Joining the band on the field for the 57th year was the Ohio State University Alumni Band. Quadruple Script Ohios closed the halftime show, with current band members in the south end zone and alumni band members in the north, east and west.

TBDBITL’s formations remain a program highlight. This weekend’s show featured the Statue of Liberty, Revolutionary War soldiers and the Liberty Bell.

Saturday’s i-dotters were Robert Gawdyda, from Hubbard, Ohio, and alumni Jeremy M. Rogers (north), Mark B. Enochs (east) and Tom Goodman (west).

Ohio State is one of seven universities partnering with Stanford University for a first-of-its-kind advanced manufacturing training program known as Foundry School. Foundry School is a national program to train the entrepreneurs, engineers, technicians and industrial leaders needed to rebuild American manufacturing.

Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the program details at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace on Thursday. During the launch event, Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda joined U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno, Meta President Dina Powell McCormick and other manufacturing and technology leaders for a panel focused on revitalizing American manufacturing and creating jobs. The program also featured presidents and senior leaders from the universities working to deliver the Foundry School curriculum.

“Ohio State is a national leader in advanced manufacturing, and we're excited to partner with the U.S. Departments of State and Labor, along with university peers from coast to coast, to launch the Foundry School,” Bellamkonda said. “The university has a number of labs and centers, including the Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence (CDME), already partnering with employers to educate the next generation of manufacturing leaders, and the Foundry School will further enhance our offerings and help us tailor Ohio State's student experience to grow Ohio’s economy and maximize job opportunities for our graduates. This work is core to our land grant mission, and Ohio State is proud to play a leading role.”

Bellamkonda offered several examples of how Ohio State was already working with industry to support advanced manufacturing. CDME is partnering with a company in Piqua to help manufacture a novel, high-pressure sand-casting technology for defense alloys. Students from CDME work directly with the company to help develop the technology. After completing their paid program with the firm, they can often join the firm as an employee.

American manufacturers will need an estimated 3.8 million skilled workers by 2033 in semiconductor, defense, energy and other technology fields, according to a report referenced by the State Department. The Foundry School is designed to help close that gap.

“I’m very proud that we have Ohio State front and center along with Stanford, Penn State, and a few other great universities,” Vance, an Ohio State alumnus, said. “I think it’s an amazing collection of people, of institutions, of businesses, of thought leaders, and of entrepreneurs that we’ve gotten together in order to make this possible.”

Stanford University has collaborated on the curriculum with Ohio State, Arizona State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, University of Kansas, Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis. At each campus, the program will run 17 sessions, each taught by founders and CEOs from advanced manufacturing firms. Industry leaders will come from the U.S. and the Republic of Korea, Japan, Taiwan and India.

The curriculum begins this year on supporting campuses and will cover topics like fundamentals of modern factory design, materials and supply chains and assembly-line engineering. A core program hosted by Stanford University starts in January 2027 and will focus on precision tooling, industrial automation, digital manufacturing, defense production and other sessions.

“The future is through manufacturing in states like Ohio and in the Midwest,” Bellamkonda said.

Trustees on Thursday honored each scholar as a Distinguished University Professor. The permanent honorific title is awarded annually to tenure-track professors who have been at Ohio State for at least five years and have demonstrated truly exceptional records in teaching, research, scholarly or creative work, and service. Distinguished University Professors become members of the President’s and Provost’s Advisory Committee and are awarded a $30,000 one-time grant to support their academic work. The university has awarded just 78 faculty since the creation of the honor in 1987.

The recipients are:

• Gail E. Besner, H. William Clatworthy Jr. Professor of Surgery, College of Medicine
• Shan-Lu Liu, professor, College of Veterinary Medicine
• Alan Luo, professor, Donald D. Glower Chair in Engineering, College of Engineering
• Giorgio Rizzoni, professor, Ford Motor Company Chair in ElectroMechanical Systems, College of Engineering
• Brent Sohngen, Distinguished Professor of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
• Claudia Turro, Dr. Melvin L. Morris Endowed Professorship in Inorganic Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences

“Academic excellence is only possible because of our people,” President Ravi V. Bellamkonda told trustees on Thursday. “World-class research, exceptional scholarship, dedicated service — we have lots of reasons to be incredibly grateful for and proud of our distinguished faculty.”

Trustees also reviewed the tenure of Bellamkonda, praising his progress on goals including academic excellence, integrating AI into undergraduates’ academic experience, and driving transformative research and innovation. Bellamkonda was named the 18th president of Ohio State in March.

“You do a great job articulating a really compelling vision for the kind of university that we can be and ought to be,” Board Chair Jeff M. S. Kaplan said. “The urgency, enthusiasm and action that you bring to this role, we believe, are exactly what we need.” 

The board agreed to a 3% adjustment to Bellamkonda’s base salary as part of the university’s Annual Merit Compensation Process, and an annual performance award for achieving agreed-upon goals of $420,000, or 30% of his base salary.

Trustees approved the president’s fiscal year 2027 goals, focused on inspiring, innovating and empowering people across Ohio and beyond, and building upon the themes of the Education for Citizenship 2035 strategic plan.

The goals are:

• Academic excellence, which includes enhancing Ohio State’s signature undergraduate experience, advancing life-changing research, cultivating dynamic people and leaders, and bolstering strong colleges and programs.
• Healthcare excellence, in which Ohio State will help to reshape and transform healthcare by providing world-class care for every person, pursuing relentless innovation to improve lives, and being the best place to work and learn.
• Athletic excellence, a space in which the university is positioned to define the future of college sports.

The following actions were taken during the full board meeting:

Establishment of academic programs approved
The board approved the establishment of the Bachelor of Science major in biotech science and the Bachelor of Arts major in civics, law and leadership. The major in biotech science addresses a growing workforce need within Ohio’s rapidly expanding biotechnology and life sciences sector, and the civics, law and leadership major offered by the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society advances Ohio State's land-grant mission by preparing students to participate thoughtfully and lead effectively in civic life through the study of history, constitutionalism, law and leadership.

Revision of program curricula approved
Trustees approved revisions to the classics major, comparative studies major, natural resource management major and the environmental policy and decision-making major.

Honorary degree approved
The board approved the awarding of the honorary degrees for the following:

• Douglas Laycock, Doctor of Laws, honoris causa
• Dianne McIntyre, Doctor of Arts, honoris causa

Resolutions in Memoriam

• Edward “Ned” J. Behrman, who died on March 7. He was professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences.

• R. Bruce Curry, professor emeritus in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

• James R. “Jim” Helt, who died on June 15. He was an associate professor emeritus in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

• Floyd L. Herum, who died on Jan. 12. He was professor emeritus in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

• Michael Jon Kindred, professor emeritus in the Moritz College of Law and former associate dean.

• Cheryl Lee Krueger, former member of the Board of Trustees, who died on June 13.

• Robert Frederic Lawson, professor emeritus in the College of Education and Human Ecology, who died on Aug. 9, 2025.

• Sheila J. Marion, associate professor emerita in the Department of Dance in the College of Arts and Sciences, who died on June 22.

• Thomas Edgar Noyes, assistant professor emeritus within the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, who died on April 6.

• John D. Ong, former member of the Board of Trustees, who died on June 4.

• Russell “Russ” M. Pitzer, professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, who died on May 25.

• Richard P. Swenson, professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, who died on Feb. 20.

Personnel actions approved 
Trustees approved the following appointments and reappointments:

Appointments

• Karin Allenspach has been appointed professor (The Endowed Chair in Comparative and Translational Oncology and Biomedical Research) in the College of Veterinary Medicine for a term running from Sept. 1, 2026, through July 31, 2031.
• Natarajan Balasubramanian has been appointed professor (The Robert and Anne Hoyt Fund) at Fisher College of Business for a term running from Sept. 1, 2026, through Aug. 31, 2031.
• Susie Breitenstein has been appointed professor (Centennial Endowed Professor of Nursing) in the College of Nursing for a term running from Aug. 20, 2026, through Aug. 19, 2031.
• Kristi Cheramie has been appointed professor (The Hubert Schmidt Chair in Landscape Architecture) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Edward Dodson has been appointed professor-clinical (The William H. Saunders M.D. Professorship in Otolaryngology) in the College of Medicine for a term running from August 15, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Kiely Fletcher has been appointed vice provost for strategic enrollment management in the Office of Academic Affairs effective June 15, 2026.
• Frank Jacobus has been appointed professor and director (Walter H. Kidd Designated Professorship KSA) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Osama Khalil has been appointed associate professor (Dr. Charles Saltzer Professorship in Mathematics) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from Aug. 16, 2027, through Aug. 16, 2032.
• Kami Maddocks has been appointed professor-clinical (Natalie M. Knutsen Professorship) in the College of Medicine for a term running from Sept. 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Antoinette Marsh has been appointed professor (Endowed Chair in Comparative and Translational Parasitic and Infectious Diseases) in the College of Veterinary Medicine for a term running from Sept. 1, 2026, through July 31, 2031.
• Dustin Mixon has been appointed associate professor (Russell C. Shaw and Lynn B. Shaw Endowed Professorship in Mathematics) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Nathan Mowery has been appointed professor-clinical (Margaret Bowers Hardymon Professorship in Surgery) in the College of Medicine for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Michael Neblo has been appointed professor (Ann and Darrell Dreher Chair in Political Communication and Policy Thinking) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Kathy Northern has been appointed associate professor (Joanne Wharton Murphy/Class of 1965 and 1973 Professorship in Law) in the Moritz College of Law for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Efthimi Parasidis has been appointed professor (The Robert J. Lynn Chair in Law) in the Moritz College of Law for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Robin Queen has been appointed professor and chair (Bertha Lamme Professorship) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Jeffrey J. Walline has been appointed dean of the College of Optometry from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Balasubramaniam Shanker has been appointed interim dean of the College of Engineering from Aug. 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.

Reappointments

• Elizabeth Cooke has been reappointed professor-clinical (Frank C. Woodside III Clinical Professorship of Trial Advocacy) in the Moritz College of Law for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Monica Cox has been reappointed professor (Distinguished Professor of Engineering) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Laura Dugan has been reappointed professor (Ralph Mershon Designated Professorship of Human Security) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez has been reappointed professor (Gregory H. Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties) in the Moritz College of Law for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Andrew Glassman has been reappointed professor and chair (Frank J. Kloenne Chair in Orthopedic Surgery) in the College of Medicine for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2028.
• John Horack has been reappointed professor and vice president (Neil A. Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Policy) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Igor Jouline has been reappointed professor (Rod Sharp Professorship in Microbiology) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Ahmet Kahraman has been reappointed professor (Howard D. Winbigler Designated Professorship) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Sanjay Krishna has been reappointed professor (George R. Smith Chair in Engineering) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Dhabaleswar Kumar has been reappointed professor (Distinguished Professor of Engineering) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Tasha Lewis has been reappointed associate professor-clinical (Nina Mae Mattus Professorship) in the College of Education and Human Ecology for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Jamie Lipp has been reappointed associate professor-clinical (Mary Fried Endowed Clinical Professorship) in the College of Education and Human Ecology for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• Rama Mallampalli has been reappointed professor and chair (S. Robert Davis Chair of Medicine) in the College of Medicine for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Matthew Mayhew has been reappointed professor (William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher Endowed Professor in Educational Administration) in the College of Education and Human Ecology for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2031.
• David McComb has been reappointed professor (Ohio Research Scholar in Materials) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Marta Nowak has been reappointed assistant professor (Christos Yessios Endowed Professorship) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• John Nusstein has been reappointed professor (Dr. William J. Meyers Endowed Chair in Endodontics) in the College of Dentistry for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through Aug. 14, 2030.
• Phillip Popovich has been reappointed professor and chair (Ray W. Poppleton Research Designated Chair) in the College of Medicine for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2030.
• Dongbin Xiu has been reappointed professor (Ohio Eminent Scholar in Scientific Computation) in the College of Arts and Sciences for a term running from Aug. 15, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Ahmed Yousef has been reappointed professor (Virginia Hutchison Bazler and Frank E. Bazler Chair in Food Science) in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.
• Xiaodong Zhang has been reappointed professor (Robert M. Critchfield Professorship in Engineering) in the College of Engineering for a term running from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031.

Trustees also approved a market compensation adjustment for Jake Wozniak, treasurer, vice president of financial services and innovation and deputy chief financial officer.

Professional services and construction contracts approved
The board authorized the university to enter into or increase professional services and construction contracts for the following projects:

East Hospital endoscopy expansion and catheter lab
Professional services totaling $3.6 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Hughes Hall renovation
Professional services totaling $5.2 million, to be paid for with university funds, state funds and partner funds.

Wexner Medical Center community facilities
Professional services totaling $20 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Ramseyer Hall renovation
Professional services totaling $3.1 million, to be paid for with university funds and state funds.

Research Center deferred maintenance, phase 1
Professional services totaling $4 million, to be paid for with university funds.

Airport capital improvements
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $1.3 million, to be paid for with university funds and partner funds.

Baker Hall portable air conditioning and electrical upgrades
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $4.7 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Blankenship Hall upgrades
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $1.5 million, to be paid for with university funds and partner funds.

Fawcett Center renovations
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $6.5 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Howlett Hall deferred maintenance
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $11 million, to be paid for with university funds and grant funds.

Knowlton Hall roof replacement
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $5.6 million, to be paid for with university funds.

North Towers renovations
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $145 million, to be paid for with university debt.

Outpatient Care East clinic renovations and relocations
Professional services and construction contracts totaling $14.2 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Tunnel rehabilitation, phase 1
Construction contracts totaling $6.1 million, to be paid for with university debt, university funds, state funds and partner funds.

University Hospital pavilion air handling units review/repair
Construction contracts totaling $37.8 million, to be paid for with auxiliary funds.

Fiscal year 2027 capital investment plan approved
Trustees approved the university capital investment plan for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2027.

Joint use agreements approved
The board approved entering into joint use agreements between Ohio State and the following entities following funds appropriated in the state capital bill:

• Edison Welding Institute (EWI)
• Junior Achievement of Central Ohio
• Lifecare Alliance
• Rev1 Ventures

Settlement agreement and amendments to the concession agreement with Ohio State Energy Partners approved
Trustees approved a settlement agreement and amendments to the long-term lease and concession agreement for the Ohio State utility system.

Amendments to the bylaws of the Board of Trustees and Wexner Medical Center board approved
Trustees approved amendments to the bylaws of the Ohio State Board of Trustees and the bylaws of the Wexner Medical Center Board.

Board of Trustees committee appointments approved
Trustees approved the ratification of committee appointments for fiscal year 2027 as follows:

Academic Excellence

• Reginald A. Wilkinson, chair
• Bradley R. Kastan, vice chair
• Elizabeth P. Kessler
• M. Katherine Holcombe
• Elizabeth A. Harsh
• Juan Jose Perez
• Patrick J. Tiberi
• Annabelle B. Feibel
• Phillip Popovich (faculty member)
• Eric Bielefeld (faculty member)
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Engagement & External Relations

• Patrick J. Tiberi, chair
• Elizabeth A. Harsh, vice chair
• Elizabeth P. Kessler
• M. Katherine Holcombe
• Pierre Bigby
• Bradley R. Kastan
• Kara J. Trott
• Annabelle B. Feibel
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Finance, Audit & Investment

• Gary R. Heminger, chair
• Pierre Bigby, vice chair
• Tomislav B. Mitevski
• Juan Jose Perez
• George A. Skestos
• Kara J. Trott
• Patrick J. Tiberi
• Patrick C. Arp
• Amy Chronis
• Kent M. Stahl
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Governance & Institutional Accountability

• Jeff M.S. Kaplan, co-chair
• Elizabeth P. Kessler, co-chair
• Gary R. Heminger
• Reginald A. Wilkinson
• Tomislav B. Mitevsk
• Juan Jose Perez
• Kara J. Trott
• Patrick J. Tiberi

Master Planning & Facilities

• Tomislav B. Mitevski, chair
• Suzanne R. Kiggin, vice chair
• M. Katherine Holcombe
• Elizabeth A. Harsh
• Reginald A. Wilkinson
• Pierre Bigby
• Bradley R. Kastan
• Annabelle B. Feibel
• Robert H. Schottenstein
• Keith Myers
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Talent & Compensation

• Juan Jose Perez, chair
• George A. Skestos, vice chair
• Elizabeth P. Kessler
• Gary R. Heminger
• Reginald A. Wilkinson
• Suzanne R. Kiggin
• Patrick C. Arp
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio)

Wexner Medical Center

• Robert H. Schottenstein, chair
• Kara J. Trott, vice chair
• Gary R. Heminger
• Suzanne R. Kiggin
• Tomislav B. Mitevski
• George A. Skestos
• Patrick C. Arp
• Leslie H. Wexner, chair emeritus
• Stephen D. Steinour
• Cindy Hilsheimer
• Amy Chronis
• Hiroyuki Fujita
• Jeff M.S. Kaplan (ex officio, voting)
• Ravi V. Bellamkonda (ex officio, voting)
• Trevor Brown (ex officio, voting)
• Michael Papadakis (ex officio, voting)
• John J. Warner (ex officio, voting)

Finance Committee, Wexner Medical Center

• Stephen D. Steinour, chair
• Tomislav B. Mitevski
• Juan Jose Perez
• Pierre Bigby
• George A. Skestos
• Amy Chronis
• John J. Warner
• Michael Papadakis

Quality & Professional Affairs Committee, Wexner Medical Center

• Kara J. Trott, chair
• George A. Skestos, vice chair
• Suzanne R. Kiggin
• Trevor Brown
• Michael Papadakis
• John J. Warner
• Eric Bourekas
• Stacy A. Brethauer
• David E. Cohn
• Scott A. Holliday
• Daniel Like
• Kami J. Maddocks
• Traci Mignery
• Elizabeth Seely
• Corrin Steinhauer
• W. Kimryn Rathmell
• Andrew M. Thomas
• Crystal Tubbs
• Nicole Williams

Foundation Board Representative

• Pierre Bigby

Alumni Board Representative

• Bradley R. Kastan

Fiscal year 2027 Clinical Quality Management, Patient Safety, and Patient Experience Plan approved
Trustees approved the annual review of the Clinical Quality Management, Patient Safety, and Patient Experience Plan for fiscal year 2027 for the university hospitals.

Fiscal year 2027 Quality, Safety and Experience Council Plan approved
Trustees approved the annual review of the Quality, Safety and Experience Council Plan for fiscal year 2027 for the Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center — James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.

Plan for patient care services approved
The board approved the annual review of the plan for patient care services for university hospitals.

Scopes of care approved
Trustees approved the annual review of the scope of patient care services the Ohio State Ambulatory Surgery Center — Outpatient Care New Albany, Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center, Powell Ambulatory Surgery Center, and Extended Recovery Unit for Outpatient Care Dublin and New Albany clinical departments.

Direct patient care services contracts and patient impact service contracts evaluation approved
The board approved the annual review of the direct patient care service contracts and patient impact service contracts for the university hospitals.

Contracted services evaluation approved
Trustees approved the annual review of the contracted services for the Ohio State Ambulatory Surgery Center — Outpatient Care New Albany and Dublin Ambulatory Surgery Center.

Emergency General Surgery Program verification approved
Trustees approved the submission for verification of the Emergency General Surgery Program for university hospitals.

Ohio State Energy Partners utility system capital improvements plan for fiscal year 2027 approved
The board approved the fiscal year 2027 capital improvements plan for Ohio State Energy Partners.

University Foundation Report approved
The board approved, as of July 31, 2026, the establishment of two endowed chairs as part of the Provost’s Endowed Chair Matching Program: the James Mitchell Endowed Chair, the Barbara and Al Siemer Chair in Functional Medicine; one endowed professorship: the Jim and Christina Grote Professorship in Integrative Health Education; one endowed professorship fund: the Dr. Martha S. Pitzer Professorship Fund in Nursing; one fellowship: the Morell Family Fellowship; one scholarship as part of the Scarlet and Gray Advantage Endowed Matching Gift Program; 23 additional named endowed funds; and the revision of 26 named endowed funds.

Naming of spaces
Trustees approved the following namings:

• The Oklo Nuclear Reactor Laboratory in the College of Engineering
• The Christine Coultrip Dwarf Conifer Collection in Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens
• The CVS Health Innovation Hub in the Riffe Building
• The east-west portion of Carmack Road in the Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory to Hess Road.
• The following internal spaces in the Engineering Research and Education Laboratories:
  • Ayanna Howard Innovation Space (room 2241)
  • Google Foundations Lab (room 1250)
  • Air Transport Services Group Charitable Foundation Office (room 2203)

Touring Disney Animation Studios and Tokyo Disney Sea with alumni executives, attending Q&A sessions with Disney engineers and having dinner with Mickey Mouse are just some of the highlights 29 students from The Ohio State University experienced during the inaugural Around the World with Disney Imagineering global education program.

