Research locally, impact globally
Solutions to big challenges worth exploring happen beyond the surface.
Our faculty and graduate researchers dive into the unknown to make life-changing discoveries and in the process become experts in fields that might not even exist yet, on Earth and beyond.
Research highlights
There’s a lot about 2020 that many of us would rather forget. Despite the challenges resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, Missouri S&T researchers advanced the frontiers of technical, scientific and scholarly discovery in many ways in 2020. Here are 20 examples.
$48.6MFunds awarded |
1,548Graduate students |
359Awards received |
48,480+Scholars' Mine publications |
Five year highlights
Proposal dollars requested
Total expenditures from sponsored research activities
2020 Fiscal Year Summary of sponsored programs
| Funds awarded |
$48.6M |
| Proposal dollars requested |
$229.5M |
| Awards received |
359 |
| Total expenditures from sponsored research activities |
$35.2M |
| Total expenditures from external sources |
$43.5M |
| Invention disclosures |
39 |
| Patent applications filed |
31 |
| Patents issued |
25 |
| Royalty income |
$650k |
CAREER award funds research on earthquake history
Dr. Jonathan Obrist-Farner, assistant professor of geosciences and geological and petroleum engineering (GGPE) at Missouri S&T, says a particular type of sediment forms when there are earthquakes. The five-year, $720,000 CAREER Award will support Obrist-Farner’s study of sediments from lakes in Guatemala to determine when earthquakes occurred. His team will collect 10-meter sediment cores to identify earthquake-related sedimentary features and date them using radiocarbon-dating techniques. They will then use the information to determine how frequently earthquakes have happened along the plate boundary.
Steelmaking research saves energy, reduces costs with fiber optics
About 70% of steel production in the United States uses the electric arc furnace (EAF) process to melt scrap and virgin iron to create steel in a much more energy-efficient process than smelting from ore. But EAF steelmaking efficiency is dependent on many factors, and researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology are working to save energy and costs related to EAF steel production by using fiber optic sensors.
Missouri S&T researcher studying human-robot interaction wins NSF CAREER award
Research to understand how humans and robots communicate and interpret each other’s intentions has resulted in a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for Dr. Yun Seong Song, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Missouri S&T. The five-year, $538,876 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will support Song’s research to advance physical human-robot interaction.
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