OU Engineering

By Jana Smith, Director Strategic Communications for R&D Norman, Okla.— A University of Oklahoma-led research team has conducted a study on the diversity of microbial communities that demonstrates the effects of human-caused changes in climate, land use and other factors.   In this study, researchers show the diversity of soil bacteria, fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria all are better predicted by variation in environmental temperature rather than pH. Jizhong Zhou, director of the Institute for Environmental Genomics and professor in the Department of Microbial and Plant Biology and School of Civil Environmental Sciences, OU Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Gallogly College of Engineering, leads the research project with assistance from the University of Arizona, The Santa Fe Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa and University of New Mexico.   Zhou is an affiliate of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Tsinghua University. The significance

By Jana Smith, Director Strategic Communications for OU R&D Arnold Rech, Fort Towson High School; Laura Lewis, RET program manager and graduate research assistant; Niccole Rech, Fort Towson High School; Joseph Albrecht, Liberty High School; Ashley Rodriguez, Clinton High School; Mark Nanny, RET director; Sue Flaming, Foyil Junior/High School; and Shawn Cusack, Northwest Technology Center Norman, Okla.— Six science and mathematics teachers from rural high schools in Oklahoma are engaged in a National Science Foundation-supported summer program at the University of Oklahoma’s Center for BioAnalysis in an effort to improve STEM teaching in rural classrooms and increase the number of rural students who select and successfully graduate from a higher education STEM field.     “Combining the teaching expertise of the high school teachers with the research expertise of the faculty creates a powerful synergism for producing innovative and dynamic science curricula that dire