Open to all majors, the four-week summer course allows students from diverse backgrounds to explore how their interests can contribute to collaborative creations like Disney parks. Students from 15 disciplines took part, including 16 engineering majors and one architecture major.

“The course was designed around Disney Imagineering as a model for large-scale creative collaboration, bringing together engineers, designers, storytellers, technologists, artists and business professionals to create immersive experiences,” said Yuri Melendez, an instructional designer for the College of Engineering. “What made the concept especially appealing from an educational standpoint was the opportunity for students from different academic backgrounds to see how their own skills could contribute to complex, multidisciplinary projects.”

The brainchild of Engineering Instructional Technology Director Chris Strasbaugh, it is the first course offered by the Office of International Affairs at Ohio State to combine both domestic and international travel.

Visiting Disneyland Resort in California and Disney Tokyo, students enjoyed a unique behind-the-scenes peek into the creative force behind Disney’s immersive experiences.

“We had the opportunity to learn about the behind-the-scenes processes that go into designing Disney parks through backstage tours and panels with Imagineers in Disneyland in California and in Tokyo,” said Haven Tan, a civil engineering major. “We learned about attraction design, interdisciplinary collaboration within Imagineering, and theming within the Disney intellectual property. This was a dream come true experience and I am so thankful for all that I was able to learn.”

The coursework included a group project focused on designing a new park attraction, individual response papers on how students envision their academic careers fitting into the Imagineering ecosystem, and maintaining a travel journal to document their experiences.

“As a part of our coursework, we worked in teams to create and film an attraction pitch. Our group was inspired by Pixar’s film, ‘Hoppers,’ which we used to theme a unique boat ride attraction,” said Kaylin Kerrick, a computer science and engineering major. “Individually, I explored interactive queue design through the Disney mobile app for my problem portfolios relating to computer science. This course was an incredible opportunity to combine my interests in both computer science and animation and see how it relates directly to Disney Imagineering.”

Ohio State alumni were essential in making the trip an impactful learning experience for students, organizers said.

“Planning for the course included contributions from Ohio State alumni and Disney professionals, which I believe is one of its strengths,” Melendez explained. “Meeting with alumni in person helps students feel a sense of belonging and realize that they are in this wonderful Buckeye community.”

In California, students toured Disney Animation Studios and shared an insightful Q&A with Technical Supervisor Rebecca Thompson, a computer science and engineering alumna. In Tokyo, landscape architecture alumnus Mark Schirmer, the recently retired executive portfolio creative producer at Walt Disney Imagineering, spent a day with students exploring Tokyo DisneySea, including the newest addition, Fantasy Springs, and sharing some of the park's unique aspects.

“Our walkabout provided the students with an up-close look into the storytelling and level of detail that Imagineers strive to produce at our parks,” Schirmer said. “The students and faculty were truly engaged and curious with their questions. Throughout the day, we shared our experiences in creating and operating these parks and attractions. Their interest and enthusiasm was an inspiration for us and we hope the time together will inspire them to look to their future and believe, ‘If you can dream it - you can do it.’”

Fellow alumni Brad Okeson, Kelli Ross, Machi McGuire and Robert Anderson also provided invaluable insight that made the trip successful.

“It’s the alumni who made this trip special,” Strasbaugh said.

In summer 2027, the program will travel to Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando and Disneyland Paris. Student applications are due January 7, 2027.

For fans who want to experience the build-up to the home opener, The Ohio State University Marching Band’s pregame Skull Session will be livestreamed — accessible on phones, tablets and laptops for those who cannot watch it live in St. John Arena.

This is the sixth year that University Communications will livestream Skull Session before each home game of the season. The livestream is available on the Ohio State News YouTube channel through the website or the YouTube app.

“We’re excited to be back for our sixth season of livestreaming Skull Session. We are bringing back our popular guest interviews as well as the flag giveaways,” said Director of National Broadcast Media Joe Camoriano. “If you tune in 2 1/2 hours before kickoff of each home game, you’ll get to see one of the best fan experiences in the country.”

Camoriano and a team of videographers will stream Skull Session using seven different cameras and multiple microphones to capture the action from all angles.

Skull Session originally served as a final music rehearsal for the Ohio State Marching Band before its performance on the field. It has evolved into one of the most anticipated game day traditions for Buckeye fans. Doors to St. John Arena open three hours prior to kickoff and the arena can quickly fill up.

TBDBITL marches into the arena and plays “Fanfare for a New Era” as the football team arrives. Coach Ryan Day, assistant coaches and players speak each week to the fans before they head to the stadium. The band then performs a final musical run-through of its pregame and halftime shows before game time.

Does support from administrative leadership help keep teachers in their jobs by making them feel safer and less stressed? And when teachers experience violence from students in their classrooms, does it weaken the impact of that protective relationship?

To find out, researchers analyzed 2020–21 national survey data on school violence from 5,550 pre-K through 12th-grade teachers. Conducted in collaboration with the American Psychological Association (APA)’s Task Force on Violence Against Teachers and School Personnel, the study was published recently in Educational Researcher.

Andrew Perry, a senior lecturer in educational studies at The Ohio State University, led the project alongside a research team that included co-author Eric Anderman, a professor of educational psychology and vice provost for regional campuses. They focused specifically on teachers’ intentions to transfer or quit, noting that about one-third of educators who express a desire to leave actually follow through within the year.

The researchers’ definition of support centers on transparency and communication — such as teachers feeling safe and comfortable talking to principals about matters of discipline — and a general belief that school administrators will back up teachers when a disciplinary incident occurs.

They found that while supportive leadership is widely recognized as protective against teacher burnout, student-directed violence is a critical tipping point. In a sample where 44% of educators reported experiencing student victimization and up to 80% faced verbal or threatening aggression, high levels of violence systematically weakened the protective benefits of principal support.

These results did not surprise Perry. “Our hypotheses were largely supported by the study. What we expected to find, we found,” he said. “Support is beneficial and necessary, but not sufficient. You have to have it, but in the face of victimization, support alone is not enough.”

Prior research shows that teachers who are on the front lines in our schools are most susceptible to non-physical violence from students — including verbal threats, obscene remarks and slurs. It’s “a demoralizing, sobering day-to-day reality,” Perry said. “If a teacher feels they are in an environment where this stuff is ignored, and they have nobody to turn to, it becomes toxic to their well-being, and they want to get away.”

Notably, elementary school teachers reported being victimized more often than their peers. Perry suspects this is due to elementary students having a lower capacity for self-regulation, making them more likely to lash out through hitting, biting, throwing objects or screaming.

“Teachers sign up for the job, but dealing with young children presenting these behaviors is challenging. School principals being present and showing support is a necessary component, but systematic strategies are required alongside it,” he said.

In a 2024 School Psychology paper co-authored by Perry, researchers evaluated strategies schools use to prevent violence and found that zero-tolerance policies and school hardening practices, like upgrading physical security and surveillance systems, do not work. “The most effective strategies are restorative, prevention-based approaches that build a climate of mutual respect, safety and integrity,” he said.

Beyond institutional policies, Perry emphasized that addressing teacher retention requires a fundamental shift in how schools and communities handle classroom safety.

“Violence against teachers is real, pervasive and impactful. When teachers are victimized, they want to leave. Teacher attrition leads to cascading consequences: schools lose experienced veteran teachers and replacing them is expensive and leads to inexperienced instruction,” Perry said.

Administrators can influence teachers’ perceptions of school safety, anxiety and stress, and retention intentions, the researchers noted, but administrator support needs to be combined with positive and clear discipline policies, and effective violence prevention initiatives that include all stakeholders and systemic improvements in school culture and climate.

“Teachers are human beings who need support not only from principals, but from parents and the public as well,” Perry said.

This work was supported by the American Psychological Association. Additional co-authors include Linda A. Reddy of Rutgers University; Andrew Martinez of Hunter College; Susan D. McMahon of DePaul University; Ron A. Astor of the University of California, Los Angeles; Frank C. Worrell of the University of California, Berkeley; and Dorothy L. Espelage of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

When his family immigrated to the United States, one of his relatives fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. Once settled, his father’s family plotted out land that would be farmed for generations. Hinzman, a fifth-year student at The Ohio State University and member of the offensive line for the Buckeye football team, grew up on that same 300-acre farm.

“A dairy farm is an every day, twice a day, no breaks sort of thing,” he said. “It instilled in me a lot of values. I learned from my grandma and grandpa, who lived on a farm close by.”

As Hinzman puts it, farming isn’t a job; it’s a way of life – which made training for football the fun part of his day, no matter how challenging it was.

“Whenever we’re training, doing something really difficult, I’m like, ‘Man, this is fun,’” he said. “I don’t know if the guys understand that this is time when we’re allowed to go do something, hang out together.”

It is the values he learned from farming that have made Hinzman a success at Ohio State. He is currently working on his second bachelor’s degree and is a three-time university scholar-athlete, as well as a 2025 first-team All-American.

Now, he wants to help people with the same values give back to the communities that taught them. Hinzman founded the Grit & Grain Foundation with his father, Jon. The foundation will give kids from rural and blue-collar communities more opportunities to succeed, Hinzman said. 

“Through mentorship, athletics, education and service, we want to help young people build confidence, develop strong character and take pride in where they come from.

“I want people to hone in on their values, that work ethic that was instilled in you and let that take you to your next level,” he said. “It could be sports or something else, like engineering, that becomes your next great opportunity. You grow your own legacy and then come back to the community to pick up that teaching role.”

“Community is important to our players and to our team.,” said head football coach Ryan Day. “To see Carson take on this role of supporting the people and the industry that made him who he is today, I am very proud of him and his efforts.”

Ohio State football players are very visible to the public, and with that comes responsibility, Hinzman said,

“It’s only right for us to give back to the community. Those are the people that put us in this position and give us the opportunity to be Ohio State football players. They’re what makes Ohio State football great,” he said. “Without them, we’d just be a club team hitting pads.”

Having worked with his grandparents, Hinzman knows that older farmers often need help, either with immediate needs or longer-term goals.

“Those people that developed the community” deserve respect and support, he said.

“It’s important for the next generation to hear about farming because right now, people don’t think farming is the coolest thing to do,” he said. “It is hard work, it is demanding but it’s also one of the most rewarding things you can do, work the land.”

Hinzman is a fixture at the university’s annual Farm Science Review, where he emphasizes the significance of small farms. And he walks the walk, too. Hinzman has personally helped farmers clean up their land after storms. He brings his Buckeye teammates with him when he can.

“For the guys who grew up in the city, who grew up in the suburbs, this is a very different lifestyle,” he said. “For them to see that this is the backbone of America and how farmers support you, that’s important.”

And football players are made for lifting bales of hay, he added.

“We have a lot of big guys who can move a lot of weight, that’s for sure.”

For more than a decade, Ohio State faculty, students and postdoctoral scholars have played a role in designing Roman’s surveys. More than 20 Buckeyes, including nine undergraduates, traveled to Florida to watch the launch in person and also joined their peers on the Columbus campus for a virtual watch party.

David Weinberg, Distinguished University Professor of astronomy at Ohio State, was viewing the launch near NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building, where the Apollo rockets were assembled and rolled out onto the launch pad.

“We heard briefings recently from the NASA administrators and others, and everybody is very excited to see this go,” Weinberg said. “It’s been fun to be here and see people we’ve been working with for 15 years and have it all come together.”

Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,” Roman is designed to survey the universe a thousand times faster than Hubble.

The Roman telescope’s primary tool, the Wide Field Instrument, is a 300-megapixel infrared camera with 18 4K detectors – collecting photons of light that, according to NASA, will be “decoded into crisp cosmic panoramas.”  

Ohio State has deep ties to the Roman mission, showcasing the university’s academic excellence across multiple departments. Members of the university’s astronomy and physics departments have spent more than a decade developing the robust technologies and scientific programs in cosmology, exoplanets and stars to make the extraordinary mission a success.

Claire Lamman, a cosmologist and postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State, followed the launch from Columbus and looks forward to the discoveries the telescope will make.

“I care about what the universe looks like on big scales, how it changes and the forces that drive it, dark matter and dark energy,” she said. “Roman will be excellent for this… Not just figuring out where these galaxies are, but getting really good pictures of them will help us understand how galaxies are connected to their cosmic environment in ways that we haven’t seen before.”

Paarmita Pandey, an Ohio State graduate student, joined Lamman at the launch party. She said the telescope's surveys will help explore the lifecycle of stars, supernovae and black holes.

“I spend a lot of my time hunting for stars that should have exploded and didn’t. Some massive stars, instead of going out in a supernova, just collapse into black holes. No explosions. No fireworks,” she said. “So catching one of these failed supernovae in the act means staring at the same patch of sky over and over for years and waiting for a star to disappear. And that's exactly the kind of survey Roman is built for.”

Following the successful launch, the Roman telescope is on a million-mile journey toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, where it will stabilize and begin to transmit back 1.4 terabytes of data every day, the highest data rate of any NASA astrophysics mission so far. 

Ohio State researchers expect the telescope’s first science findings in mid-2027.

While the card is easy to use, with just a tap, it requires users to always carry it, and it can be lost or stolen.

Now, Buckeyes on the Columbus campus can instead use a mobile BuckID that’s part of what they always have on them — a compatible smartphone or smartwatch.

“A BuckID provides access to all kinds of important things at Ohio State, and adding a mobile option makes it even easier for students, faculty and staff to use,” said Josh Bodnar, director of BuckID. “People who have already switched to mobile really enjoy how easy it is to use.” 

Mobile BuckID is free and available for the Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet. Users can simply tap their iPhone, Apple Watch, eligible Android phone or Samsung watch at readers, just like a physical card. If they have an iPhone or Samsung phone, it will still work for several hours after the battery dies.

Switching to the mobile BuckID is optional, and when a user begins using the mobile BuckID it will deactivate their existing BuckID card. If someone does not have a compatible device, or prefers to have a physical card instead, they will still be able to keep their current physical BuckID.

Students, faculty and staff who are eligible to switch to mobile BuckID received an email from the BuckID office on Aug. 25. Some people, including in the Wexner Medical Center and some health science colleges, are not currently eligible to switch. 

Mobile BuckID is initially open to the Columbus campus, with plans for a rollout in regional campuses in 2027. Students that are in online programs and remote-work employees can access a basic digital BuckID in the Ohio State App without needing to add the full mobile BuckID to their mobile wallet. All Columbus campus BuckID readers include mobile-credential capabilities in addition to the tap-enabled cards; if anyone on the Columbus campus still has a swipe-only BuckID, they will not be able to enter buildings or print until they switch to mobile or the tap-enabled cards.

Ohio State is one of the first colleges or universities in North America to integrate mobile functioning for student IDs into an existing app — here, the Ohio State app — instead of requiring an additional app for Apple users to download. To find out more about the mobile BuckID and how to easily switch to mobile, please see the BuckID website and answers to frequently asked questions.

Using computational modeling to simulate how electrons interact with manganese ions — an element produced during stellar explosions called supernovae — researchers predicted how different environmental conditions could produce types of observable light called emission lines.

They found that certain emission lines were extremely sensitive to changes in the temperature and density of the surrounding nebula, meaning they could be useful tools for analyzing rapidly expanding objects like supernova remnants and other large gas clouds, said Anil Pradhan, co-author of the study and a professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University.

“If we understand the chemical composition of galaxies, we can learn more about the chemistry of stars and their elements,” said Pradhan. “That will eventually lead to understanding the evolution of the universe and the composition of everything within it.”

The study was recently published in The Monthly Notices of The Royal Astronomical Society.

Stellar explosions play a crucial role in the formation of heavy elements like iron and other metals, which are essential to the evolution of stars, planets and other cosmic objects. Manganese is a key element because its abundance increases over time, meaning that researchers can use it as a cosmological clock to learn more about how galaxies evolve.

“Space and time are related, so measuring manganese abundances can grant us insight into the ever-expanding nature of the universe,” said Pradhan. “By combining this emission line data with other known facts on important elements like oxygen and sulfur, we may be able to view some of the earliest observable epochs in the history of the universe.”

Still, depending on their strength, faint emission lines can be extremely difficult and time-consuming to detect. To overcome these limitations, Pradhan and his colleagues employed powerful computing systems to model the behavior of more than 700 potential emission lines using atomic physics calculations that would otherwise have taken years to complete.

Though their work is still theoretical, the findings suggest that once paired with real-life astronomical observations, these conclusions could even be used to predict the conditions of other types of complex space environments, said Pradhan. Moreover, understanding manganese’s role in the cosmos could help scientists predict the universe’s chemical future.

“We’re getting better and better at capturing energy that reveals the shape of the universe,” said Pradhan. “This work joins astrophysics, atomic physics and plasma physics together, and we’re on the cusp of discovering many brand new processes.”

The team plans to verify their data using the James Webb Space Telescope and other ground-based observatories specialized in detecting chemical variations across time and space. The results from this work will also be made publicly available so that researchers can compare their datasets with novel atomic analyses, laying the foundation for similar chemical discoveries.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and partially carried out at the Ohio Supercomputer Center. Co-authors include Sultana Nahar from Ohio State and first author Zher Samak from Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, Palestine.

The newly renovated Campbell Hall on The Ohio State University’s Columbus campus reopened last week, in time for the start of the new academic year. A host of facility upgrades are designed to enhance the student experience at Ohio State, university officials said.

The College of Education and Human Ecology (EHE) hosted Campbell Hall’s grand reopening ceremony on Aug. 21.

Renovation of the 110-year-old building began in summer 2023. The $61.2 million project includes university and state funding as well as private donations.

“A three-year renovation has transformed Campbell Hall into a modern facility equipped for a new century of education, innovation, scholarship and community impact,” said EHE Interim Dean Erik Porfeli. “For more than 100 faculty and staff, they will call Campbell Hall their home, continuing the legacy of so many others who have worked in this space.”

The renovation includes:

· Updated research laboratories

· An instructional kitchen

· Faculty, staff and student offices and workspaces

· Auditorium renovations

· Climate-controlled storage and a gallery for the university’s Historic Costume and Textiles Collection

· Modernized interior and exterior accessibility features

· Restoration of the Mirror Lake-facing building façade

· A new three-story community space in the center of the building that can host informal gatherings

“The most important thing is what happens inside the building,” said Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Trevor Brown. “The most important activity is the feeling and the energy it creates in the space to help our students, to help our faculty position our students for the world.”

Collaboration among the partners involved in the project was essential, said Todd Henterly, facilities project management specialist with Facilities, Design and Construction in the Office of Administration and Planning.

“We had the right team that was able to deliver the project within the confines of the resources,” he said. “It's a testament to how much the team really just dug in on this project and worked together.”

The renovation brings together several EHE programs and departments under one roof, including the Department of Human Sciences.

Evan Miller, a doctoral student in the Human Nutrition program, said moving to Campbell Hall has bolstered his enthusiasm for research.

“Having a professional, welcoming space allows us to provide participants with a positive research experience and creates an environment I’m proud to bring them into,” he said. “Being in this setting has strengthened my interest in clinical research and reinforced how rewarding I find a direct interaction between research and participants.”

Campbell Hall now also houses the Department of Educational Studies.

“We need spaces that foster community, connection and creativity. Campbell Hall gives us exactly that,” said Dawn Shrimplin, an educational studies graduate student. “Stepping into these classrooms isn’t just about sitting through a lecture. It’s about entering a space designed to inspire us.”

Campbell Hall also has new workspaces for students in the Fashion and Retail Studies program. Facilities include a 3D printer, a manufacturing-grade laser cutter and industrial glue guns.

The equipment will help students realize their most inventive ideas for clothing and accessories, said Alexandra Suer, a Human Sciences senior lecturer.

“They’re going to have a whole new range of capabilities that they’ve never had before,” she said. “The type of output from this space is going to be really exciting.”

Campbell Hall’s expanded, well-lit workspaces have the potential to promote collaboration among students, said Jonas Rogers, a Fashion and Retail Studies major.

“It’s a great place to be innovative. I feel like there are so many resources here that will bring students together,” he said. “It gives us a sense of community because we’re able to work together and talk to one another and bounce ideas off of each other. It’s a good hub for us.”

Carolyn Ready, a consumer sciences graduate student, said the new space is welcoming, even for students who are not majoring in fashion-related subjects but would like to explore their creativity.

