Shyam Sablani, professor of food engineering, recently received the Yang “Wendy” Liu award for his focus on making international students feel at home at Washington State University.
Sablani received the award in May for excellence in teaching international students. Sablani was nominated by his student Smit Patel, student in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at WSU.
“Dr. Sablani helps students find their own passion and direction in life rather than giving them definitive direction,” Patel wrote in his nomination. “During my first year, when I was struggling to get accustomed with the culture of the university as an international student, he kept providing me additional encouragement. He gave me sufficient time, support, and encouragement to help me pass my struggling phase.”
The award’s namesake, Liu, was an Office of International Programs’ Intensive American Language Center faculty member who taught English at WSU for nearly a decade. She died of complications from cancer in 2019. Liu spoke Chinese and English and pioneered many of the current practices of working with East Asian students. The award was created in recognition for her work with IALC and her dedication to helping students and faculty in and out of the classroom.
Sablani began working at WSU in 2007 and earned his Ph.D. in food engineering from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He previously taught at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman and was a research associate at Agri-Food Canada in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec. Sablani said he was honored to receive the award.
“This award validates my teaching philosophy, boosts my confidence, and reinforces my dedication to continue striving toward excellence,” Sablani said. “I aim to create an environment where international students feel understood and empowered to succeed academically and achieve their career and life goals.”
Bala Krishnamoorthy, professor of mathematics and statistics at WSU Vancouver, received the first award last year.
Faculty and staff are eligible for nomination for the annual award.
Narasimha Boddeti, Berry Family Assistant Professor in WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for his work using 3D printing to create and understand novel materials that combine solids and liquids.
Such unique materials could someday be used to mimic biological structures and tissue for biomedical engineering and soft robotics applications.
The prestigious five-year CAREER grants are intended to provide research support to young faculty beginning their careers who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.
As part of the approximately $600,000 award, Boddeti will use a novel 3D printing process to create soft architected materials that include liquid within a soft solid, similar to the way in which skin or other organs hold water within their soft structures.
Architected materials are materials designed with a tailored arrangement of one or more materials. The way that the materials are arranged means they can have engineered physical properties that are not easily available from their individual constituents.
“One kind of architected material is a soft composite that combines solids with liquids in a periodic fashion, and through this periodicity, you can access some interesting mechanical properties that you don’t find in nature,” he said. “It should be possible to create structures that are similar to biological tissues because our tissues are made of solids and liquid.”
Boddeti aims to create materials that will be tunable and able to respond to stimuli in a variety of ways.
“This allows for the design of structures and devices that emulate the flexibility and toughness of biological matter — without their complexity — for biomedical, healthcare, and soft robotics applications,” he said.
Some applications for such materials could include realistic organ models, energy absorbing structures, or flexible actuators or sensors.
As part of the project, Boddeti also aims to integrate computational science and engineering into mechanical engineering education and courses, which, he says, is an “increasingly critical component for all engineers and scientists.”
Boddeti holds a Ph.D. from University of Colorado Boulder, and a B. Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Before joining WSU in 2020, he served as a postdoctoral researcher at Singapore University of Technology and Design’s Digital Manufacturing and Design Center.
After receiving the D.W. Steiger Family Graduate Fellowship in 2023, Olufunke Ayegbidun was especially grateful to receive it another time in 2024.
“I was surprised and elated,” said Ayegbidun, a PhD student and graduate research assistant in Washington State University’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. “I feel so honored to have been selected again, and I’m very thankful for the fellowship’s generous sponsors. I hope they know how much of a difference these funds make in the lives of people like me.”
Established by WSU alumni Bettie and Donald Steiger, the fellowship supports crop and soil sciences graduate students whose research centers on wheat breeding and genetics. The fellowship’s stipend can be used for tuition, fees, research expenses, and other education-related costs. Last year, the financial support helped Ayegbidun save enough of her own money to travel home to Nigeria for the first time since getting married in 2022.
“I was able to reconnect with my family, and, most importantly, my husband,” she said. “It was a really precious opportunity.”
Ayegbidun received her bachelor’s degree in plant biology from the University of Ilorin in Nigeria, graduating in 2019. During an internship, she learned how plant breeding can be used to increase yield and mineral concentration, potentially improving the nutritional value of crops for consumers and growers.
“Plant biology interested me initially because I wanted to understand how plants work and how we can use them to our benefit,” Ayegbidun said.
She relocated to the U.S. in 2020, earning a master’s degree in biological sciences with a concentration in quantitative genetics and plant breeding in 2022 from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Though Pullman is even farther from her home country, the choice to attend WSU was an easy one.
“I knew I wanted to work with one of the three main crops: rice, maize, or wheat,” she said. “Washington state is one of the country’s largest producers of wheat, and WSU has great faculty and a very good ag research program that aligns with my goals. It was a no-brainer for me to come here.”
Ayegbidun is currently working on her dissertation, pinpointing the specific genes responsible for high levels of iron and zinc in wheat. She is also exploring how wheat varieties with those genes can be bred faster, making them more nutritious and beneficial for consumption.
“Micronutrient deficiency is a big deal,” Ayegbidun said. “More than 2 billion people suffer from it globally, and iron and zinc deficiency are two of the most common forms.”
As a member of the WSU and USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS) wheat breeding team, Ayegbidun works closely with her advisor Kim Garland-Campbell, a USDA-ARS research geneticist and adjunct faculty in WSU’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences.
“Olufunke has been a great addition to our USDA wheat breeding team,” Garland-Campbell said. “She has already contributed great skills in data collection and statistical analyses to our project. I am looking forward to continuing to work with her for the next few years of her graduate work and am glad that she chose to come to WSU to pursue her PhD.”
Due to the broad scope of plant breeding and genetics, Ayegbidun also collaborates frequently with faculty outside of her department.
“It’s really everybody’s business,” Ayegbidun said. “Every field is part of the puzzle. For plant breeding or quantitative genetics, you need some statistics and some plant biology. You also need to know the consumer impact of the crops being produced and the varieties being developed. You have to reach out to others for ideas.”
Ayegbidun plans to graduate with her PhD in spring 2026, but she’s already envisioning a future at a plant breeding or agricultural organization.
“I want to see the impact of my research and be able to interact with growers,” she said. “I know there’s an opportunity for that in academia, but I feel that industry is better structured for what I want to do. I hope to work with other researchers and collaborators, channeling results directly to the field.”
Murrow researcher Yen-I Lee’s project to help encourage international students to access mental health services earned a $10,000 award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award will support the effort to develop and test messaging to help break down cultural barriers for the students to seek mental health assistance for their friends or themselves.
Living far from home in an unfamiliar culture, international college students can face issues such as depression and anxiety, said Lee, an assistant professor in Washington State University’s Murrow College of Communication. At the same time, many come from cultures where seeking help for mental health issues is viewed as weak or shameful.
To help combat these attitudes, Lee plans to develop and test video messages that appeal to international students’ emotions in different ways to determine which are the most effective. The goal is to help inform communications from universities and other organizations so that they reach more students who need help, more effectively.
“This award gives great support for my research which I hope will be really helpful for the mental health of any population from different cultural backgrounds,” said Lee.
The project will be conducted in two phases over two years. The first phase will involve interviewing student participants from Washington State University, University of Idaho, and Eastern Washington University about their perceptions of mental health challenges and what might persuade them to seek help. Using the insights from these interviews, Lee’s research team will design video messages and then test their effect on student participants using the physiological measures available through the Murrow Media Mind Lab. These involve collecting people’s reactions to messages that appeal to their emotions by having them answer survey questions and measuring physical stress responses like heart rate, eye movement, and skin reactions.
The research team will use the Murrow Mobile Lab to conduct these tests on the WSU Pullman campus and at the partner universities using the mobile media mind lab. Results are expected in late 2025.
Samira Diaz De Leon, a Washington State University senior from California, is one of 12 new recipients nationwide of a $20,000 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Undergraduate Scholarship given to those pursuing future careers in biomedical, behavioral, and social science research.
A first-generation student, Diaz De Leon is majoring in biochemistry in the College of Veterinary Medicine, specializing in molecular biology. Her career plan is to earn a PhD and engage in skincare research and development to help resolve skin inflammatory diseases such as eczema and psoriasis.
“I am thrilled to have received this scholarship but almost more than the funding, this NIH recognition of my potential and future plans means so much to me,” she said.
She said her undergraduate research was important to her application.
“Getting this award shows me that those efforts are valuable in many ways. Not only do I learn every day in the lab, but what goes into it and what I get out of it is going to help me help other people in the future, which is something very important to me.”
