June 2009

Kudos: ■ To Charles Brunner and Jeff Morrell for their induction into The OSU 25 Year Club and to Joe Karchesy for joining the OSU 30 Year Club. ■ Eric Hansen was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Softwood Export Council (SEC). The SEC is a trade council of U.S. softwood grading agencies, industry trade associations, state export promotional development agencies, and others interested in promotion of U.S. softwoods internationally. ■ John Nairn is a Prof. Invité at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland this summer. He is teaching the modeling half of a PhD course on "Processing and Modeling of Composite Materials." ■ Jeff Vaughn, WST undergrad will receive the Composite Panel Association’s Robert E. Dougherty Scholarship—only four of these highly competitive awards were made this year. This marks the sixth straight year that an OSU student has won this award.

Bioenergy at OSU: ■ David Smith has been working with a cross-campus committee sponsored by Sun Grant on a series of workshops around the general theme: Biofuels, Bioenergy, and Bioproducts – What is Oregon’s Niche? The first of these, “Liquid Transportation Fuels”, was held on June 29 with David moderating a session that explored the industry's perspective on current status and what gaps need to be filled for future success. ■ Mike Milota has been representing the College on a campus group planning a biomass demonstration facility. The Legislature just approved $8M in funding to locate this facility next to the new Energy Center.

New Projects: ■ Kate McCulloh, Barb Lachenbruch and Forest Service were awarded a NSF grant entitled “The plant hydraulic continuum from root to leaf: avoidance of catastrophic xylem failure under dynamic conditions.” Research will take place locally as well as in Pennsylvania and Panama. ■ Rakesh Gupta, Milo Clauson and colleagues at OSU and elsewhere received funding from NSF—Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation for a new project on Mitigating the Risk of Coastal Infrastructure through understanding Tsunami-Structure Interaction and Modeling (more wave tank destruction coming!). ■ Steve Voelker, Barb Lachenbruch’s postdoc, is a Visiting Scholar at the University Of Arizona Laboratory Of Tree Ring Research and is developing relationships between naturally occurring abundances of H and O stable isotopes in spruce wood and atmospheric relative humidity. This relationship is an important part of their NSF-funded project on climate and atmospheric reconstruction using wood samples aging up to 150,000 years. Steve is currently sampling in the mid-west and Manitoba to collect data from extant trees.

Mexican Visitors: ■ Eric Hansen, and a gaggle of faculty, students and staff hosted five Mexican Forest Service visitors on a two-week tour of Extension and Outreach and OSU. The members of the group are responsible for training activities in various regions of Mexico. They spent several days on campus and then made a loop through southern and central Oregon where they learned about topics such as forest management, water conflict issues, and fire management and the role that Extension plays in each area. The tour concluded with visits to the Rediscovery Forest at the Oregon Garden and the World Forestry Center. MS students Valeria Villavicencio, and Ana Lu Fonseca were key to the success of the visit. ■ WSE alum Antonio Silva, now a Professor at the University of Guadalajara, recently visited OSU with Maru Barba, Director of Training and Education for the Mexican Forest Service. They explored collaborations that might take place after the completion of the current Mexico-TIES project led by OSU and the University of Guadalajara

Maple veneer checking again: OWIC faculty David Smith and Scott Leavengood investigated a serious surface checking problem in high-end maple panels for an Oregon manufacturer. These panels are used in architectural wood work and the surface checks have been a periodic problem with no discernable cause. OWIC speculated on some factors and suggested solutions, but understanding how to solve this recurring problem needs research attention (e.g. funding).

Forest Products Society/SWST Meetings: ■ Nineteen (19) students/postdocs plus 7 faculty traveled to Boise for the annual FPS and SWST meetings. The Forest Business Solutions group (Jane Han, Kate Kamke, Natalie Macias, Derek Thompson, Ashlee Tibbets, Valeria Villavicencio, Chris Knowles, and Eric Hansen) moderated one session, assisted with a webinar, gave 6 oral presentations and 5 poster presentations. OSU dominated other sessions as well including one organized by Kaichang Li on adhesives. ■ WSE hosted an alumni and friends reception which drew about 100 guests to a well decorated room thanks to creative undergraduate students. ■ Arijit Sinha and Günter Modzel took First and Second Prize, respectively, in the Student Poster competition—the Wood Science Bowl Team will take the next year to practice further. ■ The OSU FPS Student Chapter successfully completed its year-long efforts to raise funds to cover the registration, travel, and lodging expenses of three undergraduate students.

The WS&E Brief will take the summer off but will return in September.

DEPARTMENT OF WOOD SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

What is this? A monthly capsule summary of selected project updates, new ventures, new grants/ contracts/ testing programs, major papers, accomplishments, awards and kudos, other stuff you are proud of, or activities that your colleagues (and DH) might find interesting. The goal is better awareness of the professional activities of faculty, staff and students in Wood Science & Engineering.