“I think it’s an amazing opportunity for any student. We accept cross-majors,” said Ready, who volunteers as a sewing instructor for undergraduates. “If you need some type of relaxation or downtime, this is one of the things to consider – sewing. We have a lot more equipment and tools here for the students to use and become familiar with.”

The Campbell Hall renovation is a physical representation of Ohio State’s land-grant mission, Porfeli said.

“The academic enterprise of what we do has direct and engaged relevance with students on our campus, who we serve in powerful ways every day to help them navigate the challenges of their lives and overcome them to great success,” he said. “These are things that can happen, certainly, in Campbell Hall.”

Ohio State was officially welcomed as a new member during Entanglement 2026, the MQC’s annual meeting, and brings its membership to eight premier research institutions significantly broadening the region’s collective quantum capabilities.

“For Ohio State, joining the Midwest Quantum Collaboratory represents an important opportunity to amplify the impact of our extraordinary quantum research through strategic regional partnerships,” said John M. Horack, vice president for research at Ohio State. “By working alongside our peer institutions in the Midwest, we can accelerate discovery, expand opportunities for our students and strengthen the nation’s quantum innovation ecosystem.” 

Ohio State brings significant strengths around computing, sensing and networking communications to MQC. These strengths are anchored by university, federal and state investments, including the recent launch of the university-wide Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering (CQISE). This hub unites researchers across physics, engineering, mathematics, chemistry and computer science.

“MQC creates a powerful framework for connecting the extraordinary quantum expertise that exists across the Midwest,” said Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin, co-director of CQISE and professor of physics. “Ohio State’s strengths in quantum computing, sensing and secure communications complement those of our partner institutions.”

Some other recent investments include:

• Ohio State is leading a multi-institutional consortium that secured a $4 million National Science Foundation Phase II award through the National Quantum Virtual Laboratory program to advance next-generation quantum sensing. Ohio State is partnering with the University of Michigan, also a collaboratory member, on a second award through this program.
• Researchers have demonstrated the first quantum key distribution link on Ohio State’s campus using in-ground optical fiber. The team is also working on Ohio’s first intercity quantum network that will establish a quantum-secure network between Columbus and Dayton. These projects are supported by the U.S. Department of Education and the Ohio Department of Higher Education through the Third Frontier Research Initiative.
• The university is launching the Quantum Graduate Interdisciplinary Program (QuGIP), one of the first stand-alone MS/PhD programs in Quantum Information Science and Engineering in the United States. This work is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

“As part of the MQC, it allows our research community to pursue larger-scale research opportunities and create pathways that accelerate scientific breakthroughs while developing the next generation of quantum leaders,” said Ronald M. Reano, co-director of CQISE and professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Ohio State joins other leading academic institutions, including Purdue University, Michigan State University, Indiana University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Illinois Chicago and Northwestern University.

The study in cell cultures and rabbits found that a hormone that naturally becomes elevated during pregnancy produces specific fatty compounds, creating conditions favoring the virus’s ability to make copies of itself.    

The study helps explain why pregnancy, especially the third trimester, is associated with severe HEV outcomes, including liver failure, fetal complications and maternal death.

“This work demonstrates that the same biological processes that support fetal growth may also be co-opted by the virus,” said first author Kush Yadav, assistant professor of animal sciences at Ohio State.

Yadav also said the findings extend beyond hepatitis E, highlighting how metabolic changes during pregnancy may influence the severity of other viral infections.

The study, a collaboration between Ohio State and the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech, was published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hepatitis E (HEV) is a leading cause of viral hepatitis worldwide and is known to disproportionately affect pregnant women, particularly in late stages of pregnancy. The risk of death in infected pregnant people can be dramatically higher than in the general population, but the biological reasons behind this heightened risk have remained unclear.

HEV is also the leading cause of acute viral liver infection in humans worldwide, mostly in developing regions where sanitation is poor.

In this new study, the research team discovered that placental lactogen, a hormone that increases significantly during pregnancy, plays a central role in fueling viral replication. The hormone increase triggers the production of higher levels of fatty acids and lipids – compounds that store energy, form cell membranes and perform other important functions in the body.

In cases of pregnant people infected with HEV, the presence of those fatty compounds provides the virus with an environment conducive to replicating more efficiently.

Experiments showed that elevated levels of oleic acid, a common fatty acid, directly enhance HEV replication, and increased production of phosphatidylethanolamine, or PE, a membrane-forming lipid, is essential for viral replication.

“This collaborative research reveals an important role of host lipid reprogramming in the pathogenesis of hepatitis E virus. Our findings that certain lipids, such as phosphatidylethanolamine and oleic acid, are elevated in hepatitis E virus-infected pregnant animals and enhance virus replication provide mechanistic insights into how hepatitis E virus causes disease, particularly pregnancy-associated adverse clinical outcomes,” said senior author X.J. Meng, University Distinguished Professor of molecular virology at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.

Disrupting these lipid production pathways significantly reduced viral replication, results showed.

“Cutting-edge lipidomic analyses allowed us to precisely narrow down the key lipid drivers of HEV replication, identifying specific fatty acids and PE as strong candidates,” said second author Menuka Bhandari, a research senior associate in the Research and Analytical Service Core of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

While additional research is needed, particularly in human populations, the study provides a foundation for developing targeted treatments to reduce pregnancy-related complications from HEV, the researchers say.

“By identifying lipid metabolism as a critical driver of HEV replication, the research opens new avenues for interventions,” Yadav said.

Potential future strategies may include therapies that target lipid production pathways, approaches that regulate hormone-driven metabolic changes, and development of broad antiviral strategies that disrupt virus–lipid interactions.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and Ohio State startup funds and Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship.

Additional co-authors include Hassan Mahsoub and Hannah Brown of Virginia Tech; Young Bin Park, Huong Van Lee and Jay Mun Choi of Calico Co. Ltd.; and Gireesh Rajashekara of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Four decades later, that mission continues.

Ohio State’s Graduate School is celebrating the 40th year of the Summer Research Opportunities Program, or SROP, a Big Ten Academic Alliance initiative that prepares undergraduate students for graduate education through intensive research experiences, faculty mentoring and professional development.

At Ohio State, SROP brings undergraduate students to campus for a summer of full-time research, cohort-based learning and preparation for the next step in their academic journeys. The 2026 program ran from May 26 to July 24, and includes weekly enrichment activities, workshops on graduate admissions and financial aid, networking opportunities, and a culminating symposium where students present their research.

SROP also connects students to a broader summer research community through Ohio State’s Consortium of Undergraduate Research Experiences, which brings together 16 summer undergraduate research programs from across the university. Founded in 2019 within the Graduate School, the consortium was created to help programs collaborate, share resources and build community for undergraduate research participants.

Brianna Davis Johnson, assistant dean for mentoring and strategic initiatives in the Graduate School, said SROP gives students a chance to see graduate education not as an abstract possibility, but as a tangible and supported path.

“It’s an opportunity for students, both who are maybe already at Ohio State or who are coming from places anywhere across the country, to really imagine themselves as graduate students and professional students here at Ohio State,” she said. “We are very proud that Ohio State has had a cohort since 1986, and we have been able to provide 1,000 students with an opportunity to participate in SROP.”

The program’s structure has remained largely consistent over the last four decades. Ohio State’s current SROP model continues to combine intensive research with professional development, community building and mentoring. Students spend approximately 40 hours each week on research and also participate in workshops on topics such as applying to graduate school, writing cover letters, developing personal statements and presenting research.

Mary Stromberger, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School, supports the continued efforts of SROP.

“SROP provides promising undergraduate students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a summer research experience,” Stromberger said. “Students receive mentorship from faculty and graduate students, as well as professional development to better prepare them for applying to graduate school. In a nutshell, SROP opens doors to curious minds and provides a path to advanced education, research training and leadership.”

For students, the program can be transformative because it offers direct experience in research environments that may not be available at their home institutions.

Katy McCaffrey, a 2026 SROP participant and senior at Denison University, spent the summer conducting research in animal sciences. Her project examined the proteins and enzymes that are present during the second month of pregnancy and how they help maintain pregnancy.

Her faculty mentor, Rafael Domingues, assistant professor in ruminant physiology in the Department of Animal Sciences, studies animal reproductive physiology with the goal of identifying ways to support pregnancy success in animals and improve reproductive outcomes more broadly.

McCaffrey said SROP offered a different kind of research environment from what she had experienced as an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college.

“Being part of SROP and being able to work alongside graduate students as well as Dr. Domingues has been a really unique opportunity, and it’s provided a lot of key insight into both how life as a PhD student or master’s student would be, and what a long-term career in research looks like,” she said.

Domingues said undergraduate research experiences are important, regardless of whether students ultimately pursue research careers.

“I always have a lot of undergraduate students in my lab,” Domingues said. “I think it’s critical to have them involved in research, whether they want to pursue a career in research or not. That’s when they learn about the basics of why we conduct research, why do we do things the way that we do.”

The mentorship McCaffrey received from Domingues and a PhD student in his lab was central to her experience.

“They are very supportive. They want you to try out all the different things in lab, learn the techniques and kind of work through problem solving, which has been really rewarding,” she said.

For Johnson, that faculty-student connection remains the foundation of SROP’s success.

“We work very closely with faculty mentors who really are the heartbeat of the program,” Johnson said.

The program’s long-term impact is evident in alumni such as Maria Ford, a 2019 SROP participant and Ohio State graduate alumna who is beginning the next stage of her career as an associate clinical trial manager.

“Participating in SROP at Ohio State would be one of the best decisions that you can make in your undergraduate career because it will give you the groundwork for what you need to do to be able to succeed in whatever career trajectory that you choose to take,” Ford said.

Forty years on, SROP continues to connect students with faculty mentors, research communities and graduate school preparation, while advancing the Graduate School’s broader work to expand access, fairness and pathways to advanced education for all students.

Areas of focus include:

• Safety resources
• Getting around campus
• Well-being resources
• Freedom of expression and civic engagement
• AI Fluency

Safety resources

The safety of all Buckeyes is Ohio State’s top priority. The Ohio State University Police Division (OSUPD) has an authorized strength of 78 full-time officers supported by hundreds of non-sworn security personnel, a campus 9-1-1 call center and security technology. OSUPD works closely with the Columbus Division of Police (CPD) to offer increased patrols in the off-campus University District, including through the joint patrol program that pairs four OSUPD officers with officers from CPD to work in the nearby neighborhood where many students live.

While campus is a safe place, crimes do still occur. Police recommend the following safety tips:

• Lock doors and windows and do not allow unknown people into your home or residence hall.
• Utilize public transportation or walk in groups to avoid walking alone, especially at night.
• Report suspicious activity to OSUPD (614-292-2121) or local city police. Always dial 9-1-1 in emergencies.

The Office of Student Life provides students with complimentary safety devices for their off-campus homes, including window and door alarms. These can be picked up at the Willie J. Young Sr. Off-Campus and Commuter Student Engagement office at the Ohio Union from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

To learn about safety resources and more, visit the university’s public safety website.

Getting around campus

Lyft Ride Smart at Ohio State offers students discounted late-night rides in a designated area from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. CABS On-Demand is a free service offered to all Buckeyes, providing daytime and overnight service to select buildings. As autumn semester gets underway, campus will be busier than usual. Expect heavier traffic, plan for extra travel time, avoid distractions and watch out for your fellow Buckeyes. Review transportation updates, including CABS and CABS On-Demand changes, the COTA digital pass in the Ohio State app and the university traffic impact map.

Well-being resources

A variety of services are available to help support the well-being of our community. Students can utilize the university’s online Health and Wellness Resource Guide to quickly search for the most appropriate resource. Health and wellness related services are listed alphabetically and can be searched by feature using the specific criteria within the 10 Dimensions of Wellness.

• The Office of Student Life’s Counseling and Consultation Service (CCS) provides individual and group mental health services, workshops and outreach programming to currently enrolled undergraduate, graduate and professional students, and others covered by the Student Health Insurance Plan. CCS on-demand services offer ways for students to get help whenever it’s needed.
• Student Life Disability Services consults with students on a one-to-one basis to: review academic accommodations based on concerns including mental health; discuss concerns with classes or instructors; and refer students to additional campus and community resources.
• The Monda Student Resource Center helps students’ holistic, essential needs through resources and support from campus and community partners.
• Student Health Services offers on-campus health care options to the student population while Recreational Sports promotes living an active life of balance, physical activity and well-being.
• The Ohio State: Wellness app supports students’ mental health and well-being on campus with resources, connections to support, information about setting goals and building healthy habits.

Faculty and staff are encouraged to utilize resources through the Ohio State Employee Assistance Program (EAP). The EAP member portal connects employees with online tools, well-being resources and work-life services that are available to eligible Ohio State employees, their dependents, household members, parents and parents-in-law.

Freedom of expression and civic engagement

The First Amendment and Ohio law expressly protect the rights of students, faculty, staff and visitors at the university to lawfully engage in speech and expressive activities. The Freedom of Expression website is an online hub for support resources, policies and other information to help everyone participate in public discourse and exercise their rights. Ohio State's University Space Standards provide comprehensive information about using spaces on our campus, including the space reservation process and associated rules.

Ohio State expects members of our community to contribute to an environment where trust and respectful dialogue are the expectation — not the exception. To advance this, the university launched an initiative to help members of our community listen and discuss different perspectives productively, build trust with one another, learn how to clearly articulate their points of view and successfully navigate complex conversations. Listen. Learn. Discuss. helps students, faculty and staff draw connections and form skills to engage in productive and respectful dialogue. Visit the Listen. Learn. Discuss. website to find courses, workshops and events that support the practice of civil discourse.

The university remains committed to its motto of “Education for Citizenship” by supporting civic engagement.

• OSU Votes is a nonpartisan, student-led initiative in the Office of Student Life that works to register, educate and encourage other students to vote. OSU Votes can provide resources and facts on the voting process and voter registration.
• Ohio State is implementing a university-wide Asynchronous Learning and Civic Engagement Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3, following a resolution passed by University Senate in autumn 2025.

AI Fluency

In autumn 2025, Ohio State unveiled the groundbreaking AI Fluency initiative to integrate artificial intelligence into the Ohio State educational experience and support an educational environment that maximizes learning, creativity and impact. In the second year of this initiative, the university is expanding its offering of programs, courses and resources for students, staff and faculty.

• Colleges across the university have developed academic roadmapsshowing how undergraduates will build and use AI skills within their majors, from the College of Arts and Sciences helping to shape the future of AI to Fisher College of Business forging connections and collaborationwithin its research community.
• The Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning continues to expand its AI Fluency support resources for instructors at all levels and launched a fellows program for this fall.

Visit the Office of Academic Affairs for a list of Frequently Asked Questions and subscribe to the AI Fluency at Ohio State newsletter to stay up to date on AI Fluency news and developments. For staff, the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation offers training, educational courses and more, and all available resources are offered on the “Learn to use AI” webpage. Virtual and in-person training can be found on the AI Resources and Events page.

President Ravi V. Bellamkonda welcomed the group with enthusiasm.

“We’re so glad that you’ve chosen Ohio State,” he said. “In my mind, you’re already succeeding because you’ve made one of the smartest possible decisions and that is becoming a Buckeye. By choosing The Ohio State University, you’ve given yourself an extraordinary gift.”

Bellamkonda introduced Trevor Brown, interim executive vice president and provost, who introduced students to the university’s alma mater, “Carmen Ohio.” The song, Brown said, “unites us all as an enduring tradition.”

Members of the men’s and women’s glee clubs and representatives from the university’s community – faculty, staff and students – guided the audience through the song, illuminating each line’s meaning.

Among the speakers were Ohio State University Marching Band drum major Ben Fox and Joy Dunne, current Buckeye and 2026 Olympic women’s ice hockey gold medalist.

“My best advice,” Dunne said, “is to ask for help. We all need it. There are so many resources, not just for student-athletes, but [all] students here. So, take advantage of it. Learn together. [College can be] a lot, but there are so many people that want to help you.”

Melissa Shivers, senior vice president for student life, closed Convocation by getting everyone on their feet to sing “Carmen Ohio.”

“There’s a tiny bit of choreography to know about it and it starts with finding some fellow Buckeyes to stand next to,” she said, encouraging students to stand together and sway to the song, as is tradition.

“On behalf of President Bellamkonda, Provost Brown and the entire senior leadership, faculty, staff and board of trustees of the university, I wish you the very best of luck on your Buckeye journey,” she said.

“We’ll be with you every extraordinary step of the way.”

Before Convocation, Bellamkonda also spoke about some of the initiatives and projects he is excited about as the new academic year begins. He noted students and faculty would be traveling to Florida this week for the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. More than two dozen Ohio State faculty, students and postdoctoral scholars have played a role in designing Roman’s surveys.

“We’ll be announcing an exciting startup program for student startups called BuildX,” he said. “We want 100 investable student startups to come out of Ohio State from our students.”

BuildX is designed to tap into the entrepreneurial spirit of students at Ohio State. The university will tap a $1 million fund to support students and their ideas. Bellamkonda said the program would include academic courses for credit.

“This year, we’re hoping to have 20 startups that will pilot the program as we launch it. And every year, we’ll build more,” he said.

Bellamkonda said he is also looking forward to the second year of the AI Fluency initiative. About 50 new courses are available or in development and 60 faculty fellows will be embedded across campus to support the program.

Hundreds of students and staff assisted new and returning students in moving into the university’s residence halls last week. The well-choreographed process took place over four days on the Columbus campus.

Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda and his wife, Lalita Kaligotla, an associate professor at the College of Nursing, welcomed students and their families as they moved into Houston House on North Campus.

Bellamkonda said move-in is a particularly meaningful time for him.

“I love this time. I just love it because there’s a lot of enthusiasm and some trepidation,” he said. “It just is like renewal. It’s like spring. After winter, you like spring. After students and not as many students being on campus, students coming in, it is spring for the university, even if it’s fall on the calendar.”

Some returning students had an opportunity to talk to the president about the new year, including new initiatives that will start this academic year.

This semester, Ohio State will launch BuildX, a program to help launch 100 investable student startups annually by 2030. Bellamkonda said he wants the university to be known as a haven for entrepreneurship.

“I was excited to hear about [Bellamkonda’s] research and what he’s done prior to coming to Ohio State,” said resident advisor Braden Blackwelder, a second-year chemical engineering major.  “I think it’s awesome that he’s putting a lot of money into the startup, as well. I’m a big fan of research. I spent my whole summer here in a graduate fellow’s program.”

An inaugural BuildX cohort of 20 startups is expected to launch this year to join a summer accelerator program in 2027. It’s one of several signature undergraduate experiences for students this year.

Matt Wisniewski, a third-year pre-dental student and Japanese major, said it was good to meet the president as students were moving in.

“He seemed like a really down-to-earth guy. I mean, he’s only been here for not too long, and he’s already walking around meeting students,” he said. “I think that’s really great. He seemed very interested in research and that’s something that I really like about Ohio State.”

Bellamkonda said he was excited to see the joy from students arriving on campus.

“It’s just great to hear the enthusiasm that they have and the love they have for Ohio State. That’s the bottom line. There are engineers, nurses, environmental science, all sorts of people studying policy, business, but the common thread is they love this place, as do I,” he said. “So it’s wonderful to see that.”

The analysis also shows the risk of a nonfatal overdose is up to three-fold higher in illicit users compared to patients exposed to fentanyl in a medical setting or through a prescription.

Overall, the study found that illicit-source fentanyl exposure is linked to a significantly higher risk of opioid-related harmful outcomes than medical-source exposure.

Almost 300,000 people from a dataset of 300 million patients were divided into two groups based primarily on urine drug test results, with illicit-source users constituting 71.1% of the study cohort, compared to 28.9% medical-source users.

“Fentanyl is a big problem, but we don’t actually know how serious illicit drug use is compared to medical use,” said co-lead author Ping Zhang, professor of computer science and engineering and biomedical informatics at The Ohio State University. “Finding that illicit use has reached 70% among all fentanyl users is a surprise. And this is also a contribution of this paper. To make something that’s been a black hole visible to the healthcare system is significant.”

The analysis also showed that among all states, illicit fentanyl use is most common in Ohio.

The study was published Aug. 14, 2026, in eClinicalMedicine.

Data on patients screened for fentanyl exposure from 2015 to 2023 came from Epic Cosmos, a large U.S. electronic health record dataset. First author Seungyeon Lee, a PhD student in Zhang’s lab, conducted the analysis linking urine drug test results with medication records to group patients by medical or illicit use.

