SUPER Fellows
SUPER Partnership Fellows
Research Partnerships
Find a Partner at WWU!
If you are seeking to connect with faculty for research collaborations, capstone project ideas, guest lecture opportunities, or technical advice -- we can help! Contact the Partnership program administrators: Amanda Murphy or Steven Emory. We will be happy to discuss your project needs, and connect you to the right people at WWU.
Amanda Murphy
Steven Emory
Current Partner Highlights
PACCAR Technical Center in Mount Vernon, WA, is sponsoring four senior capstone projects and one class project at Western Washington University in the 2025/26 academic year. These projects provide students with hands-on experience tackling real-world engineering and technology challenges while working closely with PACCAR engineering and science mentors. The projects include students from Manufacturing Engineering, Polymer Materials Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and the Institute for Energy studies.
Manufacturing Engineering Seniors Bryce Nisly, Erik Borchert, and Jordan Hallmark work on a wire harness wear testing machine for PACCAR Technical Center for their senior project.
Tidal Vision is a Bellingham-based biotech company specializing in sustainable, chitosan-based technologies for water treatment, agriculture and materials science. During the 2025/26 academic year, Tidal Vision is sponsoring three research internships at Western Washington University. The student interns are gaining industry-relevant, hands-on lab experience with chitosan formulations under the direction of a Tidal Vision scientist. Students are co-supervised by a WWU faculty member (Prof. Larsen, Prof. Murphy & Prof. Rider) and are carrying out the work on Western’s campus.
Theo Newcomb (Chemistry major), Aleah Vojak (Chemistry major), and AJ Armstong (Polymer Materials Engineering major), conducting research for Tidal Vision in WWU labs.
Partnership Fellows
The faculty highlighted below have completed our SUPER Partnership Academy training program, and are eager to seek partners from a variety of industry sectors. Feel free to contact them directly if your interests align.
Advanced Materials
I am an expert in polymer synthesis and characterization. I leverage complimentary methods of molecular, thermal, and rheological analysis to develop a comprehensive picture of a material. This links molecular-level structure with macroscopic properties, which can unlock new applications or reveal desirable characteristics that will open new markets for existing products. I seek research collaborations and student capstone projects examining real-world materials as well as opportunities to consult on ongoing projects.
Industry-university collaborations that solve polymer and composites problems are my bread and butter! My student-centered partnerships help organizations accelerate material and product development by delivering insight into the relationships between composition, structure, processing, and performance in polymers and composites. My work integrates advanced characterization, polymer chemistry, and manufacturing to solve complex materials challenges and enable faster, data-driven decisions. I have over a decade of experience spanning aerospace composites, thermosets, additive manufacturing, and sustainable materials, including continuous reactive processing and twin-screw reactor technologies. I collaborate with industry partners to translate materials innovation into scalable, manufacturable solutions that reduce risk, improve performance, and shorten time to market.
I have expertise in designing, fabricating and testing material systems for use in a wide range of biomedical applications. My research group has particular strength in the chemistry, processing and applications of silk proteins, leveraging silk’s unique mechanical performance and biocompatibility. Beyond silk, I am broadly interested in designing structural scaffolds, coatings and delivery systems using both synthetic and natural polymeric materials. I work with companies to accelerate product development by optimizing processing strategies, evaluating and refining formulations, conducting comprehensive chemical and physical characterization of material systems, and tailoring the chemical functionality of existing materials to enhance performance. I am eager to discuss ideas for student-centered research collaborations, capstone and applied research projects and consulting opportunities.
Biotechnology
I am a computer scientist interested in how brain and artificial neural networks function. My specialty is creating mathematical models that extract new insights from data, both by incorporating new mechanisms and creating custom methods for deciphering biological and technological experiments. I also have deep experience with network analysis. My goal is to build connections with industrial, internet tech, or biotech partners that want to better understand their data and act on it with predictive models.
My specialty is the marine microbial ecology of hydrothermal vent systems. My focus has been the study of microbial mats in and around hydrothermal vents. I am interested in the cultivation of extremophilic microorganisms that thrive in high stress environments, including high temperatures that exhibit distinct structural, metabolic, and genetic adaptations, such as enhanced enzyme stability that enable their survival. I seek to engage in collaborations that will realize beneficial applications through strategies focusing on partnerships, cooperative agreements, and/or pilot project methods development. Understanding these adaptation mechanisms is key to engineering similar traits where the benefits realized from the exceptional stability and catalytic efficiency of extreme enzymes underscores their potential for multiple biotechnological applications such as biomanufacturing and metabolic engineering.
