Jeff Hopper, Jeff Joiner, Shannon Rigsby, Donald Stotts Photographers CEAT Marketing, Anna Dudkova/Unsplash, Jamey Jacob, Todd Johnson, Jtorresphoto.com/ Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Gary Lawson, Dr. Weihua Sheng, Phil Shockley For details about research highlighted in this magazine or reproduction permission, contact the Office of the Vice President for Research at 405.744.6501; vpr@okstate.edu research.okstate.edu

Kenneth W. Sewell, Ph.D. Vice President for Research

Oklahoma State University, in compliance with Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Executive Order 11246 as amended, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Higher Education Act), the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and other federal and state laws and regulations, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, genetic information, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, or status as a veteran, in any of its policies, practices or procedures. This provision includes, but is not limited to admissions, employment, financial aid, and educational services. The Director of Equal Opportunity, 408 Whitehurst, OSU, Stillwater, OK 74078-1035; Phone 405-744-5371; email: eeo@okstate.edu has been designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies. Any person (student, faculty, or staff) who believes that discriminatory practices have been engaged in based on gender may discuss his or her concerns and file informal or formal complaints of possible violations of Title IX with OSU’s Title IX Coordinator 405744-9154. This publication, issued by Oklahoma State University as authorized by Office of the Vice President for Research, was printed by Modern Litho at a cost of $4,657.97 3.5M /Oct/20. #8595

PHOTO GARY LAWSON

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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On the Cover

Looking Upward Through unique partnerships, OSU is leading the way for development in unmanned aerial systems aimed at improving society.

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Dr. Kurt Rouser and his team are focused on building a hybrid propulsion system for drones, allowing them to take off quicker and fly longer.

PHOTO: PHIL SHOCKLEY

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Rethinking Rifting

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Dr. James Knapp is changing our current understanding of the Earth's land masses.

Absorbing Science Via Art The exhibition, The State We’re In Water: Constructing a Sense of Place in the Hydrosphere, depicts the intersection of science and art.

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Unifying Health

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Joining forces across the country, OSU and NY's Albert Einstein College of Medicine are working to benefit pets and people.

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TIER 1 Research Initiatives

The Value of Partnerships

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A $20 Million Boost for Oklahoma Research

OSU's response to the Covid19 pandemic was founded — and grew — from strong partnerships.

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A Fascination with Filtration

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Jealousy: Keeping Your Friends Closer

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Enhancing Geriatric Health Care

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From Research to Reality

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Powering the Future of Flight

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A Deeper Study

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Predicting a Pandemic

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Awards and Recognition

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History Hasn't Hurt Wheat Researchers are working to understand the gastrointestinal effects of modern and heirloom wheat varieties.

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R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 1

FUNDING PROGRESS As part of the land-grant mission, OSU is focused on conducting research at the highest level.

Research has always been a core pillar at Oklahoma State University. OSU is currently working on ways to address societal needs through four dynamic Tier 1 Research Initiatives. These initiatives are a cornerstone of the university's overall research mission and show OSU's commitment to serve Oklahoma and society as a whole.

To learn more about how to get involved and be a part of OSU's impactful research, visit OSUgiving.com/research.

To find out more about all the TIER 1 Research Initiatives currently active visit okla.st/tier1.

Funds to Support • The Opioid Initiative Fund (20-37230) • The Microbiome Initiative Fund (20-37220) • The Rural Renewal Initiative Fund (20-37210) • The Drone Initiative Fund (20-37240)

TIER 1 RESEARCH INITIATIVES Oklahoma State University’s Tier 1 Initiatives are tackling global problems with global solutions The four groups designated as TIER (Timely, Impactful and Engaged Research) 1 are: The Rural Renewal Initiative: Ensuring the Future of Rural Oklahoma The Microbiome Initiative: Connecting the Microbiome to Health The Drone Initiative: Drones Serving our Safety and Environment The Opioid Initiative: Addressing the Opioid Epidemic

“OSU’s research has always reflected our land-grant mission to serve society,” said President Burns Hargis. “Our Tier 1 Research Initiatives represent a commitment to Oklahoma that we intend to use our research strengths to make a major difference in areas of vital importance to our world.”

OSU Vice President for Research Dr. Kenneth Sewell said the initiatives aim “to tackle some of society’s challenges head-on.”

Since their launch, these groups have grown and launched strategic plans to further their research. In this piece, we bring you up to date on each. To find out more, visit okla.st/tier1.

TO LEARN MORE about how to get involved and become a part of OSU’s impactful research, visit OSUgiving.com/research.

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The Rural Renewal Initiative Eight scholars are already working and living in two communities, putting the Rural Renewal Initiative into full swing. The scholars are gathering data for a wide range of research projects and providing community service.

Research proposals from OSU faculty members are currently under review by the team for a new seed grant.

At the inaugural Rural Renewal Symposium, the first Rural Renewal Citizenship Prize went to Karen Wages of Poteau, Oklahoma. Dr. Steven Deller of the University of Wisconsin-Madison won the first Rural Renewal Research prize. The symposium was held virtually due to the pandemic.

Read more at okla.st/rural

The Drone Initiative OSU’s Unmanned Systems Research Institute continues to be a leader in unmanned systems research.

The institute’s major partnerships with industry and government leaders such as Toyota and NASA have enabled further investment in research infrastructure and students.

This initiative is focused on public health and safety including disaster preparedness, and recovery and relief efforts.

Read more at okla.st/drone1

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The Microbiome Initiative The microbiome team continues to build its strategic plan, strengthening its focus in several areas.

To better tackle the many aspects of this initiative, the team has created four groups led by OSU researchers: Bioinformatics — Dr. Pratul Agarwal, High Performance Computing Center Microbiology and Ecology —Dr. Mostafa

Elshahed, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Gut-Brain Axis — Dr. Gerwald Koehler, OSU CHS Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology Nutrition — Dr. Janeen Johnson, Department of

Animal and Food Science The team has seen a growing interest in the initiative and has begun hosting digital workshops to explain its work and engage the community.

Read more at okla.st/microb

The Opioid Initiative Opioid research is a very familiar topic at OSU. A team of researchers at OSU’s National Center for Wellness and Recovery is working to find new ways to handle opioid addiction, from new pain treatment methods to understanding the fundamentals of addiction.

In the battle against opioid addiction, research continues to be key: from understanding how to better train medical professionals and patient recovery processes to determining how to support families of those struggling with addiction, research will lead to a better defense in the epidemic.

The center continues to gather evidence to support its practices and help better train health care providers to treat addiction.

Read more at okla.st/opioid1

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Rethinking Rifting

Dr. James Knapp’s research may change the current understanding of how the world works

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arth has evolved over time.

Dr. James Knapp, an Oklahoma State University professor and Boone Pickens Distinguished Chair of Geoscience, and his research team are studying that evolution — specifically how continents break apart, called rifting.

“It’s a mechanism where, over geologic time, the large plates that make up the outer portion of the earth, move around and interact with each other and crash together and make big mountain belts and form volcanic chains,” he said.

One of the key processes of plate tectonics is this process of continents breaking apart periodically and forming new plates and new ocean basins.

“If you wind the geologic clock backwards 250 million years, all of the continents were assembled in a supercontinent of Pangea, and since that time we had the rifting of the continent to form the collection of continents that we have today,” Knapp said. “So, this study was focused on how that process is recorded in the eastern margin of North America.”

“This research has the potential to rewrite our understanding of what the relationship is between breaking of a continent and that whole magmatic province. Hopefully it will guide new investigations into what is seemingly a fundamental aspect of how the Earth works.”

DR. JAMES KNAPP

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STORY HARRISON HILL | PHOTOS GARY LAWSON AND PHIL SHOCKLEY

Knapp’s study was published in Nature Communications, a subsidiary of the Nature Journal. The article, titled “Limited and localized magmatism in the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province,” argues for rethinking how the Earth works.

Continents breaking apart changes a lot of the Earth’s structure, even down into the mantle, Knapp said. This melting of the internal material produces a lot of magma, so rifts have historically been perceived to include a lot of volcanic activity, he added.

Knapp and his team contend that may not be true.

“This paper comes to the conclusion that the size of the magmatic province was very limited and localized within these rift-related structures,” he said. “It appears to be orders of magnitude less than what previous researchers have proposed for the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province.”

These processes take place over millions of years, Knapp said. In the East African Rift, the next area Knapp and his team plan to study, the process has taken more than 20 million years.

“The idea of going over to study what’s going on in East Africa is so interesting,” he said. “That is the place that most closely represents the process that has gone on, essentially, throughout geologic history, as long as there’s been plate tectonics operating.”

The Afar portion of the East African Rift is in Ethiopia, where OSU has a long-standing relationship.

In 1949, during his inaugural address, U.S. President Harry Truman outlined a plan to provide technical assistance for developing countries in the wake of World War II. OSU President Henry G. Bennett was appointed

by President Truman as an assistant secretary of state to lead the Point Four program, which later became USAID.

One of the things this program accomplished was creating a new university in Ethiopia called Haramaya. “[Current OSU] President Hargis actually went [to Haramaya] last summer and gave the commencement speech in honor of the long relationship between OSU and Ethiopia,” Knapp said. “There’s a really tremendous connection there.”

On top of that, members of OSU faculty have ample experience working in Africa.

“If you look at the East African rift as a whole, it’s essentially a big chunk of Africa that’s in the process of ripping off the rest of Africa and forming a new ocean basin,” Knapp said.

There are a lot of aspects of the whole process that scientists haven’t figured out yet, Knapp added.

“There are ways that we can’t necessarily anticipate that the fundamental research is going to have some direct impact on somebody in, let’s say, Oklahoma,” Knapp said. “But the tie into both climate change and evolution of life on Earth is, I think, pretty significant.”

He added that improved understanding of how these solid Earth processes are linked to the atmosphere and the hydrosphere and the other parts of the Earth that humans interact with, the better our response to these issues will be.

“That is why it’s so important to go back and look in detail at the data,” he said. “It can tell us about how climate has evolved in the past.”

Understanding and identifying the driving forces behind those climatic changes is the key to trying to figure out what is going on with climate variations in the modern world, Knapp said.

“This research has the potential to rewrite our understanding of what the relationship is between breaking of a continent and that whole magmatic province,” he said. “Hopefully it will guide new investigations into what is seemingly a fundamental aspect of how the Earth works.”

Burns Hargis and Prince Ermias Sahle Selassie of Ethiopia at the Wes Watkins center in 2018.

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Looking Upward Through partnerships and a new NASA program, OSU is changing the future of unmanned flight.

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n the rolling hills of Southeast Oklahoma, a group of drones takes flight, piloted by one engineer.

“We had a team of students serving as safety pilots, but one engineer operated all aircraft spread over several miles from a single site,” said Jamey Jacob, director of OSU’s Unmanned Systems Research Institute (USRI). “While OSU has flown many of these one-to-many missions before — a single pilot controlling multiple drones simultaneously — this test was unique.

This time, the pilot was in control of six drones of three different types, similar to flying a helicopter, a general aviation aircraft and a new urban air taxi all at the same time.”

This test was part of a new NASA program aimed at tackling some of its strategic research initiatives.

In August, NASA recognized a team of researchers from Oklahoma State University with the University Leadership Initiative Award (ULI).

OSU is one of only five university teams to receive the award and a share of $32.8 million in funding over the next four years to address some of NASA’s strategic research initiatives. OSU is the lead institution for this specific $5.2 million initiative.

“This is a follow-up to our $6 million five-year National Science Foundation project, CLOUD-MAP,

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that just ended in July 2020,” Jacob said. “The ULI is a very high-profile program within NASA and brings great attention to USRI and our capabilities.”