“Inferring or characterizing individual-level illicit fentanyl exposure poses significant challenges because illicit use often occurs outside the clinical setting and therefore is not directly observed in clinical data, so it’s difficult to measure the scale and impact,” Lee said. “This study focused on identifying illicit-source fentanyl use and its risk for opioid-related harmful outcomes.”

Among patients in the Epic dataset who met study criteria, people who tested positive for fentanyl and had received a prescription for the drug within 72 hours before the urine test were categorized as medical-source patients (85,535), and people who tested positive but had no recent fentanyl prescription composed the illicit-source use cohort (210,193).

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Its main clinical use is to treat severe pain, especially after surgery and for advanced cancers. Fentanyl is among the synthetic opioids that contribute to nearly 70% of overdose deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition to categorizing fentanyl users, Lee conducted analyses to examine patterns of adverse outcomes in both illicit and medical-source users that emerged over time from 2015 to 2023 and to estimate short-term risks within 30 days of fentanyl initiation.

The negative outcomes linked to fentanyl use included nonfatal overdose, abuse or misuse, and dependence that leads to withdrawal symptoms when use stops. Fatal overdoses were not included in this work because causes of death were not part of the Epic dataset.

The temporal analysis showed illicit fentanyl users had a higher prevalence of all three negative outcomes compared to medical users, and by 2023, the prevalence of nonfatal overdose was four-fold higher for illicit users than for medical-source fentanyl patients, at 18.6% of illicit users compared to 4.3% of medical users.

In the short-term risk analysis, after adjusting for a variety of health conditions and demographics, results showed that illicit-source fentanyl initiation was associated with a two- to three-fold higher risk of nonfatal overdose, abuse and dependence within 30 days compared to medical-source initiation.

“These patterns indicate that illicit-source fentanyl remains a significant and growing threat to public health nationwide,” the authors wrote.

The analysis also showed that, compared to medical exposure to fentanyl, illicit fentanyl users were younger and less likely to be married, had a higher concentration of fentanyl detected in their urine drug test, and were more likely to have a mental health or substance use disorder.

Medical-source users were more likely than illicit-source users to have a chronic condition, and patients with chronic conditions were more likely to have more frequent healthcare utilization and greater exposure to opioid medications.

Geographically, Ohio had the highest proportion of illicit-source fentanyl users – 12.2% – followed by Massachusetts (10.5%) and California (8.8%). Medical-source exposure was most common in North Carolina (10.6%), Ohio (10.5%) and California (10.3%).

Opioid regulations have been focused on medical-source opioid drugs, including fentanyl, but the researchers say the availability of new data on the widespread illicit use of fentanyl and related health dangers highlights a need for additional policy action.

For example, the examination of patient data revealed a transition from medical-source fentanyl use to illicit-source use among some patients. The Zhang lab’s next step will be analyzing patterns related to this transition, with hopes that the findings could assist with policymaking strategies.

This work was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Zhang is also a core faculty member in the Translational Data Analytics Institute at Ohio State. Additional co-authors were Richard Urman of Ohio State and Wenyu Song and David Bates of Harvard Medical School.

Students at The Ohio State University gained firsthand experience in global business relations this summer by participating in the

Ohio State teamed with the Ohio Department of Development and other colleges around the state to recognize students who completed the internship during Global Trade in Action at the Statehouse last week. The event brought together students, educators, business professionals and legislators.

Ohio State and the Department of Development initially formed the partnership that created OEIP. Program objectives include workforce development, growing export sales and creating jobs at small to medium-sized Ohio companies.

Students who are selected for the program must complete a course that prepares them for the internship, said Dominic DiCamillo, director of Ohio State’s Office of Global Business and the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER).

“It’s a full spring semester, three-hour course,” he said. “Once they get through that, they’re then placed in a 12-week internship where they’re helping companies enter new markets or improve on some part of their export plan.”

During the Statehouse event, DiCamillo and Fisher College of Business Interim Dean Aravind Chandrasekaran presented the Ohio State OEIP participants with completion certificates.

OEIP’s main objective is to close the gap between Ohio companies in need of employees who know how to export and students from Ohio universities who have developed global business skills, said Lydia Mihalik, Ohio Department of Development director.

“None of what we’re building in Ohio happens without people. Companies don’t grow, communities don’t thrive and our economy doesn’t compete on the world stage without talented, driven Ohioans who are ready to do the work,” she told students during the Statehouse event.

“Ohio has something really special … incredible universities, businesses hungry to grow and students like you who show up with curiosity and with grit and the work ethic that the state is very well known for.”

Students participate in OEIP internships from mid-May through mid-August. The interns analyze a company’s export readiness and contribute to the development of the company’s export strategy.

Nicole Sciuva, an international business major, said her internship with Columbus-based arcade equipment supplier Shaffer Distributing Co. made her aware of a potential career path that she hadn’t before considered.

“This program gave me the confidence and autonomy to lead projects, strengthened my communication skills and introduced me to the possibilities of a global career in international trade,” she said. “I have also had the opportunity to meet inspirational professionals both inside and outside the classroom, whose guidance and experiences have provided valuable insight and clarity for my next steps.”

Alpha Bah, a logistics management major, said his internship with T.J. Clark International LLC, a Delaware-based water and fuel pump manufacturer, provided him with experience in international business negotiations.

“My greatest accomplishment was coordinating with an international supplier in Italy to obtain a critical component for our project, which demonstrated the importance of clear communication and proactive sourcing in global operations,” he said.

Students who participate in OEIP gain global experience without leaving Ohio, Melissa Torres, an Ohio State alumna, said during her keynote address at Global Trade in Action.

Torres is president and CEO of The Forum on Education Abroad. She previously served as director of CIBER and international programs at Ohio State and was a member of the team that founded OEIP.

“I think this program, in particular, is a shining example of how you can educate students: These students don’t have to leave the country, and they are increasing exports for Ohio companies,” she said. “They are developing their own understanding of what it takes to export. They’re learning marketing skills, manufacturing skills, language skills. … This program creates the next generation of small business leaders for the state.”

Since its initial founding at Ohio State, OEIP has expanded to other universities across the state that teach the preparation course for students from over 18 universities, said Nate Ward, director of the Global Business Center and SBDC Export Assistance Network at Cleveland State University, one of the participating universities.

“Each of these institutions has played a crucial role in preparing students to take on the real-world challenges of international trading,” he said.

“At the heart of this program are Ohio businesses, the small and medium-sized enterprises that welcome these students into their export initiatives. These companies are doing more than growing their businesses. They are strengthening Ohio’s position on the global stage and investing in the future workforce of our state.”

OEIP demonstrates the positive impact of partnerships between the state of Ohio, universities and private industry, DiCamillo said.

“I’m not aware of any other programs that bring together universities, government and businesses to work in such a way. And it’s something that other states have reached out to us to ask, ‘How do we do it?’” he said. “It’s something that really sets us apart from other states around the country.”

Ohio State students who also completed OEIP internships this year are: Sherry Dong, Global Recovery Group; Jackson Reider, Star USA Inc.; Kristine Shaner, Vesco Medical; and Shuto Urabe, Performance Results Plus Inc. Sharonda Exius, a Columbus State Community College and Franklin University student, was also recognized with Ohio State’s cohort at the Statehouse event for her internship with The Janz Corp.

The other participating OEIP universities are Bowling Green State University, Ohio University, the University of Dayton and Youngstown State University.

For generations, these familiar idioms have illustrated what Rin Reczek and Emma Bosley-Smith, co-authors of the 2022 book “Families We Keep: LGBTQ People and Their Enduring Bonds with Parents” (NYU Press), term compulsory kinship: the social expectation that biological and legal family ties must be preserved at all costs.

In their book, Reczek, a professor of sociology at The Ohio State University, and then-Ohio State doctoral student Emma Bosley-Smith (now an assistant professor at Alma College) examined the great effort adult children often make to maintain strained or painful ties with their families of origin. Now, in Reczek’s follow-up book, “Families We Lose: A New Explanation for Family Estrangement,” published this week by NYU Press, Reczek explores what happens when adult children decide that family obligation is no longer reason enough to stay.

Overall, her research has found that adult children who go “no contact” with one or both parents elect estrangement as a last resort, and to free themselves to create a chosen family environment that meets their needs.

Reczek has studied complex family dynamics for about 20 years, and she said that changing family structures often shoulder the blame for the social problems of our time. While researching “Families We Keep,” she was surprised by the lack of scholarly literature available on the topic of family estrangement. And when she looked at the current cultural conversations happening around adult children going “no contact” with family members — in the news, on podcasts, on social media, etc. — the dominant narrative was one of panic and stigmatization.

Family estrangement is the latest in a long history of what Reczek calls “family panics.” Take, for example, rising divorce rates. “When divorce rates were rising and we saw increases in states allowing no-fault divorce, we also saw a lot of panic around the fall, or decline, of the family,” she said.

According to prior research cited in the book, about 6% of U.S. adults are estranged from a mother, while roughly 23% are estranged from a father at some point in adulthood. Reczek notes there is no empirical evidence showing estrangement rates are surging.

As shifts in American family life stream across our 24/7 content feeds, historically private decisions become public conversations — and people can mistake them for the end of family life as we know it.

“To frame estrangement as just bad for society is inappropriate,” Reczek said. “When we see that kind of panic around it, it’s a signal that it’s touching on a change in how people think about family. Estrangement has been happening throughout history; maybe the publicness of it has become really scary to people.”

There’s an unspoken societal expectation that parents will take care of kids when they are little, and when those kids grow up, eventually the roles will reverse, with the kids caring for their aging parents. “Estrangement really cuts to the heart of that agreement, which never really was agreed upon by the child who was brought into the world,” Reczek said. “That is why it’s so painful for a lot of parents, understandably. They thought that their life would look a certain way, and now it doesn’t.”

In “Families We Lose” and a related article in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Reczek sought out the real-life stories behind the current estrangement panic. She conducted in-depth interviews with 68 estranged adults across the U.S. in 2023, tracing their family histories from childhood to the present day. Each participant was actively “no contact” with at least one family member, and their periods of estrangement ranged from short-term to decades-long, sometimes repeating in cyclical patterns.

The data shows that estrangement is rarely the direct result of a single childhood event, a social media trend or “therapy speak.” Instead, Reczek found it is driven by an unresolvable culture clash between those holding onto compulsory kinship and those embracing a different way of doing family: democratized kinship.

“If compulsory kinship creates the burns of inequality, then democratized kinship and its values of quality and equality are the balm,” she writes in “Families We Lose.” Familial relationships created under democratized kinship — with friends, co-workers, neighbors and others — are guided by shared values like accountability and growth, deep connection, mutual respect and safety. Estrangement, she argues, is caused by “the conflict that arises when one family member changes from compulsory to democratized kinship but the others fail to make the same transition.”

Reczek also debunks the myth that adult children who experience or initiate estrangement do so because they don’t care about family — that they’re selfish and individualistic. “That couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said. “They care so much about family. They want to have healthy families, and they have very high standards for what a healthy family is.”

Going no contact is rarely a spontaneous or easy decision. More often, it’s the final straw after years of mistreatment, miscommunication or boundary violations. Pundits have blamed mental health professionals for driving estrangement trends, but Reczek found nothing to validate that claim.

The people she spoke with described therapy as a space where they were able to work through some of the pain of their family relationships, and, through that process, learn more about the kinds of values that they had for their relationships. “It wasn't that the therapist was encouraging them to do anything,” Reczek said. “It was more that the therapist was teaching them about what healthy relationships could look like.”

Another powerful catalyst for adult children, Reczek found, is becoming a parent. Raising children brings memories of their upbringing into sharp relief, prompting them to set firm boundaries, or sever ties entirely, to protect the next generation from experiencing similar harm.

Ultimately, Reczek hopes the public conversation around estrangement moves toward a broader acceptance of modern family life — one that honors personal choice and agency in adult relationships.

“Maybe family doesn’t look like the way we thought it would, but it hardly ever does,” she said. “Being open to those possibilities is a really important thing for all of us.”

The Pierre Agostini Prize is the university’s most prestigious award for scholarly and artistic achievement and is presented annually to one faculty member in recognition of their groundbreaking and influential work.

“Professor Janet Box-Steffensmeier embodies Ohio State’s commitment to academic excellence through her extraordinary research, mentorship and service,” said Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda. “Her scholarship is consequential not only in her field, but across the entire Ohio State community and future generations of scholars who will benefit from her leadership and bold thinking. It’s a distinct honor to celebrate Professor Box-Steffensmeier as this year’s Pierre Agostini Prize recipient.”

Established in 2025, the prize is named for Ohio State Professor Emeritus Pierre Agostini, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023 for his work to generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electrons.

“The Pierre Agostini Prize is a distinguished recognition of research excellence, and Professor Box-Steffensmeier is a truly deserving recipient,” said John M. Horack, vice president for research. “Her groundbreaking scholarship has advanced our understanding of political behavior and methodology in profound ways, and this honor is a testament to both her individual excellence and the transformative influence of her research.”

The prize recognizes Box-Steffensmeier’s work advancing political methodology and the tools researchers use to study politics. Her interdisciplinary approach brings together mathematics, statistics and political science to examine political institutions, public opinion, elections, courts and political behavior.

Over the course of her career, Box-Steffensmeier has helped advance the use of time series analysis, event history analysis and network analysis in political science. Her work has given researchers new ways to examine not only why political events occur, but when they happen, how long their effects persist, and how political actors and institutions influence one another over time.

She has applied those methods to questions spanning American politics, including campaign spending, partisanship, congressional behavior, interest groups and judicial decision-making. Her methodological work has also reached beyond political science, providing researchers across the social sciences with tools for studying change, timing and relationships within complex social systems.

“I am honored to receive the Pierre Agostini Prize,” said Box-Steffensmeier. “This recognition reflects the collective efforts of a vibrant scholarly community dedicated to advancing knowledge and addressing important questions in political science. I am grateful for this honor and remain inspired by the opportunities to continue learning, discovering and contributing to the field.”

Her academic accomplishments have earned recognition throughout the field. She was named an inaugural Fellow of the Society for Political Methodology, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has also received the Political Methodology Career Achievement Award and the Warren E. Miller Award for Meritorious Service to the Social Sciences, and twice received the Gosnell Award for work in political methodology. In 2025, Box-Steffensmeier also received the Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement, recognizing her contributions to understanding democratic processes and advancing social science methodology.

Mentorship has been equally central to Box-Steffensmeier’s career. Undergraduate and graduate researchers continue to contribute to projects spanning political science, data analytics and artificial intelligence.

“What I enjoy most is helping students develop as scholars and researchers,” Box-Steffensmeier said. “Much of my work has been done alongside students, and I take great pride in seeing them forge their own paths, whether through creative, influential research that advances our understanding of politics and society or through successful, meaningful and impactful careers in a wide range of fields.”

Her impact as a mentor has been recognized nationally. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research established the Box-Steffensmeier Graduate Student Award in recognition of her contributions to political methodology and her support of women in the field. She has also received Ohio State’s Distinguished Undergraduate Mentor Award and the Political Methodology Excellence in Mentoring Award.

“Ohio State has been a place where intellectual curiosity and collaboration thrive,” she said. “The support of colleagues across the university and the rich intellectual environment in political science and the social sciences have given me the opportunity to continually evolve as a scholar, pursue interdisciplinary research and explore questions that have shaped my career.”

Box-Steffensmeier was awarded the prize during the Ohio State Board of Trustees’ Academic, Research and Student Life Committee meeting on Aug. 20. She will receive a $50,000 prize, split evenly between a cash award and a research budget. She also received a medallion as a permanent reminder of the honor.

The Agostini Prize medallion features a scarlet ribbon and a polished gray medal and includes five university landmarks: Thompson Library, Orton Hall, University Hall, Mirror Lake and the Wexner Center for the Arts, representing the depth and breadth of the Ohio State experience.

The study, published in the Early Childhood Education Journal, drew on survey data from 110 preschool teachers in two Midwestern states to examine how classroom play is supported across urban, suburban and rural settings. Researchers looked at three key factors: teachers’ own knowledge and beliefs about learning and play, their perception of family support for play and their perception of curricular support for it.

While teachers’ beliefs about play and curricular support didn’t differ by region — 96.9% agreed or strongly agreed that play supports academic learning — urban teachers were significantly less likely than suburban teachers to say families in their classrooms viewed play as essential to learning.

According to Erin Fox, lead author of the study and a recent graduate with a doctorate in human development and family science from The Ohio State University, both research and anecdotal stories from teachers and parents point to growing pressure in preschool settings to prioritize direct academic instruction, which can limit children’s time for play.

Fox was curious about how this tension was taking shape across communities and set out to explore equity in access to high-quality, play-based preschool.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that play doesn’t support learning,” Fox said. “In general, I think most people would agree that play supports social emotional development, but may be less likely to understand how play can also support early literacy or math skills.”

Far from being just a “break” or a way for kids to burn off energy, playful learning is an evidence-based teaching strategy: The researchers define it as an active learning approach that combines child-directed, engaging elements with intentional adult guidance.

“From the outside, it might just look like kids are playing, but when you actually talk to the teachers, it’s very intentional and there are clear learning goals behind it,” said Kelly Purtell, a co-author of the study and associate professor of human sciences at Ohio State. The paper is part of a larger study focused on understanding how teachers use and think about play experiences in preschool and early elementary school classrooms.

Purtell notes a broader cultural shift in the way conversations about school readiness have come to dominate how families view preschool.

“When talking to teachers, both formally and informally, they’ve expressed that when some families send their kids to preschool, they really expect them to be there to learn and to be ready for kindergarten,” Purtell said. An increased focus on formal academic preparation, she added, shapes broader expectations of what preschool should look like.

As to why teachers in urban areas reported feeling less support from families around playful learning, the researchers speculate that parents in urban areas might be more exposed to narratives around the importance of school readiness, Purtell said, and there is a growing need to better educate parents and families about the important role of play-based learning in ensuring school readiness.

Parental concerns about kindergarten preparation are well-placed and understandable, Purtell said, and she hopes to help broaden how people think about school readiness.

“Play-based learning is a developmentally appropriate learning strategy,” she said, “and it’s something parents should feel comfortable talking to their children’s teachers about — to better understand how and why teachers are using play in the classroom — and how that’s helping kids develop and get ready for the transition to school.”

Purtell is also a faculty affiliate of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, and Fox was a graduate research associate with the Crane Center. Additional co-authors were Maria Abdul-Masih of Ohio State, Rachel E. Schachter of the University of Illinois Chicago, Amy R. Napoli of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Yuenjung Joo of the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

People who have experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) are susceptible to many types of infections, especially in the lungs. Yet previous studies have shown that bladder infections in this population are not uncommon: 15% of adult brain injury patients experience a urinary tract infection (UTI) within a year, and UTIs are responsible for up to 20% of hospital readmissions that occur within a year after a TBI. In addition, UTIs are known to cause delirium-like symptoms in medically vulnerable people.

This new study, led by researchers at The Ohio State University and published recently in the Journal of Neurotrauma, is the first publication to examine neuroimmune and cognitive effects of a post-brain injury bladder infection in an animal model.

“This very common infection is happening in TBI survivors and probably those who don’t even report it and go to the hospital, and it’s associated with observed and perceived cognitive changes. We thought UTI could be something that’s having a much bigger impact on recovery after brain injury than we currently appreciate,” said senior author Olga Kokiko-Cochran, an investigator in the Chronic Brain Injury Program and the Institute of Brain, Behavior, and Immunology (IBBI) at Ohio State and associate professor of neuroscience in the College of Medicine.

“Let’s not overlook UTI,” she said. “Sometimes these common experiences that are overlooked are important, and I think we can’t presume that an infection of any sort is no big deal.”

Injuries in this work are moderate in severity and resemble the type of TBI that could result from a fall – the most common cause of traumatic brain injury.

The experiments involved four groups of female mice: those with a TBI (performed surgically under anesthesia) and “sham” mice, which had surgery but no brain injury. Three days later (again, under anesthesia), either uropathogenic E. coli bacteria, the main cause of UTIs, or a control treatment was injected into their urethras.

Results from behavioral tests six days after injury showed that the TBI impaired the animals’ spatial memory, and UTI following the injury “greatly exaggerated those cognitive impairments,” said first author Zachary Zimomra, a neuroscience research associate and manager of Kokiko-Cochran’s lab.

That UTI-induced cognitive impairment was associated with delayed increases of two inflammation-related proteins in two different cell types in several regions of the injured brains compared to controls. This finding suggested that brain immune cells were responding to not just the TBI, but to the bladder infection as well. And bladder immune cells changed after brain injury alone – an intriguing clue that could help explain why infections follow a TBI.