Getting this award shows me that those efforts are valuable in many ways. Not only do I learn every day in the lab, but what goes into it and what I get out of it is going to help me help other people in the future, which is something very important to me.Samira Diaz De Leon, student and NIH scholarship recipient Washington State University
Diaz De Leon has been involved in undergraduate research since her second year at WSU and has grown progressively more confident and competent.
At Palm Springs High School, before college and during the COVID pandemic, she said she excelled in math studies but did not get too involved in science. She chose to attend WSU because it was most affordable and friendly. To venture more into science, she has intentionally taken classes with labs and liked the experience.
In 2022 as a sophomore, Diaz De Leon applied to be a technician in the lab of Arden Baylink, assistant professor of veterinary microbiology and pathology, soon after he arrived at WSU. The lab focuses on engineering new therapeutics against bacterial gastrointestinal pathogens.
Once proficient with lab techniques and protocols, Diaz De Leon applied and was one of seven undergraduates accepted into the summer RNA Bioscience Initiative Summer Internship Program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora in 2023. In the David Barton lab there, she focused on the sexual replication of the poliovirus and what was causing it to recombine with non-polio enteroviruses. That fall, she presented a poster on her work and findings at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS).
Back in Pullman, she was accepted into MARC-WSU, an NIH-funded program for students in research, leadership development, and graduate-school preparation. As part of MARC, she received a stipend for her ongoing work in the Baylink lab where they explore the effects of Salmonella in a healthy gut by determining how reactive oxygen species affect Salmonella enterica growth in a competitive environment with the microbiome. In spring 2024, she communicated her results at WSU’s Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (SURCA).
This fall, Diaz De Leon plans to launch her project working with third-year doctoral student Siena Glenn in the Baylink lab to investigate how Salmonella takes hold in an unhealthy gut. She will use pig feces to create a microbiome with two distinct metabolisms or microflora to complete with Salmonella to see how bacteria grow in the presence or absence of oxygen.
When she graduates in spring, she said that though her undergraduate research topics will not relate directly with her graduate work investigating skin diseases, the protocols and techniques she has mastered will carry over perfectly.
“It’s all part of my ongoing education.”
She credits her love of learning and hard work ethic to her parents, Jose and Lucia Diaz De Leon, who moved to America in their teens. They taught their eight children that education is the key to finding one’s purpose and success. They “get that I am doing what I like with research and that I have a plan to help others and my community. They appreciate that.”
Diaz De Leon likes to stay busy. In addition to her research and MARC-WSU participation, she is a senior resident advisor for Stephenson East residence hall after serving two years as a resident advisor in Stephenson North. She is also active in the STEM Student Support Services (SSS) program in the Office of Academic Engagement, designed to boost engagement and persistence to graduation.
Diaz De Leon’s new NIH scholarship funding can be used for tuition and living expenses. Accepting the award commits her to participate in a summer 2025 internship at NIH in Maryland plus a service commitment to work full-time for one year at an NIH facility when her education is complete.
Almost a third of the 36 new members of the Washington State Academy of Sciences are from Washington State University. The ten WSU faculty elected to the WSAS come from a range of disciplines including animal science, cropping systems, engineering, information ethics, genome engineering, and psychology.
WSAS President John Roll, also a WSU professor, welcomed all the new members who were elected in recognition of their scientific achievement and willingness to work on behalf of the academy for the benefit of the state.
“We are thrilled to honor these scientists, engineers, and leaders in the public, non-profit and private sectors for their distinguished and continued achievements,” said Roll. “We look forward to tapping their expertise and knowledge to advance the Academy’s mission of science in the service of Washington State.”
In addition, WSU education Professor Brian French, was elected as a new WSAS board member, and engineering Professor Susmita Bose was re-elected to serve for a second term on the board. Professor Jonathan Yoder of WSU School of Economic Sciences, will serve as the board’s treasurer.
New members
Kimberly Christen
Associate Vice President, Research Advancement, Office of Research at WSU
Christen has changed the way the field of information sciences understands information ethics by aligning it with a reparative theoretical framework based in Indigenous relations to kin, territories, material belongings, and systems of knowledge in order to unsettle standard academic practices of authorship, attribution, and accountability will be inducted at the Annual Members’ Dinner following the WSAS Symposium at the Museum of Flight in Seattle on Sept. 25.