The USRI team will work directly with leaders in NASA who are setting the requirements for the future of drone flight control — unmanned traffic management — that NASA is charged with developing, Jacob said.

“We are in the driver’s, er pilot’s, seat. In addition to setting the agenda, we have more team members involved,” Jacob added. “It also brings a lot of attention to our program from outside agencies and students.”

The NASA program is a single coordinated effort with many individual pieces that support each other, including drone development, enhanced weather modeling in urban areas and real-time reporting, Jacob said “Our effort, WINDMAP (Wind Intelligent Navigation Data and Models for Aviation Planning), will be a big part of this,” Jacob said. “OSU is the lead institution in charge of the program funded

by NASA, but NASA plays a very close advisory and support role working with us.”

NASA is not the only group partnering on this project, though. Both the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (CNO) and Oklahoma startup Vigilant Aerospace Systems are involved with OSU.

STORY HARRISON HILL | PHOTOS GARY LAWSON AND JAMEY JACOB

“OSU’S unmanned systems group takes partnerships with the sovereign tribal nations, corporate leaders and federal agencies like NASA to new heights — literally and figuratively — to create economic development in Oklahoma while solving problems that will take humanity to Mars and beyond.”

Dr. Kenneth Sewell, OSU Vice President for Research

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USRI research engineer Rakshit Allamraju oversees a flight test for Vigilant Aerospace Systems to evaluate drone deconfliction systems (with Zimmer Nguyen at table and Kraettli Epperson in background.)

WIDE OPEN SPACES The Choctaw Nation has a growing unmanned systems program. Its land in southeast Oklahoma was where OSU performed its first one-to-many test.

“The Choctaw Nation is one of our partners on the program, focusing on flight test and outreach,” Jacob said.

The CNO UAS test site is a unique area, spanning 44,000-plus acres yet conveniently remote, located within a few hours of three large airports. The objective in developing the test site was to help emerging aviation technologies to more efficiently navigate through the regulatory processes, said James Grimsley, executive director of the Advanced Technology Initiatives for the Choctaw Nation.

“It is very rare for a single landowner to own and control this much property,” Grimsley said.

“We’ve been building this unique national asset since 2016, and it will truly be a one-of-a-kind facility for the nation.”

The Choctaw Nation is making critical investments in facilities and infrastructure, such as a ground-based-radar system, and has already entered into agreements with leading aerospace companies that have many decades of innovative aerospace and aviation experience, Grimsley said.

“OSU has a great reputation for building collaborative and innovative relationships with industry and government,” Grimsley said. “We also see OSU as one of the top leading UAS research institutions in the country.”

The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma was the only tribal government selected by the U.S. Department of Transportation to participate as a lead entity in

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the Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Pilot Program and is the first tribal government to be recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration as a public aircraft operator, Grimsley said. Both events were historically significant, he added.

“As we have demonstrated during the UAS IPP, UAS technology and emerging aviation technology in general will have a positive impact on our members and our communities,” Grimsley said. “We believe that technology can help bridge infrastructure gaps in remote/developing areas and lead to improved quality of life and economic activity.”

The test site is a catalyst to promote economic development within the Choctaw Nation’s boundaries and to ensure the region is poised to fully participate in the next era of emerging aviation technologies, Grimsley said.

“We are excited about all aspects of our program, from helping to stimulate interest in STEM in our communities to assisting our economic developers with unique assets that help attract industry and high-paying jobs,” Grimsley said. “We are excited about even more future collaborations with OSU.” STAYING VIGILANT Vigilant is a familiar partner for OSU’s USRI. The Oklahoma City-based company has been working with OSU for over two years.

“Right now, the unmanned aircraft industry is in a state of rapid development,” said Kraettli Epperson, CEO of Vigilant Aerospace Systems Inc. “New capabilities are emerging quickly, and the regulations are racing to catch up. Companies are eager to use drones for a wide range of purposes, from bridge and road inspection to solar and wind

farm maintenance to consumer package delivery, but they need safety solutions to allow them to fly beyond the visual line of sight of the pilot.”

Pilots are required by regulation to maintain a safe distance from all manned aircraft, a difficult task if they cannot see the drone itself. Vigilant Aerospace develops safety systems to help bridge that gap.

“We have been working with Vigilant for twoplus years in helping support flight tests for the system development, called Flight Horizon,” Jacob said. “This is a software algorithm licensed by Vigilant from NASA to provide ‘see and avoid’ capabilities for drones to prevent collisions with manned aircraft and other drones.”

Vigilant is working with OSU’s Unmanned Systems Research Institute with the support of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) on integrating small, portable radars into the system, Epperson said.

“The work with OSU has allowed us to advance this integration quicker and more efficiently than we would have been able to alone,” he said.

“Jamey Jacob and the USRI team have deep industry expertise, good relationships with regulators and extensive testing knowledge,” Epperson said. “The USRI has provided our project with engineering support, pilots and aircraft, and flight operations and testing facilities. The USRI’s capabilities have allowed us to focus on our strengths in software and product development while they provide testing expertise and test flight operations.”

Vigilant is now focusing on how it can help with this new initiative.

“As a member of the team on this multiyear project, Vigilant Aerospace will be working to leverage the success of our air traffic avoidance system into a system that also includes wind and weather hazard avoidance to provide a more complete solution for drone safety,” Epperson said.

“We think the future is bright for the development of all kinds of safe, autonomous systems in Oklahoma, and we want to help make the state a national leader in the industry.”

PURSUING GROWTH This new initiative, as well as the other projects the USRI is working on are proof of OSU’s leadership in this area.

Many industrial end-users, such as Uber and Amazon, are also very interested in the program, Jacob said. Since this will affect manned aviation, particularly airline flights by providing better forecasts thus improving on-time departures and arrivals, enhanced de-icing processes, lower turbulence and more, airlines and airports are also very interested, he said.

“Selection to the NASA University Leadership Program confirms OSU’s expertise and preeminence in unmanned systems, particularly in the area of unmanned aircraft for weather and meteorological applications,” Jacob said. “The challenge our team is addressing will have an impact across a wide range of aircraft for decades to come, not only helping advance the integration of drones and urban air taxis into the national airspace, but also increasing the safety of air transportation and airport operations for all aircraft from airliners and general aviation aircraft alike.”

USRI drones take off at the Choctaw Nation test site as part of a one-tomany drone swarm test.

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“The research team will identify the most pressing societal problems associated with water availability, land use and infrastructure facing Oklahoma, and … we will develop practical solutions at the junctions of these related issues.”

DR. RAYMOND HUHNKE

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STORY HARRISON HILL | PHOTOS GARY LAWSON AND TODD JOHNSON

A $20 Million Boost for Oklahoma Research NSF grant funds interdisciplinary study that tackles concerns involving land, water and infrastructure

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new $20 million National Science Foundation grant, administered by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), will support interdisciplinary research that aims to benefit Oklahoma.

“The people of Oklahoma are facing complex problems at the intersection of land use, water availability and infrastructure, and this project aims to answer whether an approach combining atmospheric and land sciences with social science can generate sustainable solutions,” said NSF EPSCoR program officer Chinonye Nnakwe Whitley.

“The project also offers the potential to promote STEM education and efforts to broaden the participation of women and underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities in STEM disciplines.”

Dr. Raymond Huhnke, the project director of Oklahoma EPSCoR and an OSU Regents Professor, is the principal investigator for the grant and will oversee the researchers.

During the project’s five-year span, a team of 34 researchers from Oklahoma State University, University of Oklahoma, University of Tulsa, Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Langston University, East Central University and Noble Research Institute plan to develop and test science-based solutions for complex problems involving land, water and infrastructure.

“The research team will identify the most pressing societal problems associated with water availability, land use and infrastructure facing Oklahoma, and with input from residents and policymakers, we will develop practical solutions at the junctions of these related issues,” Huhnke said.

These problems include anticipating extreme weather occurrences as well as short- and long-term climate effects, including drought and associated wildfires; addressing the encroachment of woody species into rangelands; improving marginal quality waters, especially those produced from oilfields; and enhancing the resiliency of our water and energy infrastructure, he added.

“This project is novel in both its design and vision,” Huhnke said. “It is a social science-led, multidisciplinary collaboration among social, physical, biological, engineering and computational scientists from institutions across the state.”

Co-lead researchers are Drs. Hank Jenkins-Smith and Carol Silva, co-associate directors of the OU National Institute for Risk and Resilience and professors of political science at OU. “The project is unique in that it couples a systematic, ongoing engagement with Oklahoma citizens and opinion leaders with hard science,” Jenkins-Smith said. “By working handin-hand with our fellow Oklahomans, researchers will utilize alternative solutions that accommodate the pressing needs of citizens, decisionmakers and the environment.”

Huhnke anticipates this project will have an impact early.

“I believe by communicating with stakeholders early in the project, we will set the proper tone and environment that will lead to early alternative solutions,” he said “As an engineer, I was trained to use ‘hard’ sciences to find solutions to problems. When I entered the workforce, I soon realized that the best

hard-science solution might not be the most practical when the human component is considered.”

Huhnke hopes to bring social science considerations into the process early to lead to broad societal Dr. Raymond Huhnke acceptance and success, he said.

“We will be building research capacity over the life of the project. This encompasses the hiring of additional researchers, purchasing of equipment, and providing educational programs,” he said. “One of the many outcomes of this investment by NSF is to make Oklahoma more competitive in attracting federal, state and private research funds.

“It’s important to note that we have a strong outreach and education mission as part of this project,” Huhnke said.

“As with prior NSF EPSCoR projects, we work closely with educational institutions at all levels across the state to deliver project-based as well as STEM-related programs to all age groups. We have plans to reach over 150,000 persons during this five-year project.”

To Huhnke, the motivation to work on a project like this is clear.

“For me, that’s easy … to improve the quality of life for current as well as future generations,” he said.

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 13

Absorbing

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STORY VICTORIA BERRY AND CHRISTINA ELLIOTT | PHOTOS PHIL SHOCKLEY AND ROBIN LASSER

Science Via Art OSU Museum exhibition The State We’re In Water offers immersive experiences

Water.

It’s absolutely vital for life. For science. For art. The worlds of art and research have now united in a unique new art exhibition at the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art. The exhibition, The State We’re In Water: Constructing a Sense of Place in the Hydrosphere, is designed as a powerful learning platform for science.

Including an arts-based research residency and multiple galleries, the exhibition runs through May 29. Sensory-rich videos, sculptures, and visually complex constructions will activate a visitor’s sense of place and social involvement.

The exhibition explores wastewater recycling, watershed habitats and the imprint of water movement on the land. Symptomatic of global issues, the local situations presented are intended to engage the audience in immersive experiences.

“Our goal with this project is to explore how research into the topic of water could be interpreted through the lens of socially engaged artists,” said Victoria Berry, director and chief curator of the OSU Museum of Art. “In arts-based research, projects like The State We’re In Water are built upon the platform of interdisciplinary

inquiry with many contributors. The choice of subject matter and our successful integration of collaborators have become an important benchmark for future programming. It also helped to receive funding through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.”

The artistic team of Robin Lasser, Marguerite Perret and Bruce Scherting worked with the museum for more than four years to accomplish the dynamic interdisciplinary experience. Lasser is a professor of art at San Jose State University in California who produces photographs, videos, sitespecific installations and public art dealing with environmental issues and social justice. Perret is a professor of art at Washburn University in Kansas whose artwork explores the spaces of art, science, health care and personal experiences. Scherting is an exhibition designer and the director of Project Art and the Medical Museum at the University of

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Weather Report installation dedicated to Phyllis Lasser, January 8, 1924 – April 24, 2020, Robin Lasser.