“Maybe there’s some susceptibility we don’t even appreciate,” Kokiko-Cochran said. “Because we do see, post-TBI, a higher immune cell presence in the bladder.”

The team looked further into changes in inflammatory protein signaling linked to the injury and infection, finding one cytokine, IL-6, elevated in the blood after TBI and then muted by the UTI – suggesting that clearance of the infection prompted anti-inflammatory activity.

Cellular changes seen in the bladder and brain also offer hints at the biology behind post-injury infection that researchers plan to investigate further. A better understanding of how the brain and bladder communicate – beyond their known neural connection related to urination – could lead to infection prevention strategies that improve long-term TBI outcomes, the researchers say.

“Clinically, there is something about UTI that causes a behavioral change in cognition that you don’t necessarily see from influenza or a cold or some other infection. It may be something with the bladder itself,” Zimomra said. “We want to learn what happens within the brain, but also how bladder change following TBI exaggerates or enhances these behavioral effects.”

UTIs affect 400 million people worldwide each year, and females are 30 times more likely than males to experience a bladder infection – which is why this initial study was done in female mice. But UTI after a brain injury is not restricted to females, meaning future research will include animals of both sexes, Kokiko-Cochran said.

“This has been an opportunity for our lab to contribute something new that has, we think, important translational relevance and could raise awareness and help us think about how this type of infection was layered on top of a brain injury,” she said. “There’s a lot more we can do to understand the brain-bladder connection.”

This work was supported by pilot funding from the Chronic Brain Injury Program and IBBI at Ohio State. Co-authors included Christina Lepak, Rebecca Boland, Morgan Taylor, Amber McCraw, Irene Crescenze and Dana McTigue of Ohio State, and Henry Schreiber of Washington University School of Medicine.

By examining small air bubbles trapped in ancient ice, scientists studied a 2,000-year-old record of how atmospheric methane evolved over time. They discovered that the concentrations found in Nevado Huascarán, the world’s highest tropical mountain, broadly agree with global fluctuations recorded in polar regions – but are slightly higher.

These results support the longstanding hypothesis that methane emissions from tropical sources like the Amazon rainforest likely dominated the Earth during the pre-industrial period, while a rise in human-driven agricultural and industrial emissions contributed to methane increases in later periods.

“Huascarán is a Goldilocks spot for capturing global methane, partly because of its high elevation to capture gases and location close to the equator,” said Kara Lamantia, lead author of the study and a former graduate student at the Byrd Polar and Research Climate Center at The Ohio State University. “While past studies hypothesized the tropical dominance of past methane sources, with this new core we can confidently confirm that the region was likely responsible for more of these emissions than we assumed before.”

The study was published today (Aug. 19, 2026) in Nature.

The second-most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon-dioxide, methane traps about 28 times more heat, meaning it contributes greatly to the planet’s warming. This study was the first to sample ice cores from Huascaran to identify the historic sources of these powerful gases.

After collection, five ice core samples were selected from different depths in the core to correspond to key periods in time. Lamantia’s colleagues then tested it for the presence of specific isotopes, chemical signatures that are used to determine the origins of the greenhouse gases.

“Depending on the source signature, it is possible to differentiate where the methane originated, letting us separate natural sources from fossil fuels,” said Lamantia, now a Royal Society Newton International Fellow at the University of Bristol. “Our sample revealed a globally well-mixed signature, but methane emissions lean slightly towards a more biogenic source, potentially from the wetlands in South America or Asia.”

Researchers also found that more recent measurements from the ice matched well with observations from the Mauna Loa base station in Hawaii, the global center for monitoring greenhouse gases.

According to the study, previous reconstructions of historical methane records point to the same trends shown in this paper, but because those were built solely around polar ice cores — collected from Greenland and Antarctica — they may have underestimated the importance of tropical emissions.

The researchers noticed spikes in their tropical methane record that could be attributed to events like the rise and fall of the Inca Empire, as well as the Little Ice Age, which could be helpful markers for assessing their data against other models.

Overall, the data from this work strengthens historical climate records and further solidifies the significant role the tropics play in both monitoring and understanding the distribution of global greenhouse gas emissions, said Lamantia.

Learning more about global sources of greenhouse gases can help researchers propose steps to mitigate increased warming, but opportunities to extend the analysis to more targeted ice core sampling in the tropics are rare due to rapid glacier melt. Still, these findings open up new pathways to help resolve other pressing environmental uncertainties, said Lamantia.

“My hope is that this data will be integrated into future climate models,” she said. “Because if we can understand Earth’s past, we can better understand the present and plan for our future.”

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Volo Foundation.

Other co-authors include Lonnie Thompson, Mary Davis, Emilie Beaudon, and Ellen Mosley-Thompson from Ohio State, as well as Ben Riddell-Young from the University of Colorado Boulder, Newton Nguyen from Stanford University, and Ivo Strawson and Edward J. Brook from Oregon State University.

Sonderling joined Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda, Vice President for Research John M. Horack, CDME Executive Director Nate Ames and other university representatives on the tour.

CDME students showed off tools for metal printing, digital design and simulation software, and advanced welding.

The tour concluded in the center’s Artificially Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (AIMS) Lab, where industry professionals, undergraduate students and researchers work together to study and develop manufacturing systems that work with, and are controlled by, different types of artificial intelligence. 

“We have a unique place at Ohio State where we do workforce development, but we disguise it as technology translation,” Ames said. “We use industry programs as a way to lift up the students to ensure they’re ready to work immediately upon graduation.”

CDME works with companies and researchers to translate new technologies into real-world, market-ready manufactured products. These projects give student employees at CDME hands-on experience in integrating new technology while providing customers with the workforce advantage necessary to compete in a global marketplace.

CDME partners with more than 150 companies and has completed over 900 applied engineering projects. The center houses more than $20 million in industrial-scale equipment and employs 40 full-time technical staff and 150 undergraduate students. 

“Most of the students who work in the center have a job years before they graduate. While they're working here, they’re working for the companies that ultimately want to hire them,” Ames said. “So, it’s effectively a four-year interview for both.”

Humans and chimpanzees began their separate evolutionary paths between 6 and 7 million years ago when they split from the last common ancestor (LCA) they shared. Debate about the LCA hinges in part on the tree-dwelling environment from which humans emerged – which involved living among the high-up horizontal branches or being able to get there from the ground, or, more likely, both.

Chimpanzees have ankle flexion that makes them skilled tree trunk climbers, but monkeys have been thought to navigate trees with their arms – which would influence what kind of ancestor we’re looking for, one that climbed up trunks or lived in treetops full time.

Video evidence from West Africa suggests there may be no such distinction, at least based on foot structure: Researchers from The Ohio State University observed and confirmed with measurements that wild sooty mangabey monkeys, known to have feet that lack chimps’ versatile ankles, display foot bone flexibility that facilitates vertical climbing up skinny tree trunks to hide, forage or sleep.

“People are making behavioral inferences from fossils, and some say a monkey can’t vertically climb as well as an ape can,” said first study author Luke Fannin, assistant professor of anthropology at Ohio State. “We’re saying there’s a functional equivalence here. So you can’t rule out vertical climbing just because something doesn’t have a chimpanzee-like foot.”

The research appears this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Identifying the last common ancestor is considered key to helping us understand what led to bipedalism, which is done habitually only by humans. We know we’re apes, but this study makes the point that even if the ancestor had a more monkey-like foot morphology, it could still climb like an ape.

“Part of paleoanthropology is understanding how our evolution happened, and it’s often through the hallmark of how we move because modern humans move quite differently than our cousins, the chimpanzees, do, and they’re the living primate we’re most closely related to,” Fannin said. “And we’re trying to understand why that is.”

Fannin recorded the videos of mangabeys in the wild at the Taï Forest Monkey Project field station in Ivory Coast that is co-directed by W. Scott McGraw, professor and chair of anthropology at Ohio State and senior author of the paper.

“The great thing about having the video is that it allows us to capture exactly what the monkey is doing in a high-resolution manner. So we can actually say how the joint is loaded. Before, we had hunches, but in this way, it’s far more precise,” McGraw said.

The chimpanzee ankle can flex upward at a 45-degree angle during a tree climb, compared to most human ankles’ capacity to flex about 20 degrees. Fannin found that the mangabey foot achieves a 46-degree flex in its midfoot during a vertical climb.

This poses a challenge to differing schools of thought about how the LCA moved and the kind of foot it needed to get around a forest environment – theories differ on whether the foot structure was required to be more like a chimp’s or a monkey’s.

“What’s neat about this paper is it adds clarity, but it also makes the broader picture more fuzzy,” McGraw said. “Because this notion that you have to have a foot like an advanced ape to vertically climb, which is a difficult task, is not true. You’ve got a bunch of monkeys that aren’t extinct – and which can be filmed – that are very competent at performing a biomechanically challenging behavior right now in a forest in West Africa.

“The videos that Luke made in Taï are particularly important because they provide some of the first kinematic documentation of a locomotor behavior in a monkey that has largely been unrecognized or underappreciated.”

There are modern hunter-gatherers and human foragers who are competent vertical climbers as well, a skill believed to be associated with flexibility in their ligaments, tendons and muscles rather than their foot bones.

But Fannin and McGraw note that though modern humans may be defined by walking on two feet, we are focused on ascent, on reaching new heights in a literal sense – a sign that our arboreality, that ancestral connection to trees, is not just anatomical but also a behavioral hallmark.

“Arboreality is fundamental to understanding primates – including ourselves – because it has shaped our body to a large degree: hands and feet, wrists and ankles, nails instead of claws, etc.,” McGraw said.

Added Fannin, “Regardless of where you’re starting from, which we don’t know yet, vertical climbing is universal and the anatomy is going to perform that behavior. So I think that to get at the question of a monkey-like or ape-like last common ancestor, we need more fossils.”

This work was supported by Dartmouth College, the Explorer’s Club, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Emory National Primate Research Center, the Primate Society of Great Britain and a Schmidt Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Former Ohio State undergraduate Carmen Pape was also a co-author.

Scientists at The Ohio State University showed that the engineered extracellular vesicles could evade immune cells and target cancer cells, two capabilities that could improve the delivery of future therapies.  

The technology offers exceptional flexibility: By assembling the vesicles from red blood cell lipids using microfluidics, researchers were able to package cargo ranging from genetic material and proteins to whole viruses used in gene therapy.

In mice, the engineered vesicles remained in circulation and were distributed to multiple organs in patterns similar to those of naturally occurring extracellular vesicles, with notable accumulation in the lungs.

Though researchers started with the idea of making delivery devices out of natural extracellular vesicles generated by red blood cells, they encountered limitations in efforts to scale up production and cargo loading flexibility – so they turned to engineering techniques to improve upon what nature had to offer.

“In terms of lipid composition, they basically match very closely with what the natural extracellular vesicles from red blood cells would have,” said senior author Eduardo Reátegui, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State. “We are keeping some of the great biological advantages that these particles have by themselves because they are very biocompatible.”

The source cells for the lipids are expired red blood cells – or RBCs – obtained from the lab of co-author Andre Palmer, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and an Ohio Eminent Scholar at Ohio State.

“We’re always purifying hemoglobin from expired red blood cells,” said Palmer, whose lab uses the hemoglobin as a building block for making red blood cell substitutes. “The approach here is very sustainable because these expired red blood cells otherwise would be thrown out since they cannot be transfused into patients.”

Reátegui, Palmer and colleagues described the platform in a study published recently in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are tiny cargo-containing particles that emerge from cells to transport signals to other cells. EVs are known to contribute to both health and disease, and the Ohio State team has been investigating how engineered EVs can be used in a variety of medical applications.

Beyond the biocompatibility provided by red blood cell lipids, microfluidics enables therapeutic cargo to be incorporated as the vesicles form, eliminating the need for separate cargo-loading steps afterward.

“We’re not saying our process is better. We’re claiming that we have a lot more controllability in terms of what we want the composition of this engineered vesicle to look like,” said Reátegui, also a member of the Cancer Biology Program in The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Experiments showed that attaching a CD47 peptide to the carriers’ outer surface protected them from being mistaken for pathogens and eaten by macrophages.

The team also showed that the vesicles could be engineered for tumor targeting by adding PD-L1-recognition molecules, including anti-PD-L1 nanobodies developed in the lab of co-author Blaise Kimmel, and by demonstrating preferential uptake of anti-PD-L1-tagged vesicles in PD-L1-positive breast cancer tumors that are often targeted by immunotherapy.

In fact, researchers said these engineered EVs could function similarly to cancer CAR T-cell therapies that are made from a patient’s own immune system T cells.

“It could be a unique way of using a person’s own red blood cell lipids to then encapsulate therapeutic materials that could be delivered back to that patient to potentially cure a disease,” Palmer said.

The microfluidics method also enables inclusion of comparatively large molecules, such as whole proteins or even an adeno-associated virus (AAV) – the established delivery system for many gene therapies. Encasing a therapeutic AAV inside an engineered red blood cell extracellular vesicle tagged with the CD47 peptide could reduce the chances of triggering an immune response, Reátegui said.

“Our thought was to take these AAV particles and encapsulate them inside engineered RBC extracellular vesicles. We tested if the gene therapy would still work and be delivered into cells, and we show that it would. And we also demonstrated that the AAVs would be protected from neutralizing antibodies,” he said.

With the platform in place, the researchers aim to narrow their focus to gene therapy and delivery of select therapeutics, particularly those that capitalize on the EVs’ affinity for the lungs.

This research was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, and Ohio State’s William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Co-authors include Chiranth Nagaraj, Xilal Rima, Kim Nguyen, Courtney Culkins, Nana Boateng, Jacob Doon-Ralls, Alejandro Bresolin, Xin Huang, Vahedi Amid, Ajeet Pal Singh, Dharti Shantaram, Anastasiia Amari, Nicholas Merriam, Zachary Schultz, Willa Hsueh, Rachel Kopec of Ohio State; and Hong Li, Scott Harper, Nizar Saad and Setty Magaña of Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Held earlier this month, SUMMIT welcomed speakers from across the country who covered topics ranging from strategic deterrence to healthcare. In addition, nearly 55 researchers presented posters on topics like plastic and reconstructive surgery and opportunities for veteran farmers in Ohio.

The event was the first of its kind, said organizer David Hibler, researcher at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs. Hibler, an Army veteran, recently completed his fourth Ohio State degree, a doctorate in evolution, ecology and organismal biology. Having logged so many hours on Ohio State’s campus, he is well-positioned to discuss the university’s growth, he said.

“I have seen Ohio State grow from an institution that was relatively ignorant about its military and veteran students to one that is now prioritizing and highlighting them,” he said in his opening remarks. “It is a place where military students and veterans can come grow, flourish, pursue what they’re passionate about and have real-world impact, now.”

When developing SUMMIT, Hibler said connections were his goal.

“We’re looking at the gamut, the entire spread of work, bringing together people that never knew about what other people were doing in the same areas, making connections, developing new ideas and building new collaborations, not only to make Ohio State one of the strongest engines for military and veteran development in the country but Ohio as a whole,” he said.

“We want to bring all of that work here to the state, all of that work here to Ohio.” 

Brooke Johnston was eager to share her work and meet other researchers during SUMMIT’s poster presentations. A clinical research assistant in the Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging, she works under Stephanie Gorka, professor of psychiatry and behavioral health.

Johnston’s research focuses on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and populations at higher risk for developing the condition.

“Veterans are such a high-risk population for developing PTSD, especially the young adults in the military,” she said. “We’re trying to find different neurobehavioral markers so that we can better inform interventions and better find … what differentiates one person from developing PTSD from one who doesn’t.”

Johnston said she was looking forward to finding other opportunities for collaboration.  

“A lot of the studies in our lab could be resources for all the organizations here for veterans.”

This type of collaboration is precisely what SUMMIT’s organizers were envisioning, said Norman Jones, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education. In his role, Jones oversees the university’s programming for military and veteran services.

While Ohio State’s size means that the university is the epicenter for so much research and discovery, Jones said, it can also hinder the same things.

“We’re a giant,” he said. “Which is a strength but also a weakness. It’s not always easy for us to connect the dots. We have people doing amazing work in different parts of the university; they don’t always know about each other. We have external partners who do extraordinary things and really want to work with us. It’s not always easy for them to figure out where to connect at Ohio State with the research that could help propel their missions. So, one of the reasons I’m so grateful to Dr. Hibler and everyone else who helped put together this day is that that is one of our goals: making connections.”

Jones reminded attendees that when it was founded, Ohio State had three areas of focus: agriculture, technology and military science.

“We have a long history of supporting military-connected research,” he said. “We do amazing things here at Ohio State.”

The class of 2026 includes J.T. Barrett (football), Katie Borchers (women’s cross country/track & field), Diane Dixon (women’s track & field), Jincy Dunne (women's hockey), Danielle Meyer (women’s volleyball), Oyesade Olatoye (women’s track & field), Chris Sanders (football/men’s track & field), Nick Swisher (baseball) and Stan White (football).

The Ohio State Athletics Hall of Fame was created in 1977 and has inducted 510 athletes, coaches and administrators through 2025.

Details on the official ceremonies for the class of 2026 will be announced at a later date.

J.T. Barrett, Football, 2014-17

J.T. Barrett is one of the great quarterbacks and leaders in the history of Ohio State football. He led the team to two Big Ten championships (2014 and 2017). He started 44 games and set the school record with 38 victories, including starting four wins over Michigan. He set a total of 39 Ohio State (34) and Big Ten Conference (five) records, including some of the most prestigious for a quarterback: Big Ten records for career total offensive yards (12,697), touchdown passes (104) and touchdowns responsible for (147), and Ohio State records for career completion percentage (63.5), touchdown passes (104), passing yards (9,434) and quarterback rushing yards (3,263). His 43 touchdowns scored are fifth-most at Ohio State, trailing only Pete Johnson, Keith Byars, Eddie George and Ezekiel Elliott. A Top 10 vote-getter in the Heisman Trophy race twice, Barrett was responsible for 147 passing and rushing touchdowns to rank fourth in NCAA history in that category. He also ranked 17th in NCAA history in career rushing yards by a quarterback (and third among Big Ten quarterbacks) and he is one of two Division I quarterbacks to throw at least 100 touchdown passes and rush for at least 40.

Barrett graduated in December 2016 with a degree in communication.

Katie Borchers, Women’s Cross Country/Track & Field, 2012-15

Katie Borchers rewrote the track & field and cross country record books during her time at Ohio State.

Borchers is the only two-time cross country All-American in school history. She was an individual qualifier for the 2013 NCAA Championships and finished 40th. In 2014, Borchers led the Buckeyes to the program’s second team appearance in the NCAA Championships and finished 34th individually. She was twice selected as an All-Great Lakes Region honoree.

In track and field, Borchers earned a spot on the All-Big Ten First Team in 2013 and All-Big Ten Second Team in 2014. Upon graduation, she held seven records (indoor 800m, indoor 1000m, mile, outdoor 800m, outdoor 1500m, sprint medley relay and distance medley relay). She is a three-time Big Ten Champion in the 800m (2014 outdoor, 2015 indoor, 2015 outdoor).

The 2015 Big Ten Medal of Honor winner also excelled in the classroom and was a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar and a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree.

Diane Dixon, Women’s Track & Field, 1983

Diane Dixon was a trailblazer for the Ohio State women’s track & field program, setting the standards for excellence in 1983. She captured the 1983 NCAA Outdoor 440y Championship after winning the Big Ten 300m indoor championship earlier that same year. Dixon holds the program records in each of those events and also ran a leg on the Ohio State record 4x400y relay squad. She continues to hold the Jesse Owens Classic and Ohio Stadium records in the 200m and 400m.

Following her time at Ohio State, Dixon went on to earn a silver medal in the 4x400m relay and compete in the 400m at the 1988 Olympics. She served as an alternate for the 1984 Olympics.

Jincy Dunne, Women’s Hockey, 2017-20

Jincy Dunne is one of Buckeye hockey’s best blue liners and was a key contributor to the program’s rise to national prominence. A four-time captain, Dunne was a member of the program’s first NCAA Tournament and Frozen Four team. The two-time WCHA Defensive Player of the Year and four-time All-WCHA performer also helped the team to its first WCHA Final Faceoff Championship in program history in 2020.

Dunne became the first player in program history to be named a two-time First Team All-American and is the only Buckeye to earn All-America honors three times in her career. The 2020 Ohio State Athlete of the Year skated in 147 games for her career and finished with 99 points on 17 goals and 82 assists.