Min Du
Regents Professor, Department of Animal Sciences
Du is recognized for research in maternal nutrition and fetal programming which opened new areas of discovery in genetics and nutrition and which lead to effective treatments and applications in human health and food production.
Professor and Director of NSF NRT-LEAD Program, School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and Statistics
Dutta is recognized for distinguished contributions in theoretical and computational modeling of thermal, mechanical, electrochemical, and biological systems as well as nationwide dissemination efforts of hands-on learning pedagogy to diverse students in institutions ranging from public, private, R1, to 4-year programs, including six minority-serving institutions.
Manuel Garcia-Perez
Professor and Chair, Biological Systems Engineering
Garcia-Perez is recognized for his leadership in sustainable agriculture systems and bio-energy research. His creative research advances our understanding of complex thermochemical reactions so that they can be controlled to obtain green products—such as bio-oils, biochar, and sustainable aviation fuel—to combat global warming and provide environmental services.
Maria Gartstein
Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology
Gartstein’s career is marked by leadership and service contributions, with international reach of research and translational efforts engaging the public and policy makers. Her work addressing the biological and contextual underpinnings of temperament has influenced broader impacts, including theoretical and methodological shifts in the discipline, and awareness of support for self-regulation in the community.
A willingness to dive head-first into new opportunities kept Kassandra Vogel busy during her time as an undergraduate at Washington State University.
While earning bachelor’s degrees in English and economics, Vogel found time for more than half a dozen outside commitments ranging from working at the WSU Creamery and as a Cougar Connector to writing and editing for The Daily Evergreen.
She’s keeping up that relentless pace, pursuing a Master of Applied Economics degree while serving as the student regent on the WSU Board of Regents for the 2024–25 academic year.
“It’s a really exciting opportunity and one that I take seriously because of the number of students that I’ll be representing on the Board of Regents,” Vogel said. “The student regent has their ear to the ground and so it’s important for me to speak clearly to my fellow regents about issues that are important to students.”
Originally from Vancouver, Vogel attending Running Start on her local WSU campus as a high schooler. Unsure of where she wanted to go to college, her mom convinced her to visit WSU Pullman. It ended up being the only school Vogel applied to.
“I was struck by how happy everyone was and how excited all of the students were,” Vogel said. “I hadn’t been to campus with the same feeling.”
Vogel undertook her first semester remotely amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, she found a sense of community working as a reporter for The Daily Evergreen.
“It gave me an anchor in the community,” Vogel said. “I had other students to talk to, I had virtual meeting with editors, I was interviewing people in Pullman for stories. It was a great experience during what could have otherwise been an isolated time.”
In addition to the slew of jobs and internships she held as an undergrad, Vogel joined the Associated Students of Washington State University her senior year. While initially applying to serve as a student senator, her colleagues convinced her to serve as deputy director of campus sustainability. In that role, she worked with the Environmental Sustainability Alliance to host the largest Earth Day event in more than two decades, bringing “Mythbusters” Adam Savage to the Pullman campus.
“It’s surreal to think back to the start of the year when I didn’t even know the position existed,” Vogel said.
Matt Shaw, associate director of student organizations and leadership, worked with Vogel during her time as an undergraduate and said he’s excited about her selection as student regent.
“I have no doubt that she will put 100 percent into this position and serve as a great advocate for students,” Shaw said. “I have been very impressed by and grateful for Kassandra’s passion and work ethic in her duties with ASWSU over past year. Knowing that she will be bringing those qualities to the Board of Regents should make the whole system very optimistic for the year ahead.”
As a member of the WSU Board of Regents, Vogel said she’ll continue to work with university leaders to further the institution’s sustainability initiatives. She’s also committed to not only raising the issues of students, but to expanding awareness of the board and the role of student regent.
“When I was applying and told friends, one of their first questions was, “What is the student regent?” Vogel said. “That lack of understanding of what the Board of Regents does and who it’s made up of is something I’d love to tackle during my time on the board.”
Vogel’s first meeting as student regent is scheduled for Sept. 20. For more information on the WSU Board of Regents, visit the organization’s website.
After a successful first podcast season of interviewing the top minds in the world of literacy education, a Washington State University faculty member is back for a second season.