Toys and Blooms, Marguerite Perret, Porcelain and mixed media with digital images.

THIS PROJECT is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and by the OSU Museum of Art Advocates. The National Endowment for the Arts also granted funding to the OSU Museum of Art through the CARES Act, supporting the expansion of programming for The State We’re in Water.

Read the full list of OSUMA partners and sponsors here: okla.st/artpartners

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Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, managing and maintaining the hospital’s extensive collection of artwork, one of the largest public collections of art in Iowa.

In April 2016, Perret worked with museum staff for a series of interviews recorded at the Student Union and a town hall at the museum. The interviewees list was drawn from a long list of potential candidates and research topics recommended by Dr. Kenneth Sewell, OSU’s vice president for research. The topics needed to be responsive to the community’s needs and provide a democratic space where the co-construction of ideas by audience and institution is actively pursued. The artists synthesized the information looking for synergies with their already-established socially engaged creative practices.

“The area that we have been working in for the last 20 years is really about biodiversity, conservation, culture, and the intersection of art and science,” Scherting said. “Through that process, we have become very interested in water issues. We have come to realize they are so interlaced. You really need to talk about culture, nature, science and research simultaneously. That is why we are interested in talking to researchers about what they are doing.

We find it incredibly fascinating and hopeful as they try to unravel and understand all of those intersections.”

Through numerous trips and a twoweek residency during 2019, Lasser and Perret delved into research. The artists conducted their research with visits to sites that focused on water such as regional lakes and reservoirs, including the Salt Flats, Lake McMurtry, Lake Blackwell, the city of Stillwater Wastewater Treatment Plant and the Port of Catoosa. They connected with OSU scientists in water, environmental science, unmanned systems research, plant biology and many other experts from Stillwater and around the region.

“Taking Marguerite and Robin on our field trips last summer gave my graduate students and the artists an opportunity to learn from each other.

The artists could see our research

in action as we traveled the state to learn about the challenges we face in protecting our valuable streams and reservoirs in Oklahoma,” said Dr. Scott Stoodley, director of the environmental sciences graduate program at OSU. From August to December, the artists began translating what they were learning, hearing and seeing into art forms.

The resulting exhibition is an assemblage of five distinct installations with each gallery space representing a theme. Each installation aims to immerse viewers in the sensory experiences found in and around water.

“Some of these objects were actually pulled out of lakes in Oklahoma and then cast in porcelain. By collecting and casting and working very experimentally in the porcelain, I have created a collection,” Perret said about the Entangled/Strangled Bank gallery.

“Each table tells a slightly different story through the collected objects.

The overarching theme is about things shifting and changing — transmutation from a non-human environment to a human environment. The human impact is changing ecosystems, and it is becoming something completely different.”

“If you were to go out to Boomer Lake while it is raining, you look down at the water and you start seeing these ripples interfacing with each other,” Lasser said about the The Weather Report gallery. “You let your mind go at ease for a moment, and you might see what I saw. When the rain struck the water, I saw images that looked like stained glass windows on ancient cathedral walls or very complex patterns. What I began to understand is that nature has always influenced our creative imaginations.”

Their work includes wall text and public artist talks as well as class visits, artist-led art projects and virtual discussions for students.

Extending the project over four years provided the opportunity to involve students in the design development. In 2018, Paolo Sanza, an OSU associate professor of architecture, incorporated designing

a dynamic boardwalk into his upperlevel architecture class curriculum. After several rounds of student-submitted designs, Sanza and the exhibition artistic team chose a final design for the installation where visitors walk on a boardwalk surrounded by projections of water-related videos and sounds, becoming a part of the spectacle in an immersive experience.

“I like to involve my students in projects like this to gain experience beyond the concept and design phase and into a realized construction,” Sanza said. “It is only through the making and crafting that students can embody construction knowledge and acquire a tactile awareness of their projects.

Through this hands-on experience, they also realize the complexity imbued in the making and the poetry of tectonics.”

The exhibition contains an array of experiences and displays.

“The experience of the exhibition is far different than you might anticipate,” said Christina Elliott, associate curator of education. “These works incorporate scientific data on water in graphic design, sculpture, video narrative and kaleidoscopic patterns. The artists bring the viewer into environments created with beautiful, jewelry-like sculptures cast from lakeshore debris.

Many elements have titles such as Mystic Sewer Hourglass, Duckweed Detainment Pond, Golden Sewage and Toxic Algae.

“The way that the artists have displayed the different connections that water flows through is very dynamic. They are not only asking us how we develop a relationship with water on an individual level, but they are also asking us to think about water and environmental resources on a local level, state level, national level and even on a global level. No matter where you are or how you interact with environmental conservation, you will find an aspect of this show that is highly relevant to your life.”

The exhibition is available online and in person through May 2021.

“This is a wonderful exhibition to bring the whole family to and start little conversations about what is in

Cloacina in Triplicate, Marguerite Perret and Bruce Scherting, Archival photographic digital prints on aluminum.

Toys and Blooms, Marguerite Perret, Porcelain and mixed media with digital images.

the water,” said Catarina de Araújo, associate curator of education. “What is your personal impact on the environment and how it can affect other people in the world? We have worked hard to provide art activities that coincide with themes of the show.

“We want to spark conversations and create curiosity.”

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 17

A Fascination With Filtration

Shah’s work with ionic liquids could lead to improvements in space travel and exploration

H

umans need water — especially in space. And a spring shower of fresh water isn’t falling out

there.

So one team of researchers at Oklahoma State University is working on a project that could improve water filtration in space, allowing for longer stays and longer explorations.

Dr. Jindal Shah, an associate professor of chemical engineering at OSU, is working with ionic liquids, which could be the future of space wastewater filtration systems.

Ionic liquids are chemical compounds composed of cations (positively charged) and anions (negatively charged) particles — much like table salt, but with a weaker bond so that they are liquid below 100 degrees Celsius, he said.

“My fascination with ionic liquids started while pursuing my Ph.D. at the University of Notre Dame almost two decades ago,” Shah said. “I was excited to work on ionic liquids as the research in the chemical engineering discipline was just beginning, so it presented an enormous opportunity to contribute to the field.”

Many of these solvents do not evaporate, reducing air pollution, he added.

“From a chemical engineering perspective, ionic liquids afford numerous possibilities to be applied in many areas of the chemical and petrochemical industry,” he said. “One can tailor the properties of ionic liquids by selecting an appropriate cation and anion from a large pool of candidates, (so the options are) practically limitless.”

While working on a NASA Early CAREER proposal, Shah contacted Dr. Eric Fox at Marshall Space Flight Center to learn about research on ionic liquids there. Fox told Shah about a notice that listed topics of interests to NASA. One topic was related to exploring novel ways for removing dimethylsilanediol (DMSD) — and the idea of using ionic liquids for this purpose was born, Shah said.

Since 2010, the high levels of total organic carbon measured in water produced from the water processor assembly (WPA) in the International Space Station have been attributed to the presence of DMSD, which can be harmful to the process, Shah said.

The WPA produces drinkable water from humidity condensate, carbon dioxide reduction water, water obtained from fuel cells, reclaimed urine distillate, shower, handwashing and oral hygiene wastewaters, according to NASA. Current approaches for removing DMSD rely on finding appropriate adsorbents and conversions of DMSD via catalytic reduction, he added.

“Our project with NASA adopts an entirely novel approach using ionic liquids in an extractive distillation process to remove DMSD from wastewater … to produce contaminantfree water for reuse aboard space shuttles for deep space exploration and the ISS,” Shah said.

The research group conducts molecular simulation to predict how various ionic liquids will modify how DMSD attaches to water, Shah said.

To be able to correctly predict the trends with variations in ionic liquid structures, the team needs molecularlevel information on how ionic liquids interact with water and DMSD. Shah’s team is also collaborating with Dr. Joan Brennecke, a renowned

Examples of the molecular shape of anion ionic liquid classes.

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STORY HARRISON HILL | PHOTOS AND ILLUSTRATIONS CEAT MARKETING

Dr. Jindal Shah (left) and graduate student Atiya Banerjee look over some results involving ionic liquids research.

expert in ionic liquids from the University of Texas at Austin.

“Dr. Brennecke’s group conducts experiments to determine a thermodynamic quantity known as the activity coefficient — an indirect measure of interaction between two molecules,” Shah said. “We use this information to tune the parameters needed in our calculations to reproduce the experimental data as closely as possible.”

These parameters help Shah and his team determine how much ionic liquid might be needed per kilogram of water to remove the contaminant.

“The primary goal of the research activities in this project is to generate fundamental knowledge on the feasibility of ionic liquids for the removal of DMSD,” Shah said.

Shah also anticipates the concept could be used in difficult separation processes in chemical and petrochemical industries. This

could benefit oil and gas companies in Oklahoma, and Shah has a long-term plan to work with them.

“We leverage the design flexibility of ionic liquids to identify ionic liquids that can weaken the interaction between water and DMSD,” Shah said. “Ionic liquids are particularly suited for the application as they can be designed to be non-volatile, which is quite an advantage aboard the ISS.” This non-volatility means the liquid does not evaporate, which is also beneficial for separating ionic liquids from water once DMSD is removed, Shah said. Reducing the pressure on the mixture would let the water vaporize while the ionic liquid remains in the liquid state.

This research could lead to a more efficient water filtration system, allowing longer trips into space.

“Ionic liquids are transitioning from academic curiosity to industrial applications,” Shah said.

Probable density plot showing the molecular structure of an ionic liquid.

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 19

THE VALUE OF PARTNERSHIPS Common goal unites interdisciplinary teams in COVID-19 testing lab

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STORY SHANNON RIGSBY | PHOTOS PHIL SHOCKLEY AND GARY LAWSON

Oklahoma State University stepped up to the challenge of helping combat the spread of COVID-19 by establishing a human diagnostic lab on the Stillwater campus in March. It remains the most productive COVID-19 testing lab in the state. While the effects of the virus have been devastating, COVID-19 provided a clarifying lens for what is possible when partnerships are formed and academic, political and personal aspirations are set aside in the pursuit of a common goal.

“We are extremely proud of the innovative and collaborative work of our large and diverse team of experts and volunteers,” said Oklahoma State President Burns Hargis. “Our COVID19 testing response is a shining example of Oklahoma State’s foundational landgrant mission to educate, conduct cutting-edge research, and share both with the world.”

THE STATE OF A ‘WICKED PROBLEM’ There’s a scientific term that sounds like slang: a “wicked problem.” It’s a problem that’s out of the ordinary in its size, scope and complexity, burdened with incomplete or contradictory knowledge, and with tentacles, many unforeseen, that weave the issue at hand into other complicated concepts like economies. In all the “wicked problems” the world has faced in this century and the last, COVID-19 can be counted as one of the most pervasive.

Dr. Kayse Shrum, president of the OSU Center for Health Sciences and the dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, was serving as Gov. Kevin Stitt’s secretary for science and innovation as the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Oklahoma on March 7.

She was the only physician in his cabinet.

On March 13, Shrum became part of the state’s COVID-19 Solution Task Force.

Adequate testing was a primary problem in the fight against COVID-19.

Without it, decision makers were flying blind, using incomplete information and historical knowledge of other disease processes to determine next steps.

Shrum knew much more testing was needed and wondered if OSU might be able to help. Little did she know that Dr. Kenneth Sewell, OSU’s vice president for research, was already taking inventory of testing equipment and expertise across the Stillwater campus that might help, and he had discovered most of the critical ingredients to at least get started already existed in an animal disease diagnostic lab.

