Author Archives: wsuvresearch
Dmitri Kalashnikov, PhD student in the School of the Environment, studies extreme weather events.
Large wildfires and severe heat events are happening more often at the same time, worsening air pollution across the western United States. As part of his doctoral dissertation research, Dmitri Kalashnikov found that in 2020, more than 68% of the … Continue reading
Spotlight on graduate student excellence
Andrea Bazzoli (he/his) is a PhD candidate in the department of psychology. Bazzoli’s area of expertise is occupational health psychology (a branch of organizational psychology). He is a member of the Coalition for Healthy and Equitable Workplaces Lab led by Tahira … Continue reading
Researching rapid evolution in fruit flies
Seth Rudman, an assistant professor in WSU Vancouver’s School of Biological Sciences, has research interests centering around rapid evolution, rapid adaption in response to environmental stressors, and whole genome evolutionary change within a changing environment. Rudman received his Ph.D. in … Continue reading
Humanizing mathematics education
Everyone is capable of making sense of the mathematics around them, says Kristin Lesseig, who works to help teachers encourage mathematical reasoning and confidence in their students. Try to figure out some everyday calculation, like how inflation has affected the … Continue reading
Competitive gossip
Anthropologist Nicole Hess studies the ways and reasons we praise other people or put them down. Competition for scarce resources—such as food, territory, sex, power—comes naturally to primates, human and non-human alike. But while physical contests, including warfare, are well … Continue reading
The evidence for human connections
Amy Salazar’s research provides evidence that meaningful connections are essential to help foster youth achieve independence. A patchwork of federal, state and county programs spends billions of dollars a year on various aspects of foster care, yet there is little … Continue reading
Climate extremes in a warming world
Climate change is already here. Deepti Singh is working to help people understand its impacts. Deepti Singh earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering, planning to specialize in aeronautics and astronautics. Today, however, she is an assistant professor in … Continue reading
Exploring how the past informs the future
Colin Grier’s archeological studies explore how indigenous societies adapted to social and ecological change. For thousands of years, numerous small-scale societies, mostly coastal hunting, gathering and fishing peoples, populated the Pacific Northwest. What remains of these small-scale societies, and what … Continue reading
Expanding understanding of pigmentation diseases
With a new NIH grant, Cynthia Cooper is probing some “unexpected effects” related to diseases of pigmentation. Cynthia Cooper has spent 18 years studying the relationship of pigmentation to human diseases, notably melanoma and albinism, using zebrafish as a model. Zebrafish … Continue reading
Autism and juvenile justice
Laurie Drapela’s book examines how autism research can improve juvenile justice policies in the United States and Canada. Laurie Drapela has been studying inequities in the justice system for more than 20 years. Drapela, an associate professor of criminal justice … Continue reading
WSU Vancouver ResearchNow! 