Dunne also became the second Buckeye women’s hockey player to represent the United States at the Olympic Games, helping the team to a silver medal finish in 2022. She is also a two-time IIHF Women’s World Championship silver medalist for Team USA. Dunne currently plays in the Professional Women’s Hockey League for the Minnesota Frost after being drafted to the league in its inaugural season in 2023.

Danielle Meyer, Women’s Volleyball, 2004-07

Danielle Meyer was a two-time AVCA All-American (2005, 2006) during her time at Ohio State. She was also named AVCA All-Region and an ASICS/Volleyball Magazine Honorable Mention All-American each of those two seasons.

The three-time All-Big Ten First Team selection (2005, 2006, 2007) led the Buckeyes to three NCAA Tournament appearances, including a regional final appearance in 2004. Meyer currently ranks fourth in program history in career kills (1,760) as one of just five Buckeyes in program history to surpass the 1,500-kill threshold. She continues to rank in the top 10 in program history in seven additional career categories, including third in points (2,131.5) and fourth in points per set (4.75).

Meyer also excelled in the classroom, earning a spot on the 2008 Academic All-American First Team and the 2006 Academic All-District IV Second Team.

Oyesade Olatoye, Women’s Track & Field, 2015-21

Oyesade Olatoye raised the standard for Ohio State throwers. The 2019 NCAA Weight Throw Champion tallied nine NCAA First Team All-America accolades and won seven Big Ten Championships during her time at Ohio State. In 2019, she was named USTFCCCA Great Lakes Field Athlete of the Year and Ohio State Female Athlete of the Year. Olatoye also carved out a spot on the Bowerman watch list in 2019. She was selected as the Big Ten honoree for the 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year and was a 2021 NCAA Today’s Top 10 nominee.

As she wrapped up her collegiate career, Olatoye held four program records – indoor shot put (58’8”), weight throw (80’3”), outdoor shot put (58’8”) and hammer throw (229’3”). She still holds the program records for the weight throw and hammer throw and ranks in the top five in program history in the discus throw (185’11”).

Olatoye excelled in the classroom as a six-time Ohio State Scholar Athlete, five-time Academic All-Big Ten selection and five-time Big Ten Distinguished Scholar. She received postgraduate scholarships from Wayne Duke, NCAA and Varsity O.

After competing for the United States in the 2016 IAAF World U20 Championships, she began representing Nigeria in 2019. Since then, Olatoye has secured six global medals and consistently ranks among the top hammer throw athletes worldwide. She is a 2024 Paris Olympian and currently holds a top 35 world ranking in hammer throw. Alongside her athletic pursuits, Olatoye is committed to becoming a physician, continuing her academic and professional journey.

Chris Sanders, Men’s Track & Field/Football, 1992-94

Chris Sanders was a dual-sport athlete at Ohio State, excelling at football and as a member of the track & field team. He earned Ohio State Male Athlete of the Year honors, across all sports, in 1994.

As a member of the football team, Sanders was a three-year starter at wide receiver, totaling 71 career receptions for 1,120 total yards, and helped lead the Buckeyes to a Big Ten title in 1993. As a senior in 1994, he had 35 receptions for 533 yards and a team-leading eight touchdown receptions.

In track & field, Sanders was one of the best long jumpers – and athletes – the program has ever seen. The three-time First Team All-Big Ten selection earned a spot on the USTFCCCA All-America First Team on 10 occasions in four different events (long jump, 200m, 4x100m relay, 4x400m relay). Sanders captured six Big Ten Championships – 1992 indoor long jump, 1992 outdoor long jump and 4x100m relay, 1993 outdoor 4x100m relay, and 1994 outdoor 200m and 4x100m relay. He ran a leg on the winning 4x100m relay at the 1993 Big Ten Championships that set an outdoor championship record (39.33). Sanders held the program record for the indoor long jump (26’9.75”) for 34 years, a record that was just broken this season. He also ranks fourth in the outdoor long jump (26’7”).

Nick Swisher, Baseball, 2000-02

Nick Swisher was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 2000 and earned First Team All-Big Ten honors in 2001 and 2002. Swisher helped the Buckeyes to a Big Ten Tournament title in 2002 and was named to the Big Ten All-Tournament Team in 2000. He remains in the top 10 in program history in career home runs (35), RBI (156) and walks (131).

Swisher was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the first round of the 2002 MLB Draft. During his 11-year MLB career, he played for the A’s, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Guardians, Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees. He won the 2009 World Series with the Yankees. Swisher now serves as a special adviser for the Yankees and works as a baseball broadcaster.

Stan White, Football, 1969-71

Stan White Sr. was a standout for the Ohio State football team in the late 1960s and early 1970s and also competed in baseball and men’s basketball during his time at the university.

White played football for Ohio State under legendary head coach Woody Hayes and was a three-year letterwinner for the Buckeyes from 1969-71. He received All-Big Ten honors in 1971, finishing the season with 100 total tackles, 4.0 tackles for loss, four pass breakups and a defensive touchdown. He also led the Buckeyes with 106 total tackles en route to winning the 1970 National Championship. When he finished his college career, he held the school records for both career tackles, tackles in a season and tackles in a game. He was selected by the Baltimore Colts in the 1972 NFL Draft and spent time with both the Colts (1972-79) and Detroit Lions (1980-82) and in the USFL. White went on to earn a law degree from the University of Baltimore and served as a television analyst for the Baltimore Ravens.

“Your journey here isn’t captured by the degree you’re getting alone,” he said. “It has been, and I know from personal experience, an amazing experience to be part of the Buckeye family. In my time here over the last year, that’s what I realized.

“The Ohio State University is not just the buildings, not just the degrees or the campus,” he continued. “It is a total immersive experience to be here. And it’s not just any experience; it’s an extraordinary experience that we share together.”

Speaker Lars Bildsten, the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics and director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, shared his excitement in attending the event.

A 1985 Ohio State alumnus, Bildsten missed his own commencement, having already left for graduate school, he said.

“It is wonderful to be here,” he said. “Little did I know it would take me 41 years.”

Bildsten shared advice with graduates: Be patient, listen and serve the community.

“When you have an opportunity to give back, I would encourage you to really dive in and do it,” he said. “Whether it be volunteering in your community, mentoring an early-career person in your discipline or collaborating maybe on projects outside of your immediate expertise, you have a lot to offer. And I can guarantee that you will find it very satisfying and very life-enriching to do that.”

Bellamkonda echoed the importance of serving the community.

“You all have a rich understanding of what it means to use your education for citizenship,” he said. “You have the notion of service in your heart. You are ready to answer the call to serve a greater good.”

Bildsten was also presented with the Joseph Sullivant Medal, awarded every five years to a university community member in honor of their extraordinary achievements and service. Matthew J. Desch received the university’s Distinguished Service Award.

Of the 1,919 degrees and certificates awarded during the ceremony, 298 were doctorates, 678 master’s, 15 professional, and 928 undergraduate and associate degrees and certificates.

Nearly 55 countries were represented in the graduating class, including Australia, India, Peru and Nigeria.

High school students from around Ohio participated in hands-on learning activities in cancer research this summer at The Ohio State University.

The Center for Digital Learning and Innovation (CDLI) at the College of Education and Human Ecology (EHE) collaborated on the initiative with Ohio State Extension’s 4H Youth Development and The James Comprehensive Cancer Center.

As part of the initiative, high school students visited Ohio State’s Columbus campus in mid-July. Among other activities, the students offered feedback on technology that Ohio State researchers developed to engage younger students in medical science.

“The James, 4H and CDLI collaborated to develop interactive, technology-focused learning experiences to help middle school students learn about cancer research and inspire them to consider it as a future career,” said CDLI Executive Director Detra Price.

While on campus, the high school students tested out the new technology, known as Cancer Code Breakers. The technology features classroom activities, including a game that is similar to bowling.

Players use a tablet as a remote control to maneuver a small sphere, with the goal of toppling a stack of plastic cups. The sphere represents chemotherapy and radiation, and the cups represent cancer cells.

The objective of the Cancer Code Breakers technology is to introduce students to the concept of cancer treatment, said Julie Johnson, CDLI community outreach specialist who led the high schoolers through the activities.

“Our whole mission is to work with faculty and staff and students and K-12 classroom teachers and students in bringing technology and innovative voices into the classroom,” said Johnson, who was an elementary school teacher for 30 years before joining Ohio State.

Nora Swerens, an incoming senior at Hilliard-Davidson High School, said she appreciated the opportunity to offer input on the Cancer Code Breakers technology.

“Those were really helpful,” she said of the activities. “I have a sibling who’s in that age range who’d be interested in that.”

Aryan Kaushik, an incoming senior at Pickerington North High School, also said the Cancer Code Breakers activities can interest youth in scientific research.

“I do think middle schoolers will be interested in them, especially the spheres,” he said. “It’s engaging and hands-on. I think that will be really beneficial.”

Also during their campus visit, high school students led presentations on cancer research projects they participated in with Ohio State faculty, staff and students. Swerens said gaining hands-on experience in medical science gave her an opportunity to interact with researchers in cutting-edge fields.

Swerens said she learned “how important networking is early on, especially if you have an interest in something in particular.”

A panel discussion and question-and-answer session with Ohio State researchers presented the high school students with additional networking opportunities. Panelists included Heather Aker, an assistant manager in clinical research at The James; Alexis Mann, a research pharmacist; and Pamela Brock, who works in endocrine cancer-related genetic counseling.

Brock told the students that she first learned about her career in high school at a guidance counselor’s recommendation. She said she worked in genetic counseling for several years at other organizations before finding the right fit at Ohio State.

“I came to Ohio State with the ability to do research and teach and wear these different hats,” she said.

“I couldn’t figure out why my first job [at a different organization] that I loved so much when I started, after 10 years, I didn’t love it anymore. And what changed? Give yourself the grace that your interests may change. Just make the best decision you can at the time. And if it’s not all on one path, that’s OK.”

By attending the panel discussion, Swerens said she saw real-life examples of viable career paths.

“Something I didn’t know about before was genetic counseling,” she said. “I’m considering that as a career now.”

Kaushik also said the panel discussion served as a catalyst to explore new academic and career paths.

“I definitely want to be involved in research in college,” he said.

The initiative to encourage middle and high school students to learn about cancer research has been three years in the making and is part of Ohio State’s broader community outreach efforts, said Margaret Robinson, a project manager with The James Cancer Education and Training unit.

“This is the very beginning. We hope there will be lots more activities and programs for parents, too,” she said. “It’s getting knowledge out there.”

Green hydrogen, produced when water is split into hydrogen and oxygen using a process called electrolysis, is a promising tool for decarbonizing the planet: Unlike power created by burning fossil fuels, when run on renewable electricity, it has no negative impact on the environment.

Accordingly, as reliable energy sources become increasingly vital for ensuring a consistent and enduring global energy supply, many industries are pivoting to embrace next-generation zero-emission technologies, said Tomaz Neves-Garcia, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University.

“Carbon dioxide is an abundant resource that we need to make an effort to capture and utilize,” he said. “When paired with industrial waste, it can be transformed into valuable products, so we came up with a process where instead of releasing its energy, we actually harvest it from the capturing process to produce green hydrogen and valuable calcite.”

In the first demonstration of their technology, the team successfully captured carbon dioxide (CO₂) using industrial by-products such as steel slag and coal ash. The gas reacted with those materials to permanently form high-purity calcite, a widely used industrial mineral with applications ranging from construction materials to pharmaceuticals and agriculture.

The team’s results showed that the chemical reactions their process created reduced the energy required for water electrolysis and green hydrogen production. This also meant the team was able to produce hydrogen with negative emissions by employing widely available grid electricity, paving the way for hydrogen to be produced in a much more effective and cheaper way than traditional methods of generation, which require significant amounts of electricity.

“Our technology does not treat CO₂ as a burden that must be managed,” said Neves-Garcia. “Instead of wasting energy, we are actually creating value and creating energy. This is what makes the potential of this process really impactful.”

The study was published July 8 in the journal ACS Energy Letters.

While utilizing green hydrogen offers many environmental benefits, researchers have also noted that widespread adoption would greatly benefit the global economy.

For instance, because the team’s new chemical process doesn’t rely on specialized materials to capture carbon dioxide, their findings introduce a sustainable way for steel and coal industries to transform unwanted waste into valuable calcite products, said Robert Baker, senior author of the study and a professor in chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.

“This technology is exciting because it takes two abundant waste streams and converts them to valuable products, which are in high demand for fuels and manufacturing,” said Baker. “It also has the potential to make a significant economic impact without relying on carbon credits, government subsidies or environmental mandates.”

According to the study, when combined with the value of the calcite co-product, the projected cost of production is less than $1 per kilogram, making their green hydrogen scalable and readily competitive with the cost of producing conventional fossil-fuel-derived hydrogen.

While both methods have limitations and advantages, if this team’s process is widely implemented across interconnected sectors, researchers estimate the study’s technology could prevent about 500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution annually. Beyond helping to protect the environment, their solution to mitigate these greenhouse gases represents an abundant and inexpensive carbon source that could be utilized for sustainable manufacturing of many other much-needed complex materials and chemicals.

As investment in green technologies grows worldwide, researchers say, this work emphasizes the importance of major chemical leaps in expanding energy systems and reducing our carbon footprint.

“Climate solutions do not only not have to be more expensive, they can also be simpler, scalable and economically attractive,” said Neves-Garcia. “We have the ability now to implement them.”

Corrado Masciocchi, an undergraduate research fellow at Ohio State, was also a co-author. This work was supported by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

At the PTRC, innovators can find guidance, educational resources and expert support to help them navigate patents, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property protection. As part of a nationwide network of centers designated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Ohio State’s PTRC helps connect inventors and business owners with the information they need to safeguard their work.

The network includes academic, public and state libraries across the country. What makes Ohio State’s program unique is the diverse areas of expertise from the team, including a business librarian; an engineering librarian; a chemistry and physical science librarian; and a food, agricultural and environmental science librarian.

For Patricia Verdines, engineering librarian, assistant professor and one of the experts supporting Ohio State’s PTRC, success is often measured not by the number of patents filed, but by something even more fundamental.

“I enjoy helping patrons to understand the types of intellectual property protection available in the U.S., and to me, the real success of our services emerges when I see a person that came to us looking for resources relevant to their project ideas,” she said.

One memorable example involved an Ohio State alumnus preparing to present an invention to a group of potential investors. Concerned about protecting his ideas before sharing them publicly, he turned to the PTRC for guidance.

Verdines and her colleagues helped him identify relevant resources, suggesting he consider filing a provisional patent application and draft a nondisclosure agreement before discussing his designs with others.

“He was delighted to see that relevant resources are available for his particular situation at the USPTO,” Verdines said.

While the PTRC is housed within University Libraries, its reach extends well beyond campus. In addition to serving Ohio State students, faculty and researchers, the center supports local inventors, small business owners and members of the public across Ohio.

Megan Powell, chemistry and physical sciences librarian and a member of the PTRC team, noted that the university’s partnership with the Columbus Metropolitan Library further expands access to intellectual property education and resources, supporting Ohio State’s land-grant mission while helping strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship throughout the state.

Throughout the year, the PTRC offers educational workshops, information sessions and one-on-one consultations designed to help innovators navigate the intellectual property landscape. In the past two years alone, the center has educated more than 745 individuals on protecting their intellectual property.

Powell believes one of the most important functions of Ohio State’s PTRC is helping individuals better understand a process that can often feel overwhelming.

“We can prepare you in understanding how the application process works, give you the tools to conduct a prior art search, connect you with the right people and prepare you to ask the right questions as you consider the IP protection you want to pursue,” she said. “The process is not easy, but working with the PTRC can help your understanding and make the process less intimidating.”

To learn more about PTRC at University Libraries, visit its website or email lib-ptrc@osu.edu.

The Ohio State University’s Office of Academic Affairs has hired longtime central Ohio superintendent John Marschhausen as the inaugural assistant vice provost for academic program pathways, pending Board of Trustees approval.

Marschhausen’s responsibilities will include overseeing the academic programs “pathways pillar” of OAA’s workforce development initiative. In collaboration with OAA and the College of Education and Human Ecology (EHE), he will also partner with companies, local school districts, other universities and technical schools to make connections and build the pathways.

“Ohio State’s Office of Academic Affairs is delighted to welcome John to our team at an important time in our university’s efforts to support Ohio’s workforce development,” said Trevor Brown, Ohio State’s interim executive vice president and provost. “With his wealth of K-12 leadership experience and deep commitment to building strong business and community partnerships, his expertise will be invaluable in leading our pathways initiative.”

Marschhausen brings more than 25 years of K-12 leadership experience to Ohio State.

“I am eager to build on the experiences and relationships I’ve built during a 21-year career as a school superintendent,” he said. “Preparing Ohio’s next generation for the workforce is a passion of mine, and supporting the Office of Academic Affairs in this role at the state’s flagship university is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Most recently, he was the superintendent of Dublin City Schools, the ninth-largest school district in Ohio, with more than 17,000 K-12 students, 100 administrative personnel and 2,000 total employees.

Under his leadership, Dublin City Schools introduced a comprehensive focus on culture, in partnership with Focus 3, Huntington Bank and Ohio State, to develop cultural and value expectations.

The district also began a partnership with the city’s business community to establish Dublin’s Business Advisory Committee (BAC), a state-model partnership that includes leaders from Fortune 500 companies. BAC advises the district on students’ skills development, job readiness and business operations.

Marschhausen has ties to Ohio State. Since 2024, he has served as the Novice G. Fawcett Leadership Fellow in EHE’s Department of Educational Studies, and he was the college’s superintendent-in-residence from 2016-19 under former Dean Don Pope-Davis. Since 2017, he has taught a course in educational administration, and he continues to serve on Gov. Mike DeWine’s Executive Workforce Board.

The students, members of the first cohort of the Buckeye Bridge initiative, filled a ballroom in the Ohio Union Monday evening to learn more about the university and the new program that offers a tuition-free path to finish their bachelor’s degree.

Trevor Brown, Ohio State’s interim executive vice president and provost, welcomed the students and encouraged them to build relationships on campus.

“Thank you for joining us on this journey,” he said. “If I can give you one piece of advice, and you may hear this again, is find a way to get connected. … Hopefully you’ve got connections here with your classmates as you come from Columbus State, but you’re going to find Ohio State to be big but incredibly welcoming.”

Columbus State President David Harrison reminded the students that they share a bond with their peers.

“Look around the room, find somebody that you haven’t met yet, connect with them,” he said. “When you get on this campus, it’s big, and it’s fast-paced, and there’s a lot going on. Having somebody there who’s with you, who you know you can bond with, who you have a shared experience with, is something that’s really important.”

Students at the event learned about on-campus resources including recreational sports and wellness opportunities. They had a chance to ask questions about financial aid – and they learned from former Columbus State and Ohio State graduates.

Nearly 200 students are expected to participate in the Buckeye Bridge initiative. Low- to middle-income Ohioans who earn an associate degree from Columbus State will qualify for the new program at Ohio State, which will cover all tuition and mandatory fees – enabling more central Ohioans to earn their bachelor’s degrees.

One of those students is Samauj Samuel, a Columbus native who will enter Ohio State in the fall after completing his associate degree at Columbus State. Samuel said his dream was always to attend both Ohio State and Columbus State, and the Buckeye Bridge program made that dream affordable.

He said it’s a credit to both institutions that the program illustrates their commitment to access and affordability.

“When you see two institutions, Columbus State and Ohio State, actually go about it and actually do what they claim that they’re about, it speaks a ton about … their commitment to furthering education for all different types of students,” he said.

Brown let the Buckeye Bridge students know that the time and effort they invested in Columbus State and now Ohio State would be worth it.

“I can guarantee you, if you put the time in, you put in the effort, if you get connected, you’re going to have a tremendous experience here,” he said. “You’re going to get a great education. You’re going to be challenged, but you’re also going to be included, and you’re going to be welcomed. So congratulations. We’re thrilled that you’re here and we’re looking forward to the next couple of years as you navigate this big, amazing, exciting place.”

But the preliminary clinical results exceeded researchers’ expectations: In the pilot trial with 12 veterans, 75% of participants were in remission one month after the study’s end. Their symptoms no longer met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“For a population with severe treatment-resistant PTSD, these results are striking,” said Stacey Armstrong, first author of the new study, published today (July 30, 2026) in Communications Medicine.

“While treatments do work for some veterans with PTSD, they’re falling short for many, leaving veterans to continue to search for solutions, which can lead to treatment dropout, long-term disability and elevated suicide risk,” said Armstrong, senior researcher and associate director of the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education (CPDRE) in The Ohio State University College of Social Work.