As the number of COVID-19 cases in Oklahoma topped 50, Stitt issued an executive order allowing Oklahoma’s research universities to test for COVID-19.

“The executive order from the governor’s office essentially made the Oklahoma State Department of Health and Oklahoma’s public research universities a kind of implicit consortium,” Sewell said. “It empowered the State Department of Health to treat the universities as partners rather than potential clients.”

COLLABORATION “The work of infectious disease detection, diagnostics and treatment is inherently multidisciplinary and collaborative. The interactions and collaboration among experts in diagnostics, infectious disease, pathology and clinical medicine are critical to understanding the threats posed by pathogens in the environment. One of our principal missions in the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Oklahoma Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory is to apply the skills of this team of experts to detection and mitigation of these threats for the benefit of the people of Oklahoma, their animal companions and the livestock upon which many base their livelihoods.” — Dr. Jerry R. Malayer, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, College of Veterinary Medicine

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PARTNERSHIP “Many researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences have participated in OSU’s SARS-CoV-2 testing lab in a variety of different capacities, from contributing supplies to processing samples to supervising data entry. The interest and support from our faculty and students has been overwhelming, as well as their excitement at the opportunity to directly benefit the people of Oklahoma.” — Dr. Kristen Baum, Associate Dean for Research, College of Arts and Sciences

CONTRIBUTION “Our research faculty immediately responded to the call for volunteers to help in the lab. Dr. Josh Ramsey was one of the first to report for duty on a Sunday afternoon. Other faculty soon followed and spent many hours in the lab while still teaching and doing their research.

They understood this was an opportunity to contribute to the health of the people of Oklahoma.” — Dr. Chuck Bunting, Associate Dean of Research and Sponsored Programs, College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology

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OSU quickly became the testing lab for the majority of specimens from county health departments across the state and for many hospitals.

Elizabeth Hutt Pollard, who took over as the Oklahoma secretary of science and innovation after Shrum, said OSU’s willingness to step up was a key to the state’s ability to navigate the pandemic.

“OSU has been an integral part of the Oklahoma State Department of Health’s and the governor’s response team to Covid-19,” she said. “Leveraging OSU laboratory capabilities and sourcing allowed us to quickly respond to the state’s testing needs and continue to expand our capabilities and service.”

THE COWBOY WAY Within the Oklahoma State University system, the partnerships quickly crossed campus boundaries. The Center for Health Sciences has a high complexity diagnostic lab. The lab most equipped to accommodate the type of testing needed for COVID-19 was the Oklahoma Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory on the Stillwater campus.

A partnership between campuses was formed. Dr. Anil Kaul, the CLIA certified lab director at CHS, became the CLIA lab director for the Stillwater human testing effort, and the lab received its needed certification quickly.

Leadership from Hargis on down believed in the project. Funds were allocated and additional equipment purchased. When a solution was identified for a problem, the administration answered “yes.”

The support continued with the faculty and staff and even many students. When it was evident the COVID-19 testing lab would require a host of people, Dr. Sewell put out a call for volunteers, and the volunteers came.

From across multiple disciplines across the university, they set aside academic pride. Bringing their skills sets, knowledge and an eagerness to serve no matter the task, more than 140 volunteers worked long hours in pursuit of a single goal: create a sustainable atmosphere for COVID-19 testing for as long as was necessary for Oklahoma.

One group functioned as the Incident Management Team to coordinate logistics, purchasing, new hiring, security and initial public relations, while others worked in the lab itself or in a computer lab set up to manage the vast flow of information. Many worked their day jobs and volunteered for additional duties on nights and weekends.

“Most of what goes on at any university is disciplined-based, department-based, college-based at the broadest. As the vice president for research, I am used to working across many disciplines and bringing people together to collaborate, but most of the time we are still doing biology research, chemistry research, psychology research, etc.” Sewell said. “This is the first time I have ever worked on anything where the entire university is coming around a problem to solve.

Everyone had different roles, and everyone had different skills to bring to the table. For the most part, people weren’t worried about what logo was on their shirt; they were worrying about, ‘Can we make an impact?’ That’s been the fun part of it.”

NATIONAL PARTNERS AND THE FUTURE The COVID-19 diagnostic lab on the Stillwater campus has changed over time. The lab settled into a sustainable operation over the summer, adding more laboratory staff as student workers prepared to return for their fall studies. Throughout, the OSU lab has maintained its place as the most productive COVID-19 testing lab in Oklahoma. As other opportunities emerged — both for new types of testing and opportunities for streamlining — OSU is taking the next steps to expand and improve.

A partnership has developed between Oklahoma State University and Infinity Biologix, previously RUCDR Infinite Biologic out of Rutgers University.

The FDA approved an emergency use authorization in the spring for RUDCR to perform a COVID-19 saliva test.

Collecting saliva specimens means less exposure for health care workers, is less invasive for the patient and reduces the use of personal protective equipment in the field.

Infinity Biologix developed the test procedures and worked with a specimen collection company to make the saliva collection cups for a high-throughput COVID-19 test. OSU submitted its application to the FDA for saliva-based testing in August.

“We have partnered with Rutgers and replicated its saliva process,” Sewell said. “Its help has also been invaluable regarding the FDA application process.”

Another national partnership took shape through the Association for Public Land Grant Universities Council on Research. Many labs across the country have a hand in COVID-19 testing, although it’s unlikely that any two are doing exactly the same thing.

Sharing information on roadblocks and successes will prevent universities from having to “reinvent the wheel.”

“We’ve formed something of a subcouncil on the various aspects of COVID testing so we can find out what’s working where,” Sewell said. “We hope this national partnership will result in an enduring network of university partnerships that will be equipped to react quickly to national pandemics.”

The lab, forged in the furnace of the pandemic, is now a permanent fixture in the OSU arsenal for helping combat COVID-19. In September, it moved to the

university’s Venture I facility, further expanding its possibilities for growth and innovation. In the years to come, the goal is to continue and expand human diagnostic testing to be ready for future state, national and global needs.

“I cannot even begin to tell you how proud I am of OSU, just in so many ways,” Shrum said. “I think it really highlights the importance of our academic institutions and how they can really be resources in great times of need, not just for education but for catastrophic events.”

While the pandemic has confined life in so many ways, it also eliminated boundaries, removed academic walls and provided a ringside seat for witnessing the possibilities of partnerships focused on one overarching goal with little thought to who gets the credit.

“When we look at what is coming at us from a societal level and at a global level — whether it’s global economics or weather patterns or how to solve problems facing rural America — these are problem sets that are so big that we have to get out of our old way of thinking,” Sewell said. “The pandemic has at least shaken us by the lapels and gotten us to approach problems in new ways. I think we can apply that mentality to other wicked problems.”

RESPONSE “I was very impressed with the response of our faculty, students and staff. When our office sent out a request for expertise, supplies or even equipment, our faculty, students and staff responded quickly and positively to all requests.

This effort required an ‘all hands on deck’ approach and whether or not they understand or appreciate it, our faculty, students and staff played critical roles in the entire process. Seeing how the campus responded to this effort makes me proud to be part of the Cowboy family.” — Dr. Ronald Van Den Bussche, Senior Associate Vice President for Research and Regents Professor of Integrative Biology, College of Arts and Sciences

SARS-CoV-2 test kits

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 23

Jealousy: Keeping Your Friends Closer An OSU study finds that emotional responses help sustain relationships

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STORY HARRISON HILL | PHOTOS PHIL SHOCKLEY AND GARY LAWSON

“People feel more friendship jealousy when our friends make new friends than new romantic partners. This is because we do different things for our best friends than their romantic partners do.”

DR. JAIMIE KREMS

J

ealousy isn’t usually seen as a positive emotion, but one researcher at Oklahoma State University is studying how jealousy among friends can be beneficial.

Dr. Jaimie Krems, an assistant professor in psychology, is focusing her research on how jealousy may help us keep friends.

“Friends are important sources of emotional support, as well as materials support, like help when we’re in need, and social support, such as having our backs in inevitable conflicts with other people,” Krems said. “In fact, friendships are so beneficial to us that some suggest sustaining them is the next best thing we can do for our health behind quitting smoking.”

Friendships don’t always last, though, she said.

In particular, friendships can be threatened by other people. She called emotional responses to this threat “friendship jealousy.”

“We explored what evokes this emotion, and whether this emotion has features that would make it well-suited to meet the recurrent challenge of hanging onto our friends when our friends inevitably meet and befriend new people,” Krems said.

Across 11 studies, Krems and her team found that people feel greater jealousy when closer friendships are threatened, and that friendship jealousy is attuned more to some threats (someone replacing you in your best friend’s affection) than intuitive ones (your best friend spending more time with someone else).

“For example, people feel more friendship jealousy when our friends make new friends than new romantic partners,” Krems said. “This is because we do different things for our best friends than their romantic partners do, and so best friends’ romantic partners are less likely to replace us.”

Like all emotions, jealousy is an adaptive emotion. This means that the emotion arose over evolutionary time to help solve a recurrent problem faced by our ancestors, Krems said.

“Adapted, or functional, emotions help us solve problems linked to fitness, the coin of the realm in evolution,” Krems said. “That is, these emotions likely help us survive and thrive.”

A good example of an adaptive emotion is the fear of the roar of a lion that prompts us to flee and live another day, Krems added.

“Friendship jealousy prompts us to engage in ‘friend guarding,’ a suite of behavior that helps us prevent the loss or defection of our friends to other people,” she said.

The team induced people to feel emotion in real time, gleaned responses to hypothetical scenarios, employed behavioral choice paradigms such as asking people where they would seat their friends and interlopers at a dinner party and engaged participants in recall of real-world events.

“The benefits of sustaining friendships are non-negligible,” Krems said. “Social ties can be powerful tools for achieving leadership Dr. Jaimie Krems positions and exercising social power.”

This emotion prompts us to keep our friends separate from those other people that might take our friends, even placing them farther away from best friends when we make a seating arrangement, the research found.

Krems partnered with Hamilton College in New York and Arizona State University, making their team interdisciplinary, a benefit to the research, which was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“Social psychology is a team sport; this particular work leverages interdisciplinary evidence — from social, developmental, cognitive psychology, evolutionary social science, ethnography, animal behavior and social network analysis,” Krems said.

“Previous work in developmental psychology suggested that these feelings were solely negative, and perhaps we should feel shame for experiencing such jealousy,” Krems said. “The perspective we take asks instead why such a negative emotion would persist if it didn’t give rise to some benefits.”

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Enhancing Geriatric Health Care Dr. Weihua Sheng leads a team of researchers developing a robotic aide to help older adults

O

wning a home-based health care robot might not be so far off, according to a team of researchers from across Oklahoma who are developing technology that could be the future of health care for older individuals.

Dr. Weihua Sheng, from the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at Oklahoma State University, is leading the team, which has members from engineering, human sciences and psychology at OSU and the University of Oklahoma’s College of Nursing.

“This is a truly interdisciplinary endeavor,” said Dr. Alex Bishop, an associate professor and Brian Close Professor in Adulthood and Aging

from OSU’s Department of Human Development and Family Science, and an expert in gerontology.

“I don’t see how we could complete this project without looking through the different lenses of our team members.”

Sheng’s focus has always been on robotics, and he brought his research to OSU in 2006. The idea for Elsa, the geriatric assistance robot, was born from a recognition of challenges faced by geriatric populations, including health monitoring and intervention, as well as mental and psychological needs. Also, the team has identified a new challenge that is prevalent in Oklahoma: the need for attentive health care in rural environments.