Margaret Vaughn, a language, literacy, and technology professor in the College of Education, is the creator and host of the “Getting Smarter” podcast.
Vaughn said her goal is to interview critical thinkers and award-winning leaders in literacy education, as well as spark listeners’ curiosity, and help them learn something new every episode.
“I started this podcast to advocate for the teaching profession and have conversations with established literacy scholars who have paved the way in the field,” Vaughn said. “These scholars have transformed our collective thinking in education.”
The first season consisted of 11 episodes, beginning this past spring, and going through the summer. Vaugh said she believes those episodes were successful at giving transformational insights into why education and collaboration is essential to the betterment of our society.
“My aim is for policy makers, literacy scholars, and educators to listen to the podcast and find their own entry point into thinking about how they too can make an impact in their community,” she said. “The scholars I have the privilege of interviewing, have spent their careers making conditions better for children and communities. We can listen to their stories and use their knowledge to make a difference around us.”
Vaughn joined the College of Education in 2021. She has received a number of awards for her research and scholarship, including a Fulbright Specialist Program award from the U.S. Department of State.
As it did last season, new episodes this season will be released on most major podcast platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
From radical partisanship to the role of race and gender in upcoming elections, this fall’s Foley Institute speaker series is bringing experts from across North America to weigh in on important topics leading up to Election Day.
“Given how deeply polarized American politics has become, this election will be fiercely contested and its outcome important to the future direction of the nation,” Cornell Clayton, director of the Foley Institute, said. “That’s why it’s more important than ever to hear from leading, unbiased experts about what is at stake.”
He continued, “The Institute’s Election 2024 series brings to campus each week leading scholars and commentators to talk about the nature of the campaign and the issues and the ideas being debated. It is a great opportunity for students and the broader WSU community to inform themselves.”
Given how deeply polarized American politics has become, this election will be fiercely contested and its outcome important to the future direction of the nation.Cornell Clayton, director of the Foley Institute Washington State University
Pavielle Haines, an assistant professor in the Department of Politics and Philosophy at the University of Idaho, will give the third talk of the series on Sept. 10, focusing on presidential rhetoric. Other upcoming talks will tackle Washington and federal races, the current states of Congress and the Supreme Court, media and politics, and artificial intelligence’s effect on political campaigns.
A full list of speakers and topics is available on the Foley Institute’s website. Both previous talks, “Welcome to the 2024 Election,” and “Election Integrity” are available to watch on the Foley Institute’s YouTube page.
A sharp-eyed Coug spotted it on a livestream: the iconic Washington State University flag waving in the crowd of thousands attending an esports tournament in Las Vegas this summer.
“I see you, you absolute legend,” the person wrote on Reddit.
The legend? Tim Lamb, a 2021 WSU alum.
For the past five years Lamb has taken the WSU flag-waving tradition that’s part of ESPN College Gameday to Evo, a major competitive video game tournament. This August Evo drew more than 10,000 contestants who play each other in hand-to-hand combat video games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Tekken.
Lamb lines up with the flag at 5:30 a.m. to make sure he can get a seat front and center when gameplay starts nearly five hours later. This year was his fifth time attending Evo, taking the WSU flag with him each time.
WSU and esports hold equal places in Lamb’s heart, he said. He grew up in a Coug family in Spokane, attended football games in Pullman, and knew WSU was where he wanted to go to college. But things got tough when his mom died his first semester there.
“I was dealing with a lot, but I knew I needed to get out of my dorm room,” he said. A lifelong video game player, he looked around for people who shared his interest in esports.
“People have an innate need for community,” Lamb said. “At my lowest point, these games and the people I’ve met through playing them were the things I fell back on when I needed help.”
He got involved with a couple of esports clubs at WSU and found that community. Eventually Lamb was organizing esports events and tournaments large and small on the Palouse.
People have an innate need for community. At my lowest point, these games and the people I’ve met through playing them were the things I fell back on when I needed help. Tim Lamb, 2021 graduate Washington State University
After graduating with a degree in multimedia journalism from the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, he worked in esports event management. The Covid pandemic interrupted that journey and Lamb is job-hunting again.
Evo and the WSU flag have helped connect him to other fighting-game enthusiasts from around the world, he said.
“The fighting game community is such a special thing to so many people,” he said. “The flag shows how my interest developed out of Washington State University. It takes two things that are a massive part of my life and puts them together.”
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