“It’s this unmet need that inspires us.”

The 11-week trial period combined eight hours of psychotherapy followed by two doses, 15 milligrams and 25 milligrams, of synthetic psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. Six to eight more hours of integrative therapy followed the drug treatment.

From baseline to one month after treatment was finished, there was an overall average drop of 27.5 points in clinician-rated PTSD symptoms among the group. Nine participants had a clinical response to treatment and were in remission. No severe adverse events occurred, with the most common side effect being a mild headache after taking psilocybin. Suicidal ideation scores did not significantly change from baseline to one month post-treatment.

Future papers from this study will assess the treatment’s effectiveness up to six months after the trial, as well as biological changes and effects on other PTSD-related problems like sleep disorders and substance use, said Alan Davis, senior author of the study, director of the CPDRE and associate professor of social work at Ohio State.

Anecdotal observations, and previous research showing that depression remission endured for five years after an earlier psilocybin trial that Davis co-led, suggest the combined therapies could have staying power for many people whose symptoms are not eased by traditional therapies.

“It’s been an incredible honor to work with veterans in this study, many of whom have been suffering with PTSD for decades or longer,” said Davis, who also holds faculty appointments in psychology and internal medicine at Ohio State.

“Some experiences we’ve seen in actual treatment sessions are extremely profound and meaningful. The ability for them to go back and to revisit really difficult events that happened to them and to find a new way of understanding them and a new way of moving forward in their life has really been exciting.”

One participant’s experience

To be eligible for the trial, veterans had to have severe PTSD that was considered treatment-resistant. The need for help in this population became quite evident as participant recruitment began: Over 3,600 applicants reached out to partake in online prescreening and 668 were assessed for eligibility. Though the initial goal was 15 participants, the final number was 12 – nine men and three women.

Zachariah Collett, a U.S. Army veteran from Washington Court House, Ohio, considers himself one of the lucky ones who was selected to participate.

Collett joined the Army in 2002 as an enlisted soldier and later became a military police corps paratrooper, serving a 28-month combat tour in Iraq. By age 25 he was medically retired. Among the diagnoses and service-connected disabilities that led to retirement was post-traumatic stress disorder.  

His symptoms included nightmares, a short temper, feeling constantly on guard and being angry virtually all the time – leading to behavior that had a negative effect on his family.

“I was just absolutely tortured by the internal struggle, the internal dialogue, the noise inside my head and the inability even to just be still,” Collett said. Years of trying counseling and medications didn’t help.

It was an intensive 41-day self-discovery experience combining a healthful diet with a series of integrative therapies that first put Collett on the path to healing. When he later learned about the psilocybin trial, he saw it as the perfect opportunity – and medicine – to take a “deeper dive.”

Now three years out from the treatment, he said the psilocybin-assisted therapy had a profound effect on him, his family and his marriage.

“For the first six months to a year, I felt like I had this fantastic set of training wheels while I’m relearning the way to act in situations,” he said. “That’s the great thing about this medicine. It’s gentle and it allowed me the space to rediscover, or discover, things I didn’t know I was capable of doing.

“It allowed me the opportunity to create peace, and stillness, and acceptance, and forgiveness and grace – all those things opposite of resentment and anger and hatred. It’s rather beautiful.”

Where the magic happens

A rigorous psychotherapy schedule is a key part of the process, with evidence from the trial suggesting that PTSD symptoms were lowered even before the drug was administered.

“There is this big question in the psychedelic therapy field right now about how much of this is a drug effect, how much of this is a therapy effect, and how much is a combination of the two,” Davis said.

This study, the first to try to answer the question, found a drop in PTSD symptoms from baseline to the end of preparation therapy, with a much larger reduction after the psilocybin doses.

“This treatment is more than just a drug,” Davis said. “The drug itself is a catalyst for the deep work that opens a window for people to perhaps access things they wouldn’t be able to access emotionally otherwise, and what that does is catalyze the therapeutic process after.

“That’s where the magic actually happens. It happens in the therapy, and in the changes that people start to make in their lives after the treatment’s concluded.”

The research team acknowledges that pilot studies with no control group tend to produce larger effect sizes than standard clinical trials. They hope to secure funding to follow up with a larger randomized, controlled clinical trial.

“Recognizing the tools that we have don’t work so well and recognizing the significant burden of PTSD in the United States carried by our servicemen and women and veterans, this seemed like the right direction to go,” Armstrong said. “Too many veterans right now are suffering despite the treatments that we have, and that’s why we feel that this research is important.”

Davis, who has been studying psychedelics as a component of mental health treatment for the past 16 years, said, “This is a very exciting time for psychedelic-assisted therapy research. These treatments are generally safe, well tolerated and showing a strong signal of efficacy.”

This research was supported by Ohio State’s College of Social Work, The Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education, the Clinical Research Center/Center for Clinical Research Management of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Ohio State’s College of Medicine.

Additional co-authors were Adam Levin, Nathan Sepeda, Hillary Shaub, Taweh Hunter, Angela Douglas and Rafaelle Lancelotta, all of Ohio State.

Kickstart Kreyòl: Introduction to Haitian Language and Culture launched in the summer of 2025 as an introductory course designed to help students build a strong foundation in Haitian Creole language, which is not widely taught. The class, which is free and open to any individual over the age of 18, was designed by Joyce.

“This is a course that I designed and organized with primary support from the Center for Latin American Studies, and additional support from the Department of French and Italian, the Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and Ohio State’s Office of Outreach and Engagement,” he said. “It’s responding to the needs that I see in our Ohio State community and more broadly, across central Ohio. The goal is to strengthen cultural understanding and community engagement in Ohio.”

Approximately 50,000 Haitians live across Ohio. Joyce said that the biggest group of students taking Kickstart Kreyòl are K-12 educators who want to be able to better converse and understand their students, many of whom speak the Haitian Creole taught in the course. The course highlights the practical benefits of language learning, providing educators and other participants with skills they can apply in their professional and everyday interactions.

“So many of our participants last year were K-12 educators, who reported during and after the course that there was not actually a lot of training or resources for them to understand Haitian culture or Haitian language,” Joyce said. “I understand that there’s a significant number of Haitian students enrolled in Columbus City Schools alone, and many of those students might have varying degrees of English proficiency. So being able to understand and speak some Creole is important.”

Being able to speak the language is especially important at Mifflin High School, where Nikki Matson teaches French. An educator of 28 years, Matson said she has already recommended the course to fellow educators after completing it over the summer.

“At Mifflin, many students speak Creole, so there was strong interest in learning the language’s basics. Learning a language means more than memorizing words,” Matson said. “It also teaches you about that culture and its social customs. By learning a language, you connect with people more deeply, which helps teachers build the meaningful relationships that are central to effective teaching.”

The course extends beyond language instruction by inviting Haitian community leaders and educators into the classroom, helping participants understand the traditions and history behind the language.

“Every speaker was engaging and informative, and the collegial discussions were especially valuable,” Matson said. “The speakers that Ryan had were excellent and so knowledgeable about the Haitian world. I am looking forward to this aspect in his next class this summer.”

In year two of the course, Joyce is adding a second tier to the language portion.

“Once people have foundational tools, like basic vocabulary and expressions, then we want to build on that toward having more complete, fluent conversations,” Joyce said. “My goal is to ground these lessons in practical, everyday situations. For example, if you went into a Haitian restaurant or had a Haitian neighbor, how could you communicate? These aren’t abstract ideas, but concrete, real-life strategies.”

Joyce said that while the free Kickstart Kreyòl course is still in its infancy, he has ideas of how to expand it down the road.

“This could be developed into for-credit summer class that students can enroll in,” he said. “It would certainly involve more programming around Haiti and Haitian studies. Things like film screenings, conferences or symposiums that would put these histories and Haitian voices at the center of the course.”

Estelle Apewokin and Matthew Wolfe, students at The Ohio State University who are majoring in science-related fields and are also studying French, say they gained valuable academic and work experience by participating in the Students in Life Sciences Abroad (STILSA) internship program over the spring semester.

STILSA is an international education program that offers paid, career-building and credit-earning experiential learning opportunities for Ohio State students majoring in biology-based subject areas. STILSA has partnered on educational activities with universities and businesses in France, the French West Indies, Colombia, Norway, Brazil and Belgium.

The internship provides students with work experience, helping with the STILSA program’s administrative operations and in fostering and strengthening relationships with Ohio State’s international partners, said Professor Patrice Hamel.

Hamel, a professor of molecular genetics, coordinates the STILSA program and administers the internship with Joi Brihm-Spann, Ohio State’s assistant director of experiential learning and opportunities.

“It was designed to provide a meaningful opportunity to experience firsthand how global education initiatives are developed and sustained,” Hamel said of the internship. “The students’ role allows them to actively use their language skills – particularly French – through regular interactions with our French-speaking international partners.”

By immersing students in science on a global scale, STILSA aims to promote students’ retention in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors, smooth their transition into the workforce and equip them with skills for long-term success.

“I thought it was cool that it’s kind of an intersection of life science and French experience as well as offering great opportunities for students,” said Apewokin, a biomedical science major. “I wanted to help other students have those same opportunities.”

STILSA activities are open to all undergraduate and master’s degree students in STEM majors.

“There have always been mixes between the two – science and humanities, the intersectionality,” said Wolfe, a dual major in biology and French. “Language and science education is kind of a perfect fit for me.”

During the internship, Apewokin and Wolfe completed a wide range of assignments. One of their major responsibilities was reaching out to students and informing them about what to expect when the new academic year begins in August.

“That’s one of the big things about the internship, is that it’s something that is very individualized and personalized,” Wolfe said. “I was constantly messaging students about setting up a time for an interview or a date that’s coming up for them. I feel connected to them.”

Apewokin and Wolfe also assisted Hamel with tasks that included replying to emails, scheduling meetings, updating the program’s website and creating marketing materials. They also drafted documents for the program’s French-speaking partners and translated them into English.

“I got to practice communication, and I think it’s really nice because it’s in a professional setting,” Apewokin said. “Usually we’re in a classroom, so you can speak a little more casually. Being able to use [French] in an international business context – a professional context – is something I’ve never really experienced.”

Apewokin and Wolfe said they honed skills that will benefit them when they graduate and enter the workplace.

“I think Dr. Hamel and Joi have been really instrumental in leading me down a path with this internship in terms of career readiness,” Wolfe said.

“There are all kinds of different types of thinking, specifically at Ohio State in the humanities. We learn a very analytical type of thinking and critical thinking in terms of analyzing passages in books. And since Estelle and I are both in the humanities and sciences, that is another type of analytical thinking and numerical thinking. But with this [internship], we’re really doing another type of thinking, more in terms of adaptability and professionalism.”

Apewokin said the internship enabled her to apply concepts she learned in class.

“I think it’s mostly through student organizations or doing internships like this where you get more of that organizational and problem-solving experience and the decision making and figuring out how to solve problems as they arise,” she said. “That’s really been something I’ve learned a lot through this internship, and I think I'll continue being able to learn those skills and apply them in the future.”

“JPMorganChase is a global brand with deep roots in Ohio, making them a natural partner that shares our commitment to innovation, excellence and long-term community impact,” said Ross Bjork, Senior Vice President and Wolfe Foundation-Eugene Smith Endowed Athletics Director at Ohio State. “Together, we have built a comprehensive and historic partnership that reflects the strong commercial strength of the Ohio State Athletics identity and the broader college athletics landscape. This relationship creates meaningful opportunities for our student-athletes that support the sustained excellence and competitiveness of our athletic programs, while honoring the tradition and values of Ohio State.”

The comprehensive partnership between Ohio State and JPMorganChase is centered on enhancing the student-athlete experience, with a strong emphasis on financial education, student-athlete financial councils, career development, and long-term personal success. Through dedicated programming, student-athletes will have access to financial literacy resources, advisory support, and tools designed to prepare them for life beyond competition.

“Ohio State leads the way in college athletics, and we’re proud to support the student-athletes and fans who power that tradition,” said Jennifer Roberts, CEO of Chase Consumer Banking. “From financial education and resources for student-athletes to exclusive fan experiences and gameday offers, this partnership brings Chase’s unique capabilities to the Ohio State community—on campus, in the stands and beyond.”

The partnership builds on JPMorganChase’s deep and longstanding relationship with central Ohio and Ohio State, spanning student engagement, financial education, commercial banking, career pathways and athletics. Through its established presence across campus and a growing early-careers pipeline that has brought more than 1,700 Ohio State University alumni to the firm over the past five years, JPMorganChase is helping create opportunities that extend well beyond athletics. Ongoing academic collaborations include classroom presentations, mentorships, scholarships, internships, and career fairs.

“Ohio State is a driving force in Columbus, and this partnership is another way we’re demonstrating our commitment to the people and places we serve,” said Becky Griffin, Columbus Location Leader at JPMorganChase. “With 18,000 employees in central Ohio and more than 155 years in Ohio, we’re proud to build on our longstanding relationship with the university, supporting student engagement, financial education and career pathways that create opportunity beyond the game.”

The partnership will enhance the fan experience across Ohio State Athletics through expanded branding at Ohio Stadium and the Schottenstein Center, JPMorganChase’s role as presenting sponsor of the new 1922 Club, and exclusive new cardholder benefits. These benefits include access to special ticket offers, gameday savings, premium experiences and other opportunities designed to deepen fans’ connection to the Buckeyes.

This agreement was facilitated in collaboration with University and Athletics Leadership and Learfield’s Ohio State Sports Properties, the exclusive multimedia rights holder for Ohio State Athletics. “As JPMorganChase’s first investment in college athletics, this partnership speaks to both the power of the Buckeyes brand and the power of storytelling within college sports,” said Cole Gahagan, CEO of Learfield.  “We are proud to facilitate such a significant pairing of two powerhouse, global brands and are thrilled to work with Ross, Ohio State, and JPMorganChase to bring it to life.”

In environments where it is vital for customers to be aware of service information, such as in restaurants, amusement parks or for transportation routes, accurate congestion information can provide real-time data about aspects like service availability and queue length.

Yet because congestion information can quickly become outdated, interruptions in queuing systems often cause users to seek other options. While such choices may serve them better individually, this behavior can make the entire system inefficient, said Ness Shroff, senior author of the study and a professor of computer science and engineering at The Ohio State University.

“If information is outdated and thus everybody’s joining what appears to be the shortest path, you’re going to create congestion over that path,” said Shroff. This bottleneck can lead to gaps in fresh information for future customers to access and use, and impede overall service progress over time.

To better regulate this information learning, researchers have developed a way to incentivize people to choose less popular service alternatives. The proposed method is a side-payment mechanism that would periodically charge customers who contribute to overcrowding by making “selfish” choices and reward others for exploring alternative avenues.

In experiments using real-world datasets, the team found that this system was adept at balancing congestion with addressing user needs via alternative routes, resulting in steady performance. According to Shroff, adding incentivized settings to mobile queuing platforms goes a long way to making these complex systems work more sensibly for everyone.

“We calculate when the public value of fresh information is worth the congestion it takes to get it, and then build incentives that steer individual choices towards that balance,” he said. “Giving incentives for people to try out different routes might in fact create better opportunities for all.”

The study was published in the journal IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

According to the study, this team’s work is the first to examine how human choice can impact system outcomes. Hongbo Li, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar at the AI-EDGE Institute at Ohio State, calls this phenomenon human-in-loop learning (HILL), noting that leveraging it can provide researchers with new insights into the growing class of service systems that rely on decentralized, customer-driven data.

“Designing a mechanism to change a user’s decision to be both consistent with social welfare and long-term utility can be difficult,” he said. “It has to be done in a way that doesn’t directly hurt their service benefit.”

A promising use-case scenario could look like this: A user visiting a car-charging station might be rewarded for choosing a less crowded location farther away, but penalized for visiting a closer station that is already at risk of becoming overloaded. Although both visits generate useful information for the operating system, the former is more valuable because curbing congestion helps reduce system inefficiencies, said Li.

“In testing, we saw that even average use saves costs and energy,” he said. “This means our approach is amazingly good for the social optimum.”

Besides keeping these systems more accurate, this team’s mechanism would also limit expenses by using the money earned from those penalized to pay out rewards. With millions of people relying on queuing systems to navigate their day-to-day lives, these meaningful findings could inform future network design for a wide number of technologies and industries, the researchers say.

To advance the work, the team next aims to test how well their system works when people make different, unexpected choices regarding prices, risks and personal convenience.

“Our next step may be to develop mechanisms that are more robust to heterogeneous users and to test them experimentally in different scenarios,” said Li. “It’s important to consider human behavior in engineering, and our goal was to show that.”

Other co-authors include Lingjie Duan from the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

Thomas “T.J.” Beach, an 8-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, is The Ohio State University’s 12th Tillman Scholar. Now, the central Ohio native is merging his experience in the armed forces with his education as an athletic trainer to help law enforcement and others recover from concussions.

“This means I get to join an incredible group of individuals, veterans and spouses, and to see the impacts that they have made in different realms of research with veterans as well as active service members,” Beach said. “As someone that’s been in academia now for the last seven years, going on eight years, I have the opportunity to learn from individuals that have had similar experiences that I have.”

Beach is one of 48 scholars representing service members, veterans and military spouses chosen this year.

The program, part of the Pat Tillman Foundation, supports active-duty service members, veterans and military spouses through education, lifelong leadership development, and a community of peers and mentors to help them impact their community and the world. Tillman, the award’s namesake, was an NFL standout who left his football career to join the Army Rangers in the wake of 9/11.

Beach served in both field artillery and as a Marine security guard. He began exploring research into concussions following his experiences with colleagues suffering brain injuries in the service – and specifically because he worked on cannons, which have a loud concussive blast.

“I want to be that voice from my research, being able to disseminate, being able to talk and being able to be an example to other veterans that it’s OK for us to go into research,” he said.

Following his service in the Marines, Beach pursued degrees in athletic training at Ohio State and the University of South Carolina. He said he was humbled by how openly athletes discussed their injuries and by how readily they allowed athletic trainers to set up care plans.

Beach is now a PhD student in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, exploring the value of embedding athletic trainer care with law enforcement officers (LEOs).

LEOs typically do not have agency-level policies for returning to duty after a head injury, he said. Beach is developing research to show evidence of the longitudinal effects of a brain injury on law enforcement personnel to advocate for policy reform and healthcare interventions to protect those who protect our community every day.

Jaclyn Caccese, an associate professor in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and a member of Ohio State’s Chronic Brain Injury Program, is one of Beach’s advisors. She said he is a worthy recipient of the award.

“T.J. brings a remarkably rare and valuable perspective to our lab, connecting his firsthand military experience with his research. His work developing TBI recognition, management and return-to-duty protocols for law enforcement is filling a critical gap in first-responder care,” she said. “As a Tillman Scholar, he embodies the exact bridge we need between scientific research and the real-world protection of our community. Receiving the Tillman Scholarship is a well-deserved recognition of his leadership and dedication to protecting and serving those who protect and serve.”

Beach is in his second year as a PhD student. He hopes to refine his research project and work toward graduation in the next three years – and then put his research and experience toward helping law enforcement.

“I feel very similar to them a lot of times,” he said. “A lot of them are veterans. That really helps when I work with this population and I’m able to have that conversation where they’re like, ‘Hey, it’s OK that something is not OK, but we’re here to help you with that process.”

 

Quasars, distant cores of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, are among the most luminous objects in the universe. While not uncommon, their brightness can make it difficult to accurately measure the galaxy they reside in. This means scientists must use gravitational lensing to assist in analyzing these bright objects, a method that relies on studying how an object’s strong gravity bends light around its host galaxy. Yet despite their own powerful gravity, finding quasars that can act as lenses is uncommon.

Moreover, while nearly every galaxy is home to a black hole, research suggests those that form quasars may act as “missing links” into the formation and evolution of the early universe. Young ones, especially, could be key to unlocking vast cosmic secrets.

Now, to identify more quasars as gravitational lenses, researchers analyzed a list of 800,000 quasars from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. Then, using an AI model trained on a small sample of mock lenses, or fake examples of quasar lens systems, to automatically search for these rare events, researchers found seven new candidates.

“Quasars are like the baby pictures of a supermassive black hole,” said Everett McArthur, lead author of the study and a graduate student in astronomy at The Ohio State University. “So exploring how we get from quasars to those black holes is really important.”

These new candidates double the number of quasars scientists have found by surveys in years past, and with more data, the discovery offers an opportunity to expand our knowledge of how their systems work as well as how the galaxy they reside in grows and evolves.