A member of a focus group tests the home-based, health care robot, Elsa’s interaction and responsiveness to a series of prompts a “patient” might use in a real-world scenario. Dr. Weihua Sheng and his team hope that the more Elsa interacts with patients the more familiar it will become with the intricacies of communication.

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STORY JEFF HOPPER | PHOTOS COURTESY DR. WEIHUA SHENG

Populations that are geographically isolated pose a unique challenge to health care workers.

Elsa is designed to address a number of growing challenges. The unit interacts with its patient through both audio and visual interfaces, each providing unique benefits to missions such as medication reminders, patient monitoring or even providing interactive entertainment.

The project has received several grants from the National Science Foundation. Most recently, work on Elsa has focused on the collection and use of sound data to trigger Elsa’s action or intervention.

For instance, if Elsa creates a baseline of “normal” sounds from a collection of sound data, then it could recognize an abnormality, such as a fall, and seek assistance.

Elsa can also administer routine mental and physical check-ups. Through a series of questions and data collection, the unit can determine whether the patient is in good mental and physical health or if assistance or further examination from a health care professional is needed.

However, each of Elsa’s tasks and services comes with its own set of unique challenges in technical, psychological and in some cases legal issues. Overcoming these challenges will dictate the next steps in the development process.

Technical challenges include the actual collection of sound and video data. While technology exists that can collect the data, Sheng says those means of collection must be refined to meet the rigorous requirements that a home health care robot will face.

“The unit must be able to learn and adapt to numerous possible situations,” Sheng said. “The robot must be able to understand the context and intricacies of human interaction in order to accurately interpret the data it collects.”

Dr. Weihua Sheng and his team (pictured) have partnered with Dr. Alex Bishop, other researchers from OSU and the National Science Foundation to develop Elsa, the home-based, health care robot.

While a person might be able to understand the context of a minutely delayed response to a memory-based question, a robot will collect the audio data and strictly apply a given set of rules in order to determine if the response meets the requirements and can be deemed acceptable.

Also, legal concerns pertaining to the active monitoring of an individual through either video or audio are already in play today. Questions about upholding individual privacy will play a prominent role in any in-home interactive audio or visual device.

The future of this in-home health care device will depend on the trust people are willing to place in a robot to provide accurate and dependable health care. As technology becomes more integral to day-to-day life, the more likely it will become that a device such as Elsa will be acceptable and welcome.

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Unifying Health OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and NY’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine partner in research to benefit pets and people

between Oklahoma State AUniversity’s NEWCollege PARTNERSHIP of Veterinary Medicine and Albert Einstein College of Medicine may herald new treatments for cancer patients, both humans and animals.

At the core of the one-health research partnership between Einstein and the CVM are Ashish Ranjan, BVSc, Ph.D., and Chandan Guha, M.B.B.S., Ph.D. Ranjan, a professor and Kerr Foundation Endowed Chair in the Department of Physiological Sciences, leads the Nanomedicine and Targeted Therapy Laboratory at the CVM. His lab conducts cancer-related research, and he treats dogs and cats who have cancer.

Located in the Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school where Guha is vice chair of radiation oncology and a professor of radiation oncology, pathology and urology. He has been doing cancer biology research for 25 years at Einstein and treats cancer patients with a variety of radiotherapy approaches.

Ranjan and Guha spearheaded the agreement, said Dr. Carlos Risco, OSU CVM dean.

“They were familiar with each other’s work and as researchers often do, they communicated and started

28 O S U R E S E A R C H M AT T E R S

asking how can we share faculty expertise, institutional resources and what would the funding trends look like?”

Risco said. “About a year ago, Drs. Ranjan and Jerry Malayer, our associate dean of research, and I met with Dr. Guha in New York City. We talked about partnering and sharing experiences and what this would look like. I envisioned this partnership to develop new therapeutic approaches, drugs and devices for oncology. And also exciting about this partnership was that we had an opportunity to look into other areas — infectious, emerging and zoonotic diseases.”

“This is the quintessential team science approach to advance research. This cross disciplinary science approach combines team members’ strengths, experience and institutional resources for a common research endeavor,” Risco said. “This method will accelerate scientific innovation and help translate research findings into therapeutic approaches that will ultimately help both animal and human patients.”

“This collaboration with Einstein depicts the One Health initiative, which focuses on the fact that animal, human and environmental health are intricately connected,” said Jerry Malayer, Ph.D., associate dean of research and graduate education at the veterinary college. “There are programs at

STORY DERINDA BLAKENEY | PHOTOS GARY LAWSON, JTORRESPHOTO.COM / ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE AND ANNA DUDKOVA / UNSPLASH

“This collaboration with Einstein depicts the One Health initiative, which focuses on the fact that animal, human and environmental health are intricately connected.�

DR. JERRY MALAYER

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Guha Chandan

Einstein and programs at the CVM that overlap in some key ways. For example, the mechanisms of disease processes may be similar in a dog as in a person. We might find something that benefits both and thereby advance public health. The opportunity to talk and network to identify these opportunities is important to both institutions. Things that benefit the human population can also affect the animal population in a positive way and vice versa.

“Both Ranjan and Guha are funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. They met through their connections at NIH and with other folks in the field. Over the past year, they talked about potential collaboration, visited each other’s facilities and before you know it, we’re talking about institutional partnerships. Agreements like this help lower the barriers for people to do quality work.”

Ranjan said his lab and Guha work in similar areas.

“Thus, we discussed ways to collaborate such that we investigate them first in the veterinary patient and then eventually take those to the human setting at their institution,” Ranjan said.

“The only way we can solve complex disease problems is to learn from nature,” Guha said. “Using a mouse model is not real life; there are no risk factors involved. In real life, we have a competition between our defense mechanisms, which prevents the mutated cell or cancer cell to express itself, versus the cancer cell trying to overcome the defense mechanisms of the body and grow.”

Dr. Edward Burns, executive dean and professor of pathology and medicine at Einstein, said, “We’ve cured every cancer in mice. Mice need not fear cancer. What this new partnership will do is investigate cure rates in veterinary patients that develop cancers spontaneously. Such patients are closer to humans and thus, are translationally relevant.

That’s where the potential payoff could be in the long run and makes this collaboration exciting.”

“I was looking to connect cancer centers with comparative oncology capability,” Guha said. “OSU is currently doing outstanding work for that. I was very fortunate to meet Dr. Ashish Ranjan in one of the ultrasound meetings. We became mutual admirers. … Dr. Ranjan has single-handedly given ultrasound a special meaning in veterinary medicine. He has been doing pioneering work using ultrasound to treat tumors non-invasively and without resection.

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“The collaboration between our college, which is an NIH-designated cancer center in humans, and the OSU veterinary college, which is treating cancers in companion pets, is a natural partnership. For medical schools like Einstein, which are doing cutting-edge research, this brings a great opportunity to study the natural causes of cancer and how to treat them as well as look at other areas (such as) the degenerative conditions of the bones and joints or neurodegenerative conditions. These opportunities will open up as we move forward, which will benefit society. It’s a winwin for all sides.”

“Current projects in my lab are mainly centered on optimizing focused ultrasound treatment parameters and how they can be combined with nanoparticle immune adjuvants to improve outcomes in pre-clinical and clinical cancer settings,” Ranjan said. “… Our partnership with Einstein will enhance our research experiences and help develop therapeutic protocols that will benefit the veterinary and human patient populations.”

“Ultrasound is a very interesting energy,” Guha said. “You have very low energy ultrasound, which you use for getting the baby pictures or diagnostic ultrasound. Then you have very high energy ultrasound, which causes almost charring; it’s instantaneous, and within five seconds the tumor is dead. Our group has been working on a spectrum in the middle. Our research has shown that we can create an in situ vaccine by using ultrasound. In other words, we can turn on mechanisms within the tumor which will essentially help the

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

tumor to be cleared using the body’s own defense system of the immune system.”

Ranjan’s lab is at the forefront of focused ultrasound and nanomedicine-based immunotherapy research.

“We have made significant inroads and findings that are aiding researchers in this field of research to understand how device-directed medicines influence a patient’s ability to cure tumors,” he said. “Einstein has top-notch investigators in cancer immunotherapy. We are of interest to Einstein’s ongoing effort because partnering with us allows them to quickly translate their bench to bedside research into actual practice. We are also unique in our ability to make clinically relevant nanoparticles and can act as a direct source of those to Einstein.”

“It’s not just what Ashish and I do, but it opens the opportunity to many,” said Guha. “Einstein has very established investigators, who are doing fundamental immunology research and would be very happy to collaborate. I’m really grateful for both Dean Gordon Tomaselli and Executive Dean Edward Burns at Einstein and Dean Carlos Risco at OSU CVM for giving us the opportunity to arrange this memorandum of agreement. Whether it’s neuroscience, orthopedic surgery or oncology, our institutions will always have an opportunity to work together for the benefit of our patients — patients in the cancer center at Einstein and patients in OSU’s Veterinary Medical Hospital.”

“We appreciate the canine owners’ motivation and support in letting their pets be enrolled in our clinical

trials. This is helping us understand the feasibility of our technologies in actual clinical case scenarios,” Ranjan said. “The findings will assist the medical institutions across the country to translate those for their own research, and Einstein is a great example in that regard. I think this partnership is a great beginning. OSU is perfectly positioned to help medical institutions to improve the way we treat cancers, and we invite them to partner with us. Our past efforts and extramural funding including those from Petco, Focused Ultrasound Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have helped expand the one-health mission, which recognizes the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment, and we hope this initiative will strengthen it further.”

Risco called the partnership a unique opportunity for the participating institutions to improve animal and human health through the development of therapeutic approaches, drugs and devices. “This agreement between the respective colleges will advance research activities and productivities by faculty collaborating like Drs. Ranjan and Guha have done. Ultimately, I see not only our faculty but the citizens of Oklahoma, this nation and the world benefitting through this initiative. We have a wonderful record of solving evolving societal issues and in this case of advancing the knowledge in therapy, diagnosis and research of oncology.

With this partnership, we have the opportunity to expand it further in the areas of infectious, emerging, and zoonotic diseases and maybe in other areas as well going forward.

It is very gratifying for Oklahoma State University, in particular the College of Veterinary Medicine, that a worldrenowned research institution like Albert Einstein College of Medicine recognizes the impactful research that our college does and then to say, ‘we want to partner with them. We want to join forces with them so that we can advance our own discovery and research.’ I applaud all faculty in our college for their dedication to advance research, teaching and service and I’m grateful to Einstein for providing us the opportunity to partner.”

Ashish Ranjan

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From Research to Reality

Team uses new program to show farmers water-saving technology

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s water resources become more limited and expensive, Oklahoma State University is using collaboration to try to improve irrigation efficiency on farms throughout the state and region.

The challenge sounds straightforward: How can we persuade farmers to adopt new advances in technology and water-use protocols? Research results show clear benefits to agricultural producers who adopt these advances.

“Surveys show only about 10 percent of producers are using recent advances related to improved irrigation scheduling and technology,” said Kevin Wagner, Oklahoma Water Resources Center director and holder of OSU’s Thomas E. Berry Professorship in Water Research and Management. “There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one given by producers is tight

profit margins and the operational cost associated with investing in the newest equipment.”

The possible solution being implemented by the Irrigation Research and Extension Team with OSU’s Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources is twofold: Find, attract and work with cooperating partners who can all pull in the same direction and let producers play.

FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE The OSU team is going beyond the ageold model of an expert speaker providing a bunch of data-driven reasons with its Testing Ag Performance Solutions. TAPS is built on interactive, real-life farm management competitions.

“Go to any county or state fair — people enjoy a bit of friendly competition, especially with their friends and neighbors,” Wagner said. “Essentially,

A 2018 OSU research survey indicated 1,835 Oklahoma farms irrigated 601,492 acres of their total 3.4 million acres involved in agricultural production.

32 O S U R E S E A R C H M AT T E R S

STORY DONALD STOTTS | PHOTOS TODD JOHNSON

we let them try out research-based improved technologies and strategies using systems at Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station sites such as the division’s McCaull Farm and Oklahoma Panhandle Research and Extension Center in northwestern Oklahoma, and the Southwest Research and Extension Center in Altus.”

Goodbye, risk. Hello, firsthand experience.

Several partners have joined the effort, and more groups and organizations are expected.

The OSU Irrigation Research and Extension Team has worked closely with the Panhandle Ag Irrigators Association, Oklahoma Water Resources Board, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, Oklahoma Conservation Commission and universities throughout the region such as Colorado State, Kansas State, Texas A&M, New Mexico State and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

“The TAPS program provides a research framework where the management treatments are based on producer experiences instead of our own,” said Jason Warren, OSU Extension soil and water conservation specialist and researcher. “This allows us to better understand how producers may manage water for efficiency and compare strategies in a replicated setting to generate data that can be shared with everyone to improve success in efficient irrigation management on farms.”

lab for the Panhandle, irrigation scheduling technology for on-farm demonstrations and soil moisture sensors for Master Irrigator program graduates.

ADOPTION BOOST Team efforts to implement a Master Irrigator program like those used by cooperating partner universities in their states are giving a boost to the focus of research-based technology and strategy adoption.

“Look at the university’s two state agencies, OSU Extension and the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station system; research is designed to be the foundation of outreach efforts, with both seeking to improve the quality of life for Oklahomans, their families and their communities,” Wagner said. “As has long been said in the division, we measure our successes by how we help others to succeed.”

Master Irrigator participants focus on how to best incorporate research-based conservation irrigation practices into their operations. Many Oklahoma producers have asked the OSU team to start such a program, and that makes it easier to attract support from funding institutions and public and private agencies, Wagner said.

The National Resources Conservation Service has verbally agreed to increase Environmental Quality Incentives Program contract rankings for graduates of the Master Irrigator program. The Oklahoma Water Resources Board has agreed to provide funding for outfitting a mobile irrigation

OSU Extension Cotton Specialist Seth Byrd and Experiment Station Senior Superintendents Cameron Murley (Goodwell) and Mike Schulz (Altus) also have provided invaluable assistance, Wagner said.

IRRIGATION TEAM The OSU Irrigation Research and Extension Team is an interdisciplinary group, drawing on combined expertise to help Oklahoma farmers solve production issues in environmentally and economically sustainable ways. In addition to Wagner and Warren, members include: Saleh Taghvaeian of the Department of

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, whose research and Extension efforts focus on irrigation efficiency, sub-surface drip irrigation, soil moisture, remote sensing, environmental instrumentation and agricultural water management, among others.

Robert Scott Frazier of Biosystems and

Agricultural Engineering, a leading researcher in optimizing agricultural processes and enhancing quality management through applied industrial engineering.

Sumit Sharma of the Department of Plant and

Soil Sciences, who is stationed at the Oklahoma Panhandle Research and Extension Center in Goodwell and focuses his research on irrigation strategies, crop physiology and soil science.

Sensors and other technological advances make irrigation more efficient, reducing associated costs and enhancing the sustainability of available water resources.

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 33

COVER STORY

Powering the Future of Flight OSU students and researchers are developing a hybrid electric propulsion system for aircraft

A team of OSU researchers have partnered with several organizations to research and develop a hybrid electric propulsion system for unmanned aircraft. The team has now partnered with the FAA to scale the propulsion system for eventual inclusion in manned aircraft.

“Sometimes life takes unexpected turns in the right direction.”

UNKNOWN

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r. Kurt Rouser didn’t know how true that quote would be for himself and numerous students after a conversation he had in the fall of 2017.

The assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Oklahoma State University has led various groups of students in researching the development and construction of a hybrid electric propulsion system for aircraft. The endeavor started after a conversation with a local oil and gas company

34 O S U R E S E A R C H M AT T E R S

that was interested in exploring new methods for pipeline inspections. The company was using electric multirotor drones to inspect pipelines, but restrictions on using those meant the company was taking upwards of three weeks to inspect 100 miles of pipeline.

Following the conversation, Rouser set out to create a turboelectric propulsion system that could harness the energy density of hydrocarbon fuel to dramatically increase the operational efficiency of the drone. In the spring of 2018, the Oklahoma Center

for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) granted two years of funding for the project.

The first year was spent characterizing power systems and working on subsystem development.

Rouser and his students measured the response time of turbine engines and the efficiency of different electrical system setups to determine the greatest output and efficiency, while taking into consideration certain parameters and the limitations of the system being integrated into an unmanned aircraft system.

STORY JEFF HOPPER | PHOTOS PHIL SHOCKLEY AND GARY LAWSON

Once the design and build specifications of the system were determined, Rouser assigned a new group of students to identify the challenges of integrating the system into an aircraft in the fall of 2019. The senior design project team meticulously analyzed potential problems in the structural design of the aircraft, the thermal management of the hybrid electric propulsion system, the system’s reaction to vibration experienced during use and the aircraft inlet size for the amount of cooling flow that would be required to keep the system within operating parameters, as a capstone project.

Rouser also submitted the project to FirePoint Innovations Center at Wichita State University’s Converge, Collaborate and Create competition. FirePoint works in collaboration with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center to expose tomorrow’s bright minds to the newest manufacturing technologies in order to develop the next workforce.

The competition chooses 10 teams to fund a proof of concept of their submissions. From there, the selected teams present their proofs of concepts, and three teams are chosen to move into the final phase of the competition and work together to implement their projects into real-world applications.

Rouser’s team was selected to move into the final phase and is working on developing a working prototype.

This also coincides with the recent awarding of $600,000 in funding over a three-year period from the Federal Aviation Administration. The first year of the FAA project will be used to finish developing a subscale (unmanned) version of their hybrid electric propulsion system. The second and third year will be used to design and develop a full-scale testing unit that will provide a testing apparatus for future iterations of this technology.

“This testing unit will help the FAA develop certification and validation standards for the safe integration of these hybrid electric propulsion units,” Rouser said. “The FAA is turning to [OSU] for the practical and safe integration of these systems.” He says this partnership and its results will reinforce OSU and CEAT as cornerstones in the emerging market, which many believe will be a necessity for the urban air mobility movement.

“I’m extremely proud of the work our students have done over the last three years,” Rouser said. “This project has the potential to impact this growing technology internationally, which is a testament to the caliber of students we have in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology.”

“This project has the potential to impact this growing technology internationally, which is a testament to the caliber of students we have in CEAT.” DR. KURT ROUSER

Dr. Kurt Rouser (second from the right) and members of his team review and discuss possible adjustments and improvements to their aircraft hybrid electric propulsion system.

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 35

WELLNESS

History Hasn’t Hurt Wheat

In a first-of-its-kind study, Oklahoma State University researchers study gastrointestinal effects of modern and heirloom wheat varieties as part of a Western diet.

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STORY BRITTANY BOWMAN | PHOTOS TODD JOHNSON AND FREEIMAGES.COM

Wheat has been a staple of the human diet for thousands of years, but when the healthfulness of modern wheat varieties was called into question, OSU researchers went to work to study its impact on gut health.

As many as 3 million Americans consume gluten-free diets annually, according to a 2017 Forbes article, but only a small proportion have a diagnosed medical condition, such as celiac disease, that actually requires such a diet. While reasons for going gluten-free vary, a common concern cited by many is the gluten protein found in modern wheat varieties.

To test whether modern wheat causes an inflammatory response in the GI tract, Drs. Edralin Lucas, Brenda Smith and Brett Carver designed a study to compare the effects of heirloom wheat variety, Turkey, and a modern wheat variety, Gallagher, while monitoring the immune response, body weight and changes in the integrity of the GI tract.

“We were trying to answer the question, ‘How does the 90 to 95 percent of the population without a diagnosed gluten-sensitive condition respond to these different types of wheat?’” said Smith, OSU Regents Professor of Nutritional Sciences and John and Sue Taylor Endowed Professor.

Carver, OSU Regents Professor and leader of OSU’s Oklahoma Wheat Improvement Team, said the varieties selected are important in American agricultural history. German Mennonite migrants introduced the Eastern European Turkey variety to the U.S. Great Plains in the 1870s after varieties from the East Coast

performed poorly. By the 1940s, Turkey was the most popular wheat variety in the region, and almost all of modern U.S. wheat varieties trace their origins to Turkey.

Gallagher, popular for its pest resistance, is a descendant of Turkey and has replaced Turkey as one of the most commonly grown wheat varieties in the Great Plains, Carver said. It is found in products ranging from pizza to cereal but contains 33-mer, an indigestible gluten peptide that some believe heightens gluten sensitivity.

“When these concerns first came out, scientists as a whole were not talking,” Carver said. “This is the first study published like this. We’re not just confirming something that’s hypothesized or already published. No, this is groundbreaking.”

GUT REACTION

Could genetic changes in the modern wheat variety Gallagher have changed from its heirloom ancestor Turkey? To test these concerns, laboratory mice were fed Turkey or Gallagher wheat as part of either an “optimal” mice diet or a Western (high fat, high sugar) diet.

“From an inflammatory standpoint, there was really no difference between the two varieties,” Smith said.

The mice fed the heirloom wheat showed slightly lower levels of LPS-binding protein, an indicator of inflammation. Meanwhile, mice on the modern wheat diet showed improved structure of villi, finger-like projections in the small intestine that absorb nutrients.

“In terms of some of the structural components of the gut, the modern wheat actually provided a benefit,” Smith said.

While past research has considered topics related to gluten sensitivity, such as the impact on individuals with celiac disease consuming wheat,

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 37

NEXT STEPS

Gallagher wheat variety being grown in one of OSU’s research fields.

Smith said this is one of the first studies directly investigating the gastrointestinal impact of wheat consumption in a mouse model that mimics otherwise healthy individuals consuming a Western diet.

Individuals with celiac disease often exhibit what Smith calls a “leaky gut,” as the body detects wheat as an invader and attacks the lining of the digestive system, causing microorganisms or their constituents to leak into the rest of the body and elicit an immune response. A lesser, but similar, led situation can occur several hours after consuming a high-fat Western meal.

“We had to give a nod to the fact people don’t eat the perfect diet,” Smith said. “With half of the animals fed a Western diet, the question was, ‘Does wheat make the response to a high fat diet worse?’

From an inflammatory standpoint, there really was no difference at all.”

In fact, mice fed a Western diet with either variety of wheat saw a reversal of one effect commonly observed in a Western diet. Short chain fatty acids, important for cell energy and immune response, are typically reduced in Western diets.

However, coupling a Western diet with Turkey or Gallagher reversed this effect.

“There were some parameters, like gut barrier integrity, that actually improved by incorporating wheat into the diet, whether it was Gallagher or Turkey,” Smith added.

To measure the health of the gut lining, or what researchers call gut barrier integrity, Smith, Lucas and Carver evaluated the proteins providing scaffolding between cells. While most were similar between mice consuming Gallagher and Turkey, one was actually enhanced in mice consuming Gallagher, an indicator of improved gut barrier health.

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The team has presented the results to the American Society of Nutrition and published in the Journal of Agricultural Food and Chemistry. Many agriculture industry leaders are showing interest in the research.

“This should be a message to the general public, but it’s also a message to clinicians,” Smith said.

