Fall 2026 11 BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY; OSU-CASCADES; OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY PERRY HYSTAD Associate Dean for Research, College of Health My lab examines how pollen and other allergens affect people with COPD, a serious lung disease. For someone with COPD, a high-pollen day is more than an inconvenience; it can increase the risk of a flare-up leading to hospitalization. Our research allows us to turn environmental data into practical tools, including clearer public messages, more personalized clinical treatment decisions and timely alerts. As climate change makes pollen seasons longer and more intense, this becomes even more important. MOLLY MORAN Assistant Clinical Professor, College of Education & LUCY PURGASON Associate Professor, College of Education Our federally funded PATHSC program is vital because many students in rural communities lack access to a school counselor when they need one most. We prepare graduate students and train supervisors who mentor them, ensuring that counselors feel prepared and supported in their roles. By strengthening this workforce pipeline, we help fill hard-tostaff positions and ensure that more students have access to critical guidance at pivotal moments in their lives. Oregon State.And interestingly, he brings an interest in athletics plus AI, which we’ve only just begun to think about. A lot of things are coming together all at once. Can you give an example of athletics plus AI? Say a student-athlete is injured. Given the history of their health, can we figure out if they can play the next time around? What are the risks? Likewise, can we figure out the next play given the configuration on the field and the history of the players? There’s a big universe of possibilities.We’re going to have to find our way to using AI to our advantage and using it ethically as well. All these wins seem especially significant because this time last year we were talking about disruptions to research funding. What’s changed? We are on a roll, but federal funding challenges remain. The ground has certainly shifted. I am grateful that we didn’t see the big cuts that were proposed in the president’s budget. That support from Congress is really heartening. But the money also has to flow, and that’s been difficult.We’ll sort it out, and in many ways, we’ve been quite fortunate. FAST is a big example of how federal dollars are still flowing to us. The other thing I want to say is that priorities have shifted, but they’ve also shifted in directions that in some cases are quite good for OSU — for example, toward AI and robotics. Our approach has been to take advantage of the things that we can. We’re finding opportunities and being agile and creative. I remain very bullish on our areas of success. Have we seen the big cuts to climate science research that were feared? There’s certainly a pulling away of investments in climate science, and we see the fallout from that. But there are related areas that we can focus on. So for example, a lot of our geosciences folks are now talking about work in critical minerPERSPECTIVES THE CASE FOR SCIENCE Q: WHY DOES YOUR FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH MATTER? PRESIDENT Q + A als. Can there be clean ways of harvesting critical minerals? Are there chemical processes that we could be doing better? All of these things are pathways for us. They’re related to the science that we do and related to the kind of expertise that we have — just applied in a somewhat different way and a somewhat different field. There’s always good, deep science to be done. There has been a lot in the news about the financial pressures facing Oregon public universities, and alumni are undoubtedly wondering how OSU is faring. How would you describe our position? There are big demographic challenges facing all universities — the number of college-age students is falling — and, of course, the federal landscape continues to evolve in terms of research dollars. But what is unique to Oregon is that while these things are broadly true across the United States, our state funding is chronically low, and labor costs here are particularly high. Balancing those costs with revenue from tuition has been a challenge in our state. We also face this, but unlike some Oregon universities, we’re not in crisis. We continue to see encouraging enrollment numbers, but we need to compete aggressively for continued growth. We are in a unique position because we happen to be invested in areas that continue to draw very heavy interest — engineering, STEM and so on. Our College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences is extremely well known. We are a premier school for “THERE’S ALWAYS GOOD, DEEP SCIENCE TO BE DONE.” continues
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