For instance, while the seven candidates in this study are located at least 5 to 6 billion light-years away from Earth, uncovering new insights about these faraway objects could also reveal valuable information about our own galaxy, said McArthur.

“By studying the tight correlation between galaxies and black holes, we could understand why our galaxy is the way that it is and perhaps why our own black hole is sometimes dormant,” he said.

The study was published July 22 in The Astrophysical Journal.

Outside of the team’s observations, what is unique about its work is the use of neural networks to achieve its result. Since there aren’t enough real-life examples of quasars acting as lenses, researchers had to teach their AI to identify the emission lines of potential quasars as gravitational lenses using a mixture of real quasar and background galaxy spectra.

This method created a simulation so impressive that the AI was able to recognize the subtle differences between normal and abnormal quasars with unique features, said McArthur.

“What this proves is our architecture was able to parse through a diverse array of quasar spectra in a really significant way,” said McArthur.

After whittling DESI’s list of 800,000 potential quasars to 200, the team hand-reviewed the shortened list before narrowing down the candidates to a final seven.

Going forward, the researchers will seek to directly confirm their observations using powerful space-based instruments like the Hubble Telescope. Once those deeper studies are completed, with more data, they expect to use their AI model to help future scientists search for and validate other kinds of strange cosmic phenomena.

“You can very well expand this type of study to find many rare anomalies in a spectrum,” said McArthur. “We’re in an era when science has suddenly become more accessible than ever, and applying AI to astronomy and machine learning methods to big data sets is part of that.”

Other co-authors from Ohio State are Klaus Honscheid and Claire Lamman. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program.

The National Endowment for the Humanities grant includes $4 million in matching funds and $100,000 in outright funds to create the Chase National Humanities Endowment for American Civic Thought. This was the largest of the 81 nationwide humanities projects totaling $41.4 million.

The grant was announced during a time of growth for the Chase Center. Now approaching its second year offering courses, the Chase Center is launching its first major: Civics, Law, and Leadership. The center is offering 10 courses this fall, many of which are at capacity, and enrollment already exceeds 440 students for the coming semester.

“Grants from the National Endowment support organizations and scholars working to illuminate and educate about the great ideas and events of the past,” said NEH Acting Chairman William English. “As we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary this year, NEH is proud to help foster robust public engagement with our national history, ideals and intellectual achievements through funding for an array of exhibitions, preservation projects, books, education initiatives and advanced research.”

Lee J. Strang, Chase Center executive director, said grants of this magnitude greatly enhance an academic unit’s ability to attract and retain the very best scholars, who will help Ohio State further distinguish itself from peer institutions across the country.

“The Salmon P. Chase Center already has been successful in attracting excellent scholars from diverse academic disciplines, ranging from law, literature and political theory to history and economics,” Strang said. “This NEH grant will enable us to take the next logical step in our maturation as a leader in the field of civic thought.”

These endowed positions will benefit Ohio State students by drawing more world-renowned thought leaders in civic education to the university.

“We are honored that the NEH believed so much in the quality of the Chase Center’s growing academic program that they chose us for this nation-leading investment, which will provide our students even more robust educational opportunities in the classroom,” Strang said. “The faculty we hire for these endowed positions are important to support our rapidly growing course enrollments.”

These two programs of Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology, and their grade descriptions, are:

• Bachelor of Science in Education in Primary Education (P-5): A+

• Master of Education in Primary Education (P-5): A+

The report, Teacher Prep Review: Decoding Progress in Reading Preparation, spotlights Ohio State for meeting the standards set by literacy experts for coverage of the most effective methods of reading instruction.

Specifically, this means the programs prepare aspiring teachers in all five components of scientifically based reading instruction, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary. The programs also avoid many instructional practices that research has shown to be ineffective or counterproductive for teaching children to read.

A child’s ability to read proficiently in the early grades shapes everything that comes next in school and in life. Yet according to NAEP data, 4 in 10 fourth graders in Ohio cannot read at a basic level. Teacher preparation is one of the most direct levers available to change that — but only if it is aligned to the research-based instructional methods that have been proven to help most students become successful readers.

Ohio State is part of a growing group of teacher preparation programs nationwide helping transform how future teachers are trained to teach reading.

“We are grateful that the National Council on Teacher Quality has recognized our faculty and staff for their excellence in preparing our undergraduate and master’s degree preservice students to become highly effective primary education teachers of reading,” said Erik Porfeli, interim dean of the College of Education and Human Ecology.

“Our preservice teachers are prepared to employ best practices in teaching their future students how to read and develop a love for reading based on research showing what works. We are pleased that our graduates will transition into a teaching career, knowing that they are well prepared to support children in their classrooms to become competent readers and knowing that their degree program now has the top endorsement of NCTQ.”

In addition to the primary education programs for bachelor’s and master’s degrees, the college offers a dual licensure program: the Bachelor of Education in Primary Education with Visual Impairment license. In this program, future teachers learn research-based methods for teaching reading to youth experiencing low vision or blindness. These methods include using Braille.

“Every child deserves a teacher who has been well prepared to teach reading, and every teacher deserves the opportunity to enter the classroom ready to help students succeed,” said National Council President Heather Peske.

“Across the country, many teacher preparation programs still do not fully align with the science of reading, but Ohio State University is demonstrating what strong preparation can look like.”

Binaya Subedi, the interim chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning, where these programs reside, affirmed the college’s emphasis on research-based practices.

“We are very committed to the growth and the quality of our teacher preparation program that serves the state of Ohio and the nation,” he said. “The recognition demonstrates the contributions we continue to make in the area of reading. Our graduates are highly sought after because of their teacher preparation at Ohio State.”

The college’s research informs educator preparation

Many Ohio State faculty have active research programs centered on best practices for teaching reading and writing, said Shayne Piasta, professor of literacies, literature and learning and director of the Early Literacy and Learning Lab.

“We have developed and tested various curricula, interventions and instructional strategies in ways that allow us to identify effective, evidence-based practices, as defined by the U.S. What Works Clearinghouse,” she said.

A few examples:

Laura Justice, professor of educational psychology and director of the college’s Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, led the multi-university Language and Reading Research Consortium, which researched Tier 1 elementary comprehension curricula. Piasta led a study of curricula for Tier 2 students with severe disabilities to improve their early literacy outcomes.

Professor Emeritus Ian Wilkinson researched how discussion improves literacy, and Tzu-Jung Lin, professor of educational psychology, is examining how collaborative reasoning in small groups improves elementary school students’ reading and writing achievement.

Jerry D’Agostino, professor of quantitative research, and Emily Rodgers, professor of reading and literacy in early and middle childhood education, are researching and refining a literacy intervention for 6- to 9-year-olds having great difficulty with beginning reading. They also developed and tested an assessment of oral reading that provides a standard way of evaluating strategies that elementary students use to decode unknown words.

The Genesis Mission is designed to double America’s scientific productivity through DOE’s world-class scientific capabilities, advanced AI, high-performance computing and the nation’s leading researchers. The goal of the mission is to transform how scientific discovery is conducted and continue to grow the nation’s leadership in technology and discovery.

“We are pleased that researchers from two Ohio State-led teams have been selected through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, a groundbreaking initiative that seeks to accelerate scientific discovery through the use of artificial intelligence,” said John M. Horack, Ohio State’s vice president for research.

The DOE invites interdisciplinary teams to leverage novel artificial intelligence models and frameworks to address over 26 national science and technology challenges spanning advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, critical materials, nuclear energy and quantum information science.

Phase one provides small teams with $500,000 to $750,000 to test initial AI concepts, models and workflows over nine months. Leading two of the projects are Ohio State researchers Roland Kawakami, physics professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Han-Wei Shen, professor of computer science and engineering in the College of Engineering.

“America has no shortage of bold ideas or talented scientists, and the response to the Genesis Mission proves that,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said. “The remarkable number of high-quality proposals we received demonstrates that America’s innovation pipeline is strong, and it points to even greater opportunities for future investment and continued expansion of the Genesis Mission portfolio.”

Participating research teams were selected through a rigorous merit review process, DOE officials said.

The projects led by Ohio State are:

• AI for Orbital Electronics Materials and Manufacturing. Kawakami is the lead principal investigator and is joined by researchers at the University of Southern California, Yale University and Argonne National Laboratory. Intel joins the team as the industry partner.
• ROBIN-NET: RObust BIdirectional PINNs for Accelerated Complex Flow Modeling and Discovery. Shen is joined by research teams from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The industry partner for the project is NVIDIA. 

Teams selected for phase one are eligible for phase two, which will include the opportunity for $6-15 million in grant funding over three years. Ohio State’s Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge (ERIK) is assisting the teams with the application process.

“These awards underscore Ohio State’s leadership in AI, advanced computing and domain science and demonstrate the vital role our researchers play in accelerating discovery that will benefit Ohio, the nation and the world,” Horack said.

The awards build on Ohio State’s growing reputation as a powerhouse in AI research, innovation and student experience. Recent highlights include:

• AI Fluency, the nation’s leading, groundbreaking initiative to integrate artificial intelligence throughout students’ educational experience. All Ohio State students will become “bilingual” — fluent in both their major field of study and the application of AI in that area.
• Buckeye BioLaunch leverages the university’s scale and research strength to accelerate therapeutic discovery, development and commercialization. Buckeye BioLaunch aims to support between 10 and 20 AI-driven screening projects annually that will drive a robust pipeline of therapeutics advancing toward commercialization.
• AI^(X) Hub at The Ohio State University, a collaborative hub dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence research and innovation across disciplines, including healthcare.

The findings have practical implications for conservation and climate policy.

“The takeaway for policymakers is that small-scale rural communities have the ability to manage community forests in sustainable ways, and they need to be supported to solve problems using their own customary practices,” said lead author Sean Downey, associate professor of anthropology at The Ohio State University. “It’s going to look different in Belize than it does in Africa or Indonesia.”

Swidden is one of humanity’s oldest farming systems, practiced in tropical and subtropical forests for around 10,000 years. In Belize, where much of Downey’s fieldwork has taken place, it involves several steps: Farmers clear a patch of forest and leave the fallen trees to dry out. Then the dried trees are burned, which releases the carbon stored in the wood back into the soil where it serves as fertilizer. When the rainy season begins, crops (often corn) are planted and harvested once or twice before the soil’s nutrients start to run low. Then the field is fallowed, essentially given time to rest while the forest regrows.

Downey has spent much of his career studying how small communities balance the demands of farming against the long-term health of the forests they depend on for their livelihood: “It’s a cyclical pattern of reciprocal exchanges of agricultural labor, social norms that help regulate land use, and fire and ecosystem services that regenerate the fertility of cleared forest patches.”He first became interested in Belize’s swidden agriculture in the early 2000s, and later discovered that satellite imagery revealed a stark contrast at the Guatemalan border: The forest had been cleared into pasture on the Guatemalan side, and there were intricate, patchwork mosaics of tropical forest on the Belizean side where Mayan communities were clustered.

A new study, published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the mosaics could originate from something as commonplace as neighbors deciding whether to help each other plant corn.

When a farmer asks neighbors to help clear and plant a new field, the scale of the request makes a difference. If it’s a reasonably sized plot, most will show up to help. But “if a farmer asks for too much — say, a 20-acre field instead of a two-acre field — fewer people show up to help,” Downey said. And if fewer people show up, the farmer can’t clear the larger plot of land. “Over time, this guides people to ask for the right amount of land, reducing overall land use,” he added.

This process, where shared expectations of right and wrong guide people’s behavior, is known as normative reasoning. It is connected to the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom, who showed that small communities can protect shared local resources through social sanctions — in this case withholding cooperation — rather than formal rules or government enforcement.

Downey’s interdisciplinary research team – which included experts in anthropology, physics, applied mathematics and remote sensing – built a computer model and analyzed remote sensing images from real-world farming communities in Central and South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia to study how people share labor, use land and select sites for swidden agriculture. They found that when farmers naturally coordinate their land clearing efforts, the result is a mosaic of swidden fields with fractal, self-repeating patterns. At the same time, cultural and social norms help reduce the total amount of land cleared.

Together, these things help communities balance their farming needs with long-term environmental sustainability. “Until now, there haven’t been many formal models that can show how small-scale swidden communities regulate land without top-down rules,” Downey said.

Importantly, the researchers also found that while clearing too much forest will turn it into grassland, the biodiversity of a forest increases when it experiences intermediate levels of disturbance.

“When you create swidden patches, you create new ecosystem niches during the fallow stage where different species thrive,” Downey explained, and “you end up with higher levels of biodiversity across the landscape than you do in a mature forest alone.”

In other words, the study found that swidden doesn't automatically lead to degradation. On the contrary, when used in moderation, it can enhance the ecosystem — a benefit, Downey said, that hasn't yet been incorporated into policy.

Co-authors include Shane A. Scaggs, Jensan Lebowitz, Rongjun Qin, Denis Tverskoi, Xinyi Wu and Zaarah Syed from the Ohio State University; and Stefan Thurner from the Complexity Science Hub, the Medical University of Vienna and the Santa Fe Institute. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, including an NSF CAREER Award Downey received at Ohio State in 2017.

Those natural enzymes are called ATPases, and their activity’s reliance on ATP makes these catalysts a desirable model for drug discovery. For example, a naturally derived ATPase that’s smaller and more malleable than a protein could be delivered to cancer cells to direct ATP’s energy toward killing those cells, or targeted to block the release of energy that stimulates harmful cellular processes.

Researchers at The Ohio State University have gotten one step closer to that possibility by identifying the first noncoding RNA derived from human cells that can bind to ATP. The team is looking now at that RNA’s function, with hopes that its affinity to ATP resembles an ATPase function that could form the basis of a therapeutic nanoparticle.

“The concept of having a noncoding RNA function as an ATPase is still really new. No one has been able to find ATPase activity in an RNA yet,” said senior study author Peixuan Guo, professor in the Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology at Ohio State.

“Many scientists think human proteins handle all ATP activity in the body, but I think there’s no way it’s limited to only a protein function,” he said.

The study was published recently in the journal Non-coding RNA Research.

Guo is a pioneer in the discovery of functional noncoding RNAs – tiny RNA molecules lacking instructions for building proteins – that constitute over 98% of the human genome. His lab has spent years refining nanoparticle technology with versatile RNA molecules that cooperate with the body, most recently designing molecular clusters called RNA micelles that deplete metastatic colorectal cancer tumors in mice.

He is optimistic that there is a noncoding RNA to be found in the genome that functions as an ATPase, and foresees making use of such a molecule for a new class of therapeutic nanomaterials. 

This new work builds on previous work in Guo’s lab that led to the identification of a viral RNA that could bind to ATP. 

“I was essentially doing a continuation of that study, looking to see if there’s anything in human RNAs that can bind to ATP,” said first author Margaret Bohmer, a PhD student in Guo’s lab. 

Bohmer ran multiple rounds of screening total RNA extracted from human cells, looking for segments that could connect with ATP. She removed non-binders between rounds and amplified the presence of ATP until she had an enriched pool of RNAs that bound only to ATP. She then sequenced what was left, confirming identification of a single noncoding RNA that made a strong attachment to ATP. 

The structure of this RNA is called a G-quadruplex, which has an advantage of being very compact and highly stable, Bohmer said. 

The team is following up by investigating the mechanism of exactly how this noncoding RNA binds to ATP. 

There’s a decent chance, she said, that this noncoding RNA could be part of an ATPase motor that assists in decomposing ATP – a prediction based on the lab’s previous finding that the viral RNA they found years ago that bound to ATP had a functional role in the motor. 

In another recent Non-coding RNA Research paper, Guo’s team also found evidence that viral molecules called packaging RNAs that bind ATP structurally remained very similar or the same while changing their coding sequences over the course of evolution to perform motor-related biological functions – a sign that they, like enzyme proteins, could trigger similar catalytic reactions in cells. 

“We are curious to see if this G-quadruplex RNA is an RNA that functions in a similar way,” Bohmer said. 

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, an Ohio State President’s Research Excellence Catalyst Award and an Ohio State Center for RNA Biology Fellowship.

Kai Jin, a PhD student in Guo’s lab, was also a co-author of the paper.

That message was part of a conversation on leadership and other topics hosted by the Columbus Chamber of Commerce this week between Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda and Chamber President and CEO Derrick R. Clay at the Athletic Club of Columbus.

“Excellence is a way of behaving, thinking, and really a way of being, much more than a state,” Bellamkonda said. “So, to me, the conversation we are having within Ohio State is, do we have this confidence to behave as a leader, a true leader? Because we are a great university in a great state, and we are positioned to do amazing things because of the people who went before.”

Bellamkonda said his aspiration is to be the most business-friendly university in the nation. He offered several examples of where Ohio State is leading or planning to expand opportunities in consequential ways to be among the best in the nation.

Ohio State has extended research and development opportunities for local businesses to partner with the university to improve their innovation while protecting intellectual property. Bellamkonda also pointed to executive training opportunities at Fisher College of Business and online courses for small business leaders to improve their knowledge of artificial intelligence.

Supporting state and local businesses is only part of the goal to help the university and the state succeed. Bellamkonda said it is also important for Ohio State to add new businesses to the region.

“We’ll be announcing a program where by 2029-2030, I’d like 100 investable startups to be coming out of Ohio State every year,” he said. “One hundred startups that are not paper startups, not projects for education, but investment-worthy startups every year. This is entirely doable.”

Ohio State’s new president also discussed the efforts to prepare students for the workforce of the future. He pointed to Ohio State’s AI Fluency initiative, the unique, groundbreaking initiative to prepare students to be “bilingual” in the use of AI: fluent in both their discipline and the responsible, intuitive use of AI.

“So we have students at Ohio State that are not just good at solving textbook problems, but [at solving] the complexity of real-world problems, communication skills, the ethic of working hard,” Bellamkonda said. “Combine that with AI fluency. … An Ohio State grad, when you hire them, brings that skill to you automatically because of AI fluency. No matter what major, they’re going to be fluent in the application of AI, and those are the people that will transform your businesses, right?”

Bellamkonda said the region is primed for greater success through partnership.

“The Midwest, I think, has an opportunity with places like Ohio State, the Chamber and all of us working together to reaffirm the narrative of this country and what we’re about: decency, civility, prosperity, hard work. This is not old-fashioned stuff,” he said. “This is the magic through which enduring success is built. And I feel fortunate that we, all of us, get to be part of this community where we can create that.”

Lars Bildsten, the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics and director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will deliver The Ohio State University’s summer commencement address. An Ohio State alumnus, Bildsten is the 2026 recipient of the university’s Joseph Sullivant Medal.

Approximately 1,700 degrees will be awarded at the Aug. 9 ceremony at the Schottenstein Center. The ceremony begins at 2 p.m.

“As one of the world’s foremost physicists, Lars Bildsten has dedicated his career to scientific research and discovery that has transformed our understanding of the universe. He embodies the world-class talent developed here at Ohio State, as well as the commitment to excellence and consequential work of our alumni,” said Ohio State President Ravi V. Bellamkonda. “Dr. Bildsten’s record of impact and service is an inspiration, and we’re looking forward to the message he’ll share with our graduates at summer commencement.”

The Sullivant Medal was created in 1920 by Thomas Mendenhall, one of Ohio State’s founding faculty and a professor of physics and mechanics. Its namesake, Joseph Sullivant, was a member of the university’s first Board of Trustees and greatly influenced the university’s development and educational character.

Awarded just once every five years, the medal is one of the most prestigious honors Ohio State bestows on its alumni and current faculty, recognizing extraordinary scholarly achievement.

Bildsten is a theoretical astrophysicist recognized for his work on the properties and behavior of stars, both when they burn their thermonuclear fuel for billions of years and when they explode as supernovae or emit gravitational waves.

He grew up in Chillicothe before moving to Worthington. He started taking classes at Ohio State as a high school student. He earned his undergraduate degree in engineering physics from Ohio State in 1985 and has maintained close ties with the astronomy and physics departments over many years.

He regularly contributes support to the department’s endeavors, including hosting a public lecture on “Hearing the Stars” in March 2025.

Bildsten was the 2000 Edwin Salpeter Lecturer at Cornell University, the 2004 Biermann Lecturer at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, the 2010 Beatrice M. Tinsley Centennial Visiting Professor at UT Austin, the 2014 Bishop Lecturer at Columbia University and the 2023 J. Robert Oppenheimer Lecturer at UC Berkeley.

He was awarded the Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics in 2017, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2026. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society.

By Kaitlyn Rabe
Lecturer in Geopolitics, The Ohio State University