“One study doesn’t turn the whole tide, but at least it should raise a question: ‘Is recommending glutenfree kinds of diets or avoiding wheat products to otherwise healthy individuals the best thing to do?”

Their research could have major impacts.

Smith said some studies have suggested severe gluten restriction causes a harmful immune response.Even in less severe situations, wheat is an important source of nutrients such as iron, selenium and fiber that would need to be replaced if wheat was removed from the diet.

Therefore, researchers are diligently sharing their findings with professional organizations including the Home Baking Association, the Oklahoma Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Oklahoma Wheat Commission. Smith says they especially hope to reach dietitians and personal trainers since these are the populations the public often turn to for dietary recommendations.

While many without diagnosed medical conditions may claim to feel better after avoiding wheat and gluten, Smith said their research suggests the blame does not belong on modern wheat gluten.

“They may be feeling better by eating less processed food, and it just so happens a lot of your processed food is wheat-derived,” Smith said.

Dr. Edralin Lucas, an OSU professor of nutritional sciences and the Jim and Lynne Williams Endowed Professor, is already looking toward future studies, especially transitioning from a study in mice to human test subjects.

“We were looking at the integrity of the gut, the integrity of immune cells and other health outcomes,” Lucas said. “But there are

“That’s the beauty of a land-grant university like this. Our work is going from producers and growers to health outcomes and then to the public.”

DR. BRETT CARVER

many opportunities for future research. For example, what is the effect of consuming different varieties of wheat in prediabetic and overweight individuals?”

As researchers collaborate with professional organizations to carry the message of their findings, Smith also highlights the importance of their own collaboration.

Dr. Carver, recognized as “Mr. Wheat” by the Oklahoma Wheat Growers Association, built on decades of wheat research expertise in the Ferguson College of Agriculture to trace wheat lineages and even mill and process the Gallagher and Turkey wheat flour for these studies on campus. Meanwhile, Lucas and Smith in the College of Education and Human Sciences provide the valuable nutritional science expertise to study its effect on gut health.

“This highlights the strength of partnerships,” Smith said. “To have someone who is an expert on wheat grown in this region and couple it with our expertise on the health side is what makes this work.”

The research is funded by the Oklahoma Wheat Commission.

“That’s the beauty of a land-grant university like this,” Carver said. “Our work is going from producers and growers to health outcomes and then to the public.”

Dr. Brett Carver (from left), Dr. Brenda Smith and Dr. Edralin Lucas led the wheat study.

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 39

A Deeper Study Research using detailed brain images investigates parent-child relationships

40 O S U R E S E A R C H M AT T E R S

STORY BRITTANY BOWMAN | PHOTO PHIL SHOCKLEY

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n Oklahoma State University researcher is using advanced brain imaging to better understand the relationship between parents and their teenagers.

Dr. Amanda Morris, OSU Regents Professor in human development and family science and the George Kaiser Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Child Development at OSU-Tulsa, examines adolescent and parent brain images during common experiences such as resolving conflict and overcoming mistakes. She believes identifying patterns between parental and adolescent brain images may one day become a predictor for mental health and development.

“We are the only place we know of in the world doing this kind of research,” Morris said. “We are interested in exploring the importance of relationships in development and how parentadolescent relationships are organized and displayed in social interactions.”

While past research has studied either parents or their children, Morris believes this is the first research to monitor parents and adolescents simultaneously during a shared activity using neuroimaging.

So far, Morris has found adolescents’ brain activity largely follows parents’ brain activity, suggesting parents are highly influential in adolescent emotional regulation and higher-level thinking. Eventually, Morris hopes to use brain imaging to show parents the effects of different actions on their children’s mental health.

“Being able to understand mental health disease and what’s happening in the brain can influence treatment effects and treatment options,” she said.

“We’re still a little far from that, but we’ve made many strides, particularly around depression and anxiety.”

Morris’ work is made possible through an OSU partnership with the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa. As a developmental scientist, her past work primarily relied on surveys and observations to compare parents and children.

Now, the institute’s functional magnetic resonance imaging machines enable her to monitor multiple individuals’ brain activities at once to identify regions of the brain activated during parentadolescent interactions that could be indicators for relational and mental health.

“The brain and social relationships are really the foundation for brain development,” Morris said. “It doesn’t just happen in a box. Being able to understand how parent interactions influence child mental health will enable us to say, ‘Hey, when you do this, this is what your child’s brain looks like.’”

Larger data sets will expand on Morris’ brain imaging approach. In addition to her parentadolescent research, Morris is contributing to a separate research as part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Nearly 12,000 individuals at 22 research sites across the U.S. are receiving biennial brain imaging scans for 10 years, creating a data set large enough to hopefully provide a framework for comparing individuals’ brain activity and understanding overall brain development.

“Just like height and weight charts for infants, we are working to develop brain charts to monitor brain growth and describe what typical brain development looks like,” Morris said. “We want to research mental health problems and their relation to brain development.”

Her work is part of the larger OSU Brain Initiative, as NIH funding has launched what many researchers call the “age of the brain.” The OSU Center for Health Sciences in Tulsa soon will have fMRI machines of its own, opening the door for more research. Additionally, a cross-disciplinary minor in neuroscience and a graduate certificate in neuroscience are set to provide students more opportunities.

“Students have told us they are really interested in neuroscience, and we want to provide them more opportunities to explore this exciting field,” she said. “It’s also really important in terms of the work we are doing to have students to support it.”

Morris and other researchers also plan to study the role of trauma on youth brain development at the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity, established through an $11 million NIH grant. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Child Trends, Oklahoma has some of the highest rates of early life adversity, and Morris plans to use OSU-CHS’s fMRI equipment to monitor neurodevelopment over time of infants born to mothers with opioid addiction. She also recently wrote a book related to childhood adversity, co-authored with Dr. JenniferHays Grudo and published by the American Psychological Association.

“As a developmental scientist, social and environmental factors are so important to mental health,” Morris said. “This is an opportunity to monitor their impact on brain activity and show firsthand the value of our work.”

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 41

Predicting a Pandemic

OSU researchers model COVID-19’s impact on Oklahoma

OSU’s COVID-19 modeling and predictive team are: Goutam Chakraborty (from left), Jared Taylor, Melinda McCann and Glen Krutz.

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s the COVID-19 pandemic reached Oklahoma, state officials realized they needed information in order to battle the virus effectively. The governor turned to the state’s two largest research universities for answers.

On the last day of March, Gov. Kevin Stitt and state health officials met with faculty from Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma to ask them to predict COVID-19’s impact on the state’s health care system.

“There was grave concern that this may overwhelm our health care capacity,” said Jared Taylor, an OSU epidemiologist and associate professor of veterinary pathobiology who was recently named Oklahoma’s interim state epidemiologist. “We were charged with understanding this disease in particular, infectious disease transmission in general, and the data out there on percentages of cases requiring hospitalization, percentages requiring treatment in the ICU and fatalities.”

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The two university teams were asked to model, independently of each other, COVID-19’s spread and provide officials with an analytical tool for their decision-making efforts. The OSU team included Taylor, Glen Krutz, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of political science, Melinda McCann, professor and statistics department head, and Goutam Chakraborty, a marketing professor and director of a graduate program in business analytics.

By building a data-driven mathematical model of the disease’s progression, the OSU researchers could adjust inputs to see how changes could affect transmission, including interventions such as shutdowns and mask mandates. The model also reflected the likelihood of increased infections as the state reopened.

“When we started at the end of March, we only had about two weeks of data available and we used that to calibrate a starting point for the model,” Chakraborty said. “The real strength of this model

STORY JEFF JOINER | PHOTOS PHIL SHOCKLEY

“We were charged with understanding this disease in particular, infectious disease transmission in general, and the data out there on percentages of cases requiring hospitalization, percentages requiring treatment in the ICU and fatalities.”

DR. JARED TAYLOR

is how it could be adjusted in real time as new data came in.”

And where information wasn’t yet available, assumptions were made so numbers could be plugged into a model of disease spread recommended by Taylor. The SEIR model categorizes everyone in a population who are susceptible to infection (S), exposed (E), infected (I) and recovered (R) or deceased. The OSU model includes demographic information like age groups and rural versus urban, and hospitalizations statistics like average length of stay or the need for respirators.

“At the end of the day, the quantitative analysis that all of us do on this project is probabilistic,” Krutz said. “We were attempting with modeling to do rough predictions of the near term using assumptions in an informed way. A lot of our early discussions were almost totally based on assumptions of disease spread, and those assumptions were critical.”

The team’s early predictions for hospitalizations and even fatalities proved to be much higher than actual experience.

“At the beginning, we were putting everybody in the hospital because we wanted to be safe,”

McCann said. “But as health care providers realized not everyone needed to be hospitalized, the hospitalization rates and, somewhat, the fatality case rates fell. That makes total sense and we were able to adjust the model to reflect that.”

The OSU and OU teams made twice-weekly reports to the governor, which later became weekly as infections leveled off. In May, Stitt released the two university research teams when it became apparent the health care system was no longer in jeopardy. Taylor said he is confident the team’s COVID-19 modeling was valuable to decision makers, whose early interventions resulted in a leveling off of infections.

Now free to return to their “day jobs,” the OSU researchers have decided to continue COVID-19 modeling and are currently working together to co-author a journal article. The team members, representing fields of study not often found in a collaboration, all agreed the experience was enjoyable and meaningful.

“We decided to convert this into a research opportunity and are still working on the model,” Chakraborty said. “The best part of this was working with the team with our really different capabilities.”

Hospitalization and cumulative fatalities

Daily fatalities

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2020-21 Niblack Research Scholars

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leven top Oklahoma State University students are getting a jump-start on their research careers.

These undergraduates have been selected as Niblack Research Scholars for the 2020-21 school year, earning each an $8,000 scholarship and the opportunity to conduct research.

Dr. John Niblack and his wife, Heidi, have funded the Niblack Research Scholars program at OSU for 16 years.

The program allows students to perform cutting-edge research in various fields under the supervision of faculty mentors and with one-on-one guidance from a graduate student mentor.

“Science is hard to do. You all are like musicians learning how to play your instrument. Learning how to play a violin at a high skill level is not easy to do,” Niblack said during last

year’s event. “Once you get past that, then you can begin to be more creative. You can put your own spin on it and write your own music.”

Niblack graduated from OSU in 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and earned a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Illinois before becoming vice chairman of Pfizer Inc. As a scientist for the international pharmaceutical company, he was responsible for Pfizer’s Global Research and Development Division, where he directed research into drugs for viral illnesses, cancer and autoimmune disorders.

Niblack retired in 2002 and founded the Niblack Research Scholarship program in 2004.

The scholars cover a wide variety of research fields and come to OSU from across the United States.

THE 2020-21 SCHOLARS, HOMETOWNS AND AREAS OF RESEARCH:

Jenna Abouzahr, Stillwater, Oklahoma — Chemical Engineering

Conner Heffernan, Lawton, Oklahoma — Physics

Joshua Anderson, Tulsa, Oklahoma — Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Sidney Bush, Blacklick, Ohio — Microbiology

Katelyn Jeffries, Swedesboro, New Jersey — Natural Resource Ecology and Management

Nicolas Kiger, McKinney, Texas — Microbiology

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Adelle Crofford, Dallas, Texas — Animal and Food Sciences

Destinee Elliott, Ardmore, Oklahoma — Nutritional Sciences

Sydney Markham, Van Buren, Arkansas — Microbiology

Daniel Reed, Sapulpa, Oklahoma — Chemistry

Ashley Gin, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma — Animal and Food Sciences

Two awarded Cox Graduate Fellowship awards

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t Oklahoma State University, the Otto S. Cox Graduate Fellowship for Genetic Research helps students stand out in the field of genetics research.

