Biochemistry and Biophysics

Our faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students are passionate about “revealing how life works” by collaborating with others to host training workshops, conferences, and events for members of the international scientific community as well as Oregon teachers, students, and the general public.

Upcoming Events: 

We share our research, expertise, and enthusiasm through annual programs and events with:

	Viral Intelligence: What Is Coronavirus? Examine why antibiotics are used for bacterial infections and why they aren’t used for viruses and what it will take to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, as you join a professor of biochemistry and biophysics to take a scientific look at what a virus is.
	Genetic Code Expansion Workshop and Conference
	STEPs (Scientists and Teachers in Education Partnerships) Program for teacher professional development workshops and equipment lending library
	STEM Academy summer camps for middle and high school students in Biochemistry and Creative Computing. The purpose of STEM Academy is to engage K-12 youth in programs designed to increase college attendance and participation in the STEM fields. (STEM includes the natural, physical and social Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, as single disciplines or in any combination, and extends to the integrative STEM disciplines forestry, agriculture, fisheries, (veterinary) medicine, and health sciences.)
	Discovery Days is an outreach program involving many of the Science Departments at OSU as well as departments from Agriculture and Engineering.
	Mi Familia Weekend  mission is to make Oregon State University accessible to families from Spanish-speaking nations.
	Discovering the Scientist Within for middle school girls. The goal of the workshop is to introduce girls to STEM career fields in which women are traditionally under-represented; another is to change the stereotypical perception that scientists are male and that science is ‘difficult’.

OSU research faculty partners supporting STEPs outreach workshops and programs in 2014-2016

Dan Arp, Dean Agricultural College and STEPs Director
Michael Freitag, Julie Greenwood, David Hendrix, Colin Johnson, Andy Karplus, and Ryan Mehl, Biochemistry and Biophysics 
Pallavi Dhagat, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Andreas Schmittner, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science
Weihong Qiu and Bo Sun, Physics
Pankaj Jaiswal and Jeff Chang, Botany and Plant Pathology
Mike Bailey, Computer Science
Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing