Eberly News

A West Virginia University researcher says Tuesday’s (July 23) surprise hydrothermal explosion at Yellowstone National Park’s Biscuit Basin doesn’t mean a larger eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano is imminent. The explosion, captured on video by park visitors, launched debris into the air and damaged the boardwalk, but no one was injured.

Natural history collections provide irreplaceable resources in many arenas, both scientific and societal. These collections, including the WVU Herbarium, provide information on biodiversity, ecosystems, species distributions, climate change, and most recently, genomes. 

Gov. Jim Justice visited the Morgantown Campus Monday (June 24) to present Duncan Lorimer, a 2024 Fellow of the Royal Society, and Maura McLauglin, a new member of the National Academy of Sciences, with Distinguished West Virginian awards.

The best word for this is an experience — a potentially life-changing one for those students who earn the opportunity. This is the WVU Medical and Dental Brigades. The term brigade is fitting. It’s tactical, strategic, well-organized, and intense. A lightning rod. And for the students and volunteers who are accepted to participate, it’s often a wake-up call. “This is a different type of clinical experience, educational experience. It’s not one that happens in a classroom. I'm not even sure if it happens in a hospital space,” Brewster said. “They're learning a more holistic understanding of health and medicine.”

In recognition of her loyalty and service to West Virginia University, Eberly College Professor Emerita Sophia Peterson has been inducted into The Order of Vandalia.

West Virginia University research is strengthening national security by ensuring policymakers, military institutions, think tanks, academics and journalists have access to substantial, up-to-date information on international conflicts when they need it. A $555,647 grant from the National Science Foundation supports the three-year expansion of the Correlates of War Project’s Militarized Interstate Dispute Data, led by Vito D’Orazio, associate professor of political science and data sciences at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

Faculty from the Eberly College gathered earlier this month to participate in the inaugural Foundational STEM Collaborative Symposium, a daylong event that provided many opportunities for collaboration, team building and peer learning.

Sean McWilliams, associate professor of physics and astronomy in the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, was part of a team in 2015 that first detected those invisible ripples, which confirmed Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Now, with $750,000 in support from NASA’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, McWilliams will lead efforts to develop models to help facilitate observations from the planned space probe.

Three outstanding West Virginia University students have been named winners of the 2024 Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s premier undergraduate scholarship in mathematics, engineering and the natural sciences. Easton Cahill, Rachel King and Christopher Smith are among the 438 scholars selected nationwide and join the ranks of 47 Mountaineers selected before them. Each scholarship provides as much as $7,500 annually for up to two years of undergraduate study.

A faculty-mentored undergraduate research program at West Virginia University has led to higher student retention rates than institutional averages, according to a new study. Additionally, data revealed higher retention rates for participants from historically marginalized populations.