Discovery

Innovative and significant research and creative activities are a recognized hallmark of MSU, where faculty, students and staff all participate in the creation of knowledge and art.

Goal: MSU will raise its national and international prominence in research, creativity, innovation and scholarly achievement, and thereby fortify the university’s standing as one of the nation’s leading public research universities.

Objective D.1: Elevate the research excellence and recognition of MSU faculty.

Objective D.2: Enhance infrastructure in support of research, discovery and creative activities.

Objective D.3: Expand the scale, breadth and quality of doctoral education.

Strategies

Attract and retain the best faculty and staff with attractive start-up and retention packages
Focus on diversity in planning, hiring and retention to foster careers and build a positive workplace
Identify key interdisciplinary research and creative themes for investment
Expand interdisciplinary efforts in research, creative activity and graduate education
Improve support for faculty active in research and creative activity through enhanced professional development, additional financial support and facilities improvements
Redesign graduate student recruitment, retention and success efforts, learning from our most successful graduate programs

Budget Alignment

(2017-18 investments unless otherwise noted):

$1.3 million invested in new faculty lines (also noted in Learning and Engagement)
$3 million in faculty startup packages to recruit the best candidates (also noted in Stewardship)
$965,000 for market, merit, equity, retention and promotion investments in tenured and tenure-track faculty (also in Stewardship)
$1 million in institutional matching funds for external grants
Additional $200,000 committed to graduate stipends over FY17
$500,000 in internal research and creativity seed awards
$300,000 annually for the Center for Faculty Excellence to support faculty excellence in learning, discovery and engagement (also noted in Integration)

Successes

Faculty Research with Impact

Stephanie McCalla, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in MSU’s College of Engineering, is leading a project to apply recent findings about the disease-detecting potential of microRNA - small molecules that regulate a variety of cellular functions in the body. This emerging technology could make diagnosis of malaria and other diseases more accessible, potentially improving treatment for millions of people in areas with limited medical resources.
MSU Professor Emeritus Barry Jacobsen discovered a bacteria strain, Bacillus mycoides isolate J, or BmJ, way back

MSU College of Agriculture Professor Barry Jacobsen holds a sample of an agricultural disease-fighting technology that could save farmers around the world millions of dollars. MSU Photo by Kelly Gorham.

in 1994. BmJ is now the active ingredient in a Montana State University-licensed technology LifeGard, an award-winning biological pesticide from Certis USA. It is the first biopesticide that works exclusively by inducing a plant’s resistance to diseases, including fungi and viruses. Jacobsen originally isolated the bacterium from a field of sugar beets near Sidney, MT.
Adrienne Phillips, an assistant professor in theDepartment of Civil Engineering, and a team of researchers and their industry partners are advancing a new way to fix leaking oil and natural gas wells: with rock-forming bacteria. The MSU team towed their one-of-a-kind mobile laboratory to Indiana for the first of three field tests to be completed this year for a real-world test at a producing oil and gas field. The field trials represent a major step toward commercializing the technology where a harmless bacteria called Sporosarcina pasteuriicould seal tiny, hard-to-reach cracks in the thin cement shell that encases metal well-bore pipe.
Three MSU art professors and a team of ten MSU students designed, built and fired a new kiln in Curitiba, Brazil.

MSU ceramics professor Josh DeWeese, left, and MSU students build a wood-fired ceramics kiln in a community center in Curitaba, Brazil, as part of a biennial arts festival outreach project.

Dean Adams, Jeremy Hatch and Josh DeWeese and the students spent six days with local community members, aligned with an international biennial exhibit curated by MSU Dean of Arts and Architecture Royce Smith and featuring several MSU faculty pieces. The message of the exhibit series was the potential of art to change the world.