Students earn the annual fellowship by showcasing proven records of genetic inquiry and the potential to impact the discipline in the future.

This year, two OSU students won the fellowship, which provides a $1,000 stipend and recognition for pursuing challenging work in a rapidly evolving and critical research area.

“As recently as 10 years ago, cuttingedge genetic and genomic technologies were prohibitively expensive, but today they are more accessible than ever and can be used with a wide variety of plant and animal species,” said OSU Vice President for Research Dr. Kenneth Sewell. “The Cox Fellowship provides our students with the ability to apply these cutting-edge genetic and genomic tools to nearly any organism or question they are interested in pursuing.”

This year’s recipients: Victor Andreev, a Ph.D. student

studying plant biology, ecology and evolution.

Salome Suarez, a Ph.D. student studying plant pathology.

“My research is about how hybridization affects morphology, physiology and genetic makeup of plants, and helps them to better respond to such challenges as climate change,” Andreev said.

“I enjoy my research because of two reasons. It allows me to explore very interesting plant-related topics, introgressive hybridization in particular, and it is an excellent opportunity to work with first-grade scientists and like-minded people.”

Andreev plans to use the stipend to make a contribution to a collaborative project with two other labs to allow him to obtain genotypic data from a large number of individuals.

Salome Suarez is studying interactions between a certain fungus and wheat.

“In my project, what I am doing is trying to understand these interactions between the plant and the fungus because this fungus releases a toxin,” Suarez said, “We’re trying to see how this interaction occurs in order to improve or develop new management or control techniques for wheat.”

“I enjoy [the research] very much because I think it is very important to examine new techniques or new methods to improve controls methods and develop management strategies.”

Suarez plans to use the funding to attend a conference that will help her further her research.

The fellowship is made possible by a gift from Otto S. Cox, a rancher from Lenapah, Oklahoma, and a 1927 graduate of Oklahoma A&M College (now OSU). The fellowships are offered through the OSU Division of the Vice President for Research.

Victor Andreev

Salome Suarez

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President’s Fellows

Three Oklahoma State University professors named 2020 President’s Fellows Faculty Research Award recipients

Julie Angle, Dingbo (Daniel) Lin and Mark Krzmarzick each received $20,000 as part of the award.

AWARD RECIPIENTS:

JULIE ANGLE Dr. Angle, an associate professor in the School of Teaching, Learning and Educational Sciences in the College of Education and Health Sciences, is studying the effects place-based learning has on students and teachers.

She studies the changes the Expedition Yellowstone program has on attitudes toward the outdoors. This five-day curriculum-based residential program, hosted by Yellowstone National Park, is designed for teachers and their fourth- through eighth-grade students.

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DINGBO (DANIEL) LIN Dr. Lin, an associate professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences in the College of Education and Health Sciences, is studying the prevention of leaky gut caused by Type 2 diabetes through the intake of dietary carotenoids, the colorful fat-soluble pigments found in a large variety of fruits and vegetables as well as salmon and other marine products.

His research will ensure the collection of more preliminary data and help his team publish manuscripts to make them more competitive for external funding, he said.

MARK KRZMARZICK Dr. Krzmarzick is an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering in CEAT. His main area of research is exploring how natural and engineered processes can improve water quality to protect human health. Krzmarzick’s goal is to analyze the presence of two emerging contaminants, perfluorooctanesulfonate and perfluorooctanoate, throughout Oklahoma’s water systems.

In Oklahoma, relatively few waters have been analyzed for the presence and concentrations of these compounds, which have been linked to cancer, reproductive and developmental effects, and illnesses of the liver, thyroid and cardiovascular system.

Regents Distinguished Research Award

Each year, OSU honors seven faculty members with the Regents Distinguished Research Award for their research excellence. The 2019 winners, honored at the 2019 Convocation in December:

Front row (left to right): Dr. Ramanjulu Sunkar, Dr. Karina Shreffler, Dr. Stacy Takacs. Back row (left to right): Dr. Ramesh Rao, Dr. Sunderesh Heragu, Dr. William Jaco, Dr. Lin Liu

RAMANJULU SUNKAR, Ph.D., Neustadt-Sarkeys Distinguished Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the Ferguson College of Agriculture KARINA SHREFFLER, Ph.D., Department of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Education and Human Sciences

STACY TAKACS, Ph.D., Professor, Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences RAMESH RAO, Ph.D., Paul C. Wise Chair of Finance, Department of Finance in the Spears School of Business SUNDERESH HERAGU, Ph.D., Regents Professor, Donald and Cathey Humphreys Chair, Head of Industrial Engineering and Management in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology

WILLIAM JACO, Ph.D., Regents Professor, Grayce B. Kerr Chair, Department of Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences LIN LIU, Ph.D., CVM, Regents Professor, Lundberg-Kienlen Endowed Chair in Biomedical Research, Director, Oklahoma Center for Respiratory and Infectious Diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine

R E S E A R C H .O K S TAT E . E D U 47

NSF CAREER awards

Three Oklahoma State University researchers among 20 across the country who won National Science Foundation’s (NSF) CAREER awards this year Securing funding is one of the more difficult challenges that researchers face early in their careers. Twenty researchers across the nation are chosen annually to receive this award, NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. Founded in 1950 by Congress, NSF supports research and people. The NSF’s goal is to keep the United States at the forefront of scientific discovery.

OSU’S AWARD WINNERS:

DANIEL MOEN Dr. Moen plans to study the evolution of swimming biomechanics in frogs and toads. He will combine experiments on live animals, mathematical modeling and comparative analyses of species differences to develop an evolutionary approach to studies of body form, function and their diversity across species.

The grant will also fund a summer research program for secondary science teachers and a new undergraduate course focused on research methods in evolutionary biomechanics.

48 O S U R E S E A R C H M AT T E R S

AUSTIN BUCHANAN Dr. Buchanan’s project will focus on developing new integer programming models and methods for designing political redistricting plans. He intends to try to answer questions focused on how compact a redistricting plan can be, how many counties can be kept whole, and how best to ensure minorityopportunity districts.

Buchanan hopes to get a better understanding of the trade-offs involved with designing districts and how to establish politically neutral baselines.

FARZAD YOUSEFIAN Dr. Yousefian and his group are working to advance distributed optimization in algorithms. This is done by developing new models, mathematical tools and computational methods.

They seek to better address emerging complex multiagent applications in such things as remote sensing, and efficiency estimation in transportation networks.

Yousefian also plans to increase awareness and interest among high school students in Stillwater and educators through several integrated educational and outreach activities.

Hiring Hiring Excellence Excellence

OSU OSU names names Zachary ZacharyMiles Milesasasthe thenew newleader leaderfor for it’sit’s technology technologyand andeconomic economicdevelopment developmentarm arm

UU

NLV’s NLV’s facilities facilities expanded, expanded, collaborations collaborations grew grew andand programs programs sprouted, sprouted, allall resulting resulting in life-changing in life-changing impacts impacts forfor students, students, faculty faculty andand thethe community. community.

Metrics Metrics soared soared toto their their highest highest levels levels in the in the university’s university’s history history and and growth growth in tech in tech transfer transfer and and research research flourished, flourished, allall while while under under thethe direction direction of Zachary of Zachary Miles.

Miles.

He He is now is now looking looking to do to do thethe same same at at OSU. OSU. Oklahoma Oklahoma State State University University recently recently named named Miles Miles as senior as senior associate associate vice vice president president forfor Technology Technology andand Economic Economic Development.

Development.

“I look “I look forward forward to moving to moving ideas ideas from from OSU OSU into into life-changing life-changing products products andand services services and and providing providing students students real-world real-world opportunities opportunities with with companies companies andand entrepreneurial entrepreneurial endeavors,” endeavors,” Miles Miles said. said.

“Economic “Economic development development drives drives increased increased impacts impacts between between OSU OSU andand thethe community community — increasing — increasing the the overall overall well-being well-being andand success success forfor students, students, researchers researchers andand community community members.” members.”

Before Before joining joining OSU, OSU, Miles Miles was was thethe associate associate vicevice president president forfor economic economic development development at at the the University University of Nevada, of Nevada, LasLas Vegas, Vegas, where where hehe oversaw oversaw technology technology transfer, transfer, commercial commercial collaborations, collaborations, UNLV’s UNLV’s Small Small Business Business Development Development Center Center andand waswas executive executive director director of UNLV’s of UNLV’s Research Research Foundation.

Foundation.

AtAtOSU, OSU,Miles Mileswill willdirect directthe theOSU OSUResearch Research Foundation Foundationand andthe theTechnology TechnologyDevelopment Development Center Centerand andserve serveas asaaprimary primarytouchpoint touchpoint for for OSU’s relationship relationshipwith withthe thecorporate corporatecommunity. community.

“We “Weare areconfident confidentthat thatZach Zachisisthe theright right person person totolead leadour ourtechnology technologyand andeconomic economicdevelopment development efforts effortsinto intoa anew newand andbrighter brighterera eraat atOSU,” OSU,” said Kenneth KennethSewell, Sewell,vice vicepresident presidentfor forresearch research and president presidentofofthe theOSU OSUResearch ResearchFoundation.

Foundation. “In his prior priorroles, roles,Zach Zachhas hasproven provenhe hecan canbring bring together together allallofofthe thecomplex complexpieces piecesofofthe thepuzzle puzzleand and generate generate true trueeconomic economicimpact.” impact.”

Growing GrowingOSU OSUininthese theseareas areasmeans meansaa broad, broad, positive positiveimpact impacttotoOklahoma.

Oklahoma.

“Economic “Economicdevelopment developmentactivities activitiesspecifically specifically benefit benefitOSU OSUand andthe thegreater greaterOklahoma Oklahomacommunity community through throughcreating creatingaadiversified diversifiedeconomy economy that that offers offershigh-paying high-payingjob jobopportunities opportunitiesfor for students students and andcitizens, citizens,increases increasesthe theoverall overallresearch research and development developmentexpenditures expendituresof ofOSU OSUand andtranslation translation ofofideas ideasinto intolife-changing life-changingproducts productsand and services services available availabletotothe thecommunity,” community,”Miles Milessaid. said.

“I“Iam amvery veryexcited excitedtotojoin jointhe theteam teamat at Oklahoma Oklahoma State StateUniversity Universityand andbuild buildupon uponthe thegreat great work work that thathas hasbeen beenaccomplished,” accomplished,”he hesaid. said.“There “There isissuch sucha agreat greatopportunity opportunityto toaccelerate accelerate mutually mutuallybeneficial beneficialengagements engagementswith withindustry industry collaborators collaboratorsand andincrease increaseeconomic economicdevelopment development and anddiversification.” diversification.”

“I“Ilook lookforward forwardto tomoving moving ideas from fromOSU OSUinto intolife-changing life-changing products productsand andservices services and andproviding providingstudents students real-world real-worldopportunities opportunities with withcompanies companiesand and entrepreneurial entrepreneurialendeavors.” endeavors.”

ZACHARY ZACHARYMILES MILES

Oklahoma Oklahoma State State University University Office Office of the of the ViceVice President President for for Research Research 203203 Whitehurst Whitehurst Stillwater, Stillwater, Oklahoma Oklahoma 74078-1020 74078-1020

CONNECTING CONNECTING OSU OSUWITH WITH INDUSTRY INDUSTRY RESEARCH RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOUNDATION Learn Learn more more about about the the OSU OSU Research Research Foundation Foundation atat research.okstate.edu/OSURF research.okstate.edu/OSURF

2020