Montana State University researchers leading a team from across the country, received $1.8 million from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative project to study methane-consuming microbes and develop ways of using them to make commercial products such as plastics. The team will look for the microbes in the thermal features of Yellowstone National Park and underground in a former South Dakota gold mine. Robin Gerlach, a professor in MSU’s Chemical and Biological Engineering Department is the project’s principal investigator at MSU. Methane conversion is of increasing interest because the gas is a potent greenhouse agent whose contribution to climate change is second only to carbon dioxide’s.
William Kleindl, assistant research professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, is part of a national team awarded a National Science Foundation grant to study how cumulative forest management decisions at local scales influence the health of forests and the ecological services they provide at large scales. The NSF’s Macrosystems Biology and Early NEON Science Program will allow the team to create computer models to evaluate national and regional forest management policies, environmental disturbances and consequences for ecology, the economy and society.
“An Intervention to Enhance the Research Capacity of Academic Women in STEM,” by MSU faculty member Jessi Smith and staff members Chatanika Stoop, Micaela Young and Rebecca Belou was published in BioScience. The study found that six-week grant writing boot camps conducted by the MSU ADVANCE Project TRACS program had a four-fold positive effect on women winning grants at the university. The number of external grants submitted increased, as did the number of proposals led by women as principal investigators. The camps also increased the number of grants awarded to women and the dollar amount awarded to them.
Nearly a dozen species of large mammals have used Banff animal crossing structures more than 150,000 times

Underpasses were designed to alllow wildlife to cross the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park. Photo courtesy Tony Clevenger.

and the mortality rates for large carnivores such as grizzly bears are now 50 to 100 percent lower where the crossings have been installed. Tony Clevenger, a senior research scientist at Montana State University’s Western Transportation Institute, and colleagues have been studying these crossings for nearly two decades.
Jennifer Thorson, MSU research scientist, andLigia Prezotto, MSU assistant professor, both in theNutritional and Reproductive Physiology Laboratory at theNorthern Agricultural Research Center in Havre, were awarded a $400,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture to develop a greater understanding of how the nutrition of a cow during gestation impacts how her calf responds to the environment after birth, which ultimately influences the calf’s life-long fertility. The research also has potential to serve as a biomedical model to better understand reproductive development and challenges that occur in humans.
In the fight against an invasive fish that has decimated Yellowstone National Park’s iconic cutthroat trout, a technology developed at Montana State University could help park managers more effectively locate fish for removal. Joe Shaw, professor of electrical engineering, and his team have developed a LIDAR technology than can detect invasive lake trout to a depth of more than 26 feet. The research was published in Applied Optics.
An international group of engineers, ecologists and landscape architects joined forces at Montana State University to design wildlife crossings from fiber reinforced plastic, a lightweight and inexpensive material that could make it possible to create and install more crossing structures, which are typically made of concrete or metal. Because the material is also very durable, it could even make it possible to relocate and reuse those crossings if animals change their migration patterns, for example. The work could also be used in pedestrian crossings in urban settings.
An Antares rocket roared into the night sky in May, carrying a prototype of MSU’s radiation-tolerant computing

A bread loaf-sized satellite called RadSat will carry the names of Montana Sate University's 2018 graduating class as a fun tribute to the university's 125th anniversary. MSU image courtesy of Brock LaMeres

technology — as well as the names of the roughly 2,000 MSU students who graduated from the university this spring. The spacecraft computer prototype was the result of over a decade of research by Brock LaMeres, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his team of students and researchers.
James Mazer, an associate professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience who studies vision and visual attention, has published research in Neuron that reveals how the brain maintains attention on an object even while the eyes are making many rapid, voluntary movements. This research seeks to answer fundamental questions that could eventually lead to new treatments or therapies for some brain disorders.
Kevin Hammonds, assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, received a $250,000 grant from NASA in March for a study that could have widespread implication for municipalities, farmers and ranchers as well as engineers who manage reservoirs. The research will take advantage of specialized tools in MSU’s Subzero Science and Engineering Research Facility to measure how microscopic changes in snow crystals affect how snowpack is quantified remotely by aircraft and satellites.
Carl Yeoman, associate professor in the Department of Animal and Range Sciencespublished findings in Scientific Reports, a publication of the prestigious science journal Nature. The paper is the first to demonstrate the maternal influence on calves’ earliest gut microbes. The findings have the potential to contribute greatly to the field of animal health and production.

Recognizing Faculty Excellence

Cathy Whitlock, a Montana State University professor of Earth sciences whose work over the past four decades

Cathy Whitlock, MSU professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors a scientist can receive. MSU Photo by Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez

has greatly impacted the fields of geology, geography and ecology has been elected by her peer scholars to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors a scientist can receive.
Connie B. Chang, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Mark Owkes, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, have each earned the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for early career teacher-scholars. Chang’s work brings new approaches for studying how microbes function in their own communities, called biofilms — research that could shed new light on how microbes causes disease or generate biofuel. Owkes’ research combines engineering and computer science to understand how fluids behave in a spray – a riddle that could one day be solved with powerful computers in order to improve car engines and other technologies.
NASA awarded $750,000 to Nicolas Yunes, a Montana State University gravitational physicist, for his project “Exploring Extreme Gravity: Neutron Stars, Black Holes and Gravitational Waves.” Yunes is a founding member of

MSU Associate Professor Nicolas Yunes has received $750,000 from NASA's EPSCoR for his project that aims to answer fundamental questions about the universe. MSU photo illustration by Kelly Gorham

the MSU eXtreme Gravity Institute, known as XGI, and an associate professor in the Department of Physics in MSU’s College of Letters and Science.
Ed Adams, professor in theDepartment of Civil Engineering won the American Avalanche Association’sHonorary Membership Award, which recognizes special achievement in research and other work related to snow avalanches. The award has been given to only 24 others since it was established, and the number of honorary members is capped at 20 living individuals at any one time.
A composition by Montana State University music instructor Eric Funk that was inspired by Czech musician Jan Hanus has received a special citation in the prestigious American Prize in Composition. Funk’s “Variations on a Theme by Jan Hanus, Op. 127” received a special judges’ citation for the Best Concerto/Concerted Work of the Year in the professional orchestra division. The American Prize is a series of nonprofit competitions that recognizes and rewards the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States.
Mark Anderson, associate professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics, has been named a faculty research fellow with the National Bureau of Economic Research, the country’s leading nonprofit economic research organization. The organization counts 27 Nobel Prize winners in economics and 13 past chairs of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors that have held NBER affiliations.

A global team of researchers including Hikmet Budak, Montana State University’s Winifred Asbjornson Plant Sciences Chair, in the Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, has decoded for the first time the

Hikmet Budak, Montana State University's Winifred Asbjornson Plant Sciences Chair, is among a global team of scientists that has successfully mapped and sequenced the genome of wild emmer wheat. MSU Photo by Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez

complete genome sequence of wild emmer wheat. Wild emmer wheat is the original form of nearly all the domesticated wheat in the world, including durum (pasta) and bread wheat.
John Priscu, a Montana State University polar scientist, contributed to new research published in Nature Ecology and Evolution that describes how an abnormal season of intense glacial melt in 2002 triggered multiple distinct changes in the physical and biological characteristics of Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys over the ensuing decade. The study was an interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists from 10 institutions.
Bill Schell, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, was named an American Society for Engineering Management. The award, the highest honor given by ASEM, recognizes professional accomplishments, distinguished service and longtime membership with ASEM.
The MUS Board of Regents bestowed the MUS Regents Professor distinction on Patrik Callis, professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mark Jutila, department head and professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and Neil Cornish, professor of Physics, for exhibited dedication to research, education, students and the university. Regents Professorships are the most prestigious designation to be attained by a professor in the Montana University System.
Vaughan Judge, director of the Montana State University School of Art, has been elected to the commission on accreditation for the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. NASAD is an organization of schools, conservatories, colleges and universities with approximately 360 accredited institutional members. At MSU, NASAD accredits the School of Art, School of the Film and Photography in the College of Arts and Architecture and Gallatin College’s Interior Design Course.
Loren Acton, a Montana State University emeritus professor who has earned recognition as an astronaut and as a solar physicist was honored for a decades-long collaboration with the Japanese in the field of space science with the Order of the Rising Sun. The honorific recognizes Acton’s contribution to promoting space science in Japan and strengthening relations between Japan and the U.S. in space science. The Order of the Rising Sun is the third highest order bestowed by the Japanese government, with the two higher orders reserved for heads of state or politicians.
Professor William Inskeep and his team of researchers have found a new lineage of microbes living in

Bill Inskeep, professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, has been published in the Nature Microbiology scientific journal for his research on Marsarchaeota, geothermal iron-oxide microbial mats found in Yellowstone National Park. MSU Photo by Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez

Yellowstone National Park’s thermal features that sheds light on the origin of life, the evolution of archaeal life and the importance of iron in early life. The results were published in the scientific journal Nature Microbiology. The discovery of archaeal lineages is critical to our understanding of the universal tree of life and evolutionary history of the Earth. Geochemically diverse thermal environments in Yellowstone National Park provide unprecedented opportunities for studying archaea in habitats that may represent analogues of early Earth.

“Charged: The Eduardo Garcia Story," is a feature-length documentary that was produced by a crew largely made up of MSU film school graduates and faculty.

produced by Montana State University film faculty and graduates debuted in Montana and won accolades across the country. The film was produced by MSU-linked crew members involved with the popular, award-winning documentary “Unbranded,” including director and cinematographer Phillip Baribeau, who is a graduate of the MSU School of Film and Photography in the College of Arts and Architecture, and Dennis Aig, a professor in the school who produced both documentaries.

Raising Visibility

The Repository Analytics and Metrics Portal or RAMP, a web service developed recently by the Montana State University Library and its partners, provides more accurate counts of downloads of files held by institutional repositories. It’s important for researchers and universities to know how many times a file has been downloaded because it helps them understand the impact of the research. RAMP is free to use and doesn’t require installing software. RAMP has demonstrated that the ScholarWorks repository at MSU enjoys approximately 5,000 downloads each week from all over the world.

Milestones in Plant Research

The Plant Growth Center at MSU celebrated thirty years of research support, enabling hundreds of research projects that have contributed important knowledge to Montana and beyond. The Plant Growth Center also features labs, classrooms and an insect quarantine unit. The work in the center ranges from disease testing on seed potatoes, to biodiesel production with algae, to weed management, to starting vegetables from seeds for MSU’s student-run vegetable farm, to studying pollinator-plant interactions, to developing wheat varieties that will perform well in Montana’s varied landscape. The center owes its foundation to the entire Montana agricultural community, who fought for legislative funding three decades ago.

The Final Frontier

Montana State University has been elected to join 109 other major research institutions as a member of the Universities Space Research Association, a nonprofit corporation chartered to advance space-related science, technology and engineering. MSU was selected due to its status as a premier research university, with programs in solar-terrestrial physics and astrophysics, its space science research in extreme gravity phenomena, such as black holes, gravitational waves and the early universe as well as MSU’s eXtreme Gravity Institute.

Uncommon Research Resources

Michael Ivie, associate professor and curator of entomology at Montana State University, right, and Vinicius Ferreira, a doctoral student in entomology at MSU, inspect the variety of net-winged beetles

The Smithsonian Institution has sent its entire collection of Lycidae beetles to MSU where it will be housed, curated and studied in the Montana Entomology Collection for at least 10 years. Because of the reputation of MSU entomologist Michael Ivie, an internationally renowned beetle expert, the collection coming to Bozeman is a loan beneficial to both the Smithsonian and Ivie’s entomology students.

Strategies

Budget Alignment