I am a structural biologist and protein biochemist that specializes in protein-protein and protein-membrane complexes in blood coagulation. Leveraging structural knowledge of blood coagulation complexes with emergent protein engineering and design has the potential to improve protein-based and gene-based therapeutic delivery modalities. Benefits from collaboration include development of next generation biotherapeutics with improved properties that are currently required to deliver a gene therapeutic with sustainable expression. My interests lie in either working as a consultant for or through a cooperative agreement with targeted biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies to develop and analyze new therapeutic approaches to congenital hemophilia treatments.
Chemistry and Analytical
Companies may not always have the time to chase down synthetic problems, side reactions, impurities, etc. This may result in inefficient syntheses, purifications, or processes when developing new protocols. We synthesize, purify and characterize small organic molecules. We are a student-centered lab proficient in using air- and moisture sensitive materials and have mass spectrometry, infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy at our disposal. I am seeking collaborations or consulting opportunities for synthetic chemistry processes. Using my 30 years of experience, I help companies with design and execution of multi-step synthesis on milligram to gram scale. I am an expert in structure determination using spectroscopic techniques such as MS, IR and NMR. Partners will gain more understanding of the fundamental science of their processes that will lead to improvements in efficiency.
I help organizations accelerate material and product development by delivering advanced analytical insight into composition, structure, and performance. Using optical spectroscopy alongside complementary techniques such as microscopy, chromatography, and mass spectrometry, I design tailored characterization strategies for complex challenges. My work enables faster, data-driven decisions that reduce risk, minimize losses, and shorten time to market. I welcome collaborations on pilot studies, applied method development, and translating analytical solutions into operational environments.
Communication, Security and Hardware Technology
I lead teams in designing technologies that are easy to use, inclusive, and grounded in real user needs, particularly for people with disabilities. My work in accessibility training, supported by NSF funding, has been adopted by 10+ institutions, reflecting a strong track record of translating research into practical impact.
Using human-centered and ability-based design methods, I help teams identify barriers that standard testing often misses, then co-design and evaluate solutions in both controlled and real-world settings. My work extends to generative AI systems, where I focus on reducing bias, so emerging technologies work equitably across ability and access needs.
I welcome collaborations on inclusive design, accessibility training, and bias reduction in emerging tech.
I help organizations explore lightweight security solutions for low-power and connected devices when traditional approaches are too resource-intensive for constrained hardware. My work helps teams make better early-stage decisions by clarifying security tradeoffs, identifying feasible trust mechanisms, and reducing technical risk in embedded and IoT environments. With expertise in hardware-rooted and protocol-level security, including PUF-based authentication and privacy-aware design, I focus on evaluating approaches to device identity, authentication, and trust for constrained and deployed systems. I welcome collaborations on exploratory R&D, concept evaluation, feasibility analysis, and prototype-oriented research for embedded and low-power devices.
My research improves the reliability of the power grid. One aspect of my work involves determining the optimal deployment of sensors in the power grid. Once the location and type of sensors are decided, data-driven algorithms are developed that can detect and locate specific faults within the power grid. This is done by looking at the fault signatures left by the components within the system. I welcome utilities to collaborate on everything involving sensor development, deployment, and algorithmic research on data analysis.
I help organizations build secure, reliable, and energy-efficient intelligent systems for next-generation healthcare and cyber-physical applications. My work combines hardware security, embedded system design, and AI at the edge to protect resource-constrained devices, especially in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). I develop fault-tolerant and attack-resilient solutions for physiological closed-loop control systems, enabling safer and more dependable medical technologies. With experience spanning academia, national labs, and large-scale scientific systems, I translate advanced research into practical, deployable solutions. I welcome collaborations on applied research, prototype development, and bringing secure edge intelligence into real-world environments.
I partner with industry to develop antenna, RF, and wireless sensing solutions for next-generation communication and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. My expertise spans antenna design, V2X communication systems, RF characterization, and sensor platforms that integrate wireless hardware and embedded intelligence. This work helps organizations improve performance, reduce development risk, and move more quickly from concept to functional prototype. I welcome collaborations in product development, prototyping, testing, and applied research for wireless and connected systems.
Environmental Technology
I study the geologic carbon cycle, focused in understanding riverine transport of organic matter, marine sediment deposition, and long-term carbon storage. I specialize in biomarker and isotopic analyses to fingerprint organic matter sources. My analytical expertise is applicable to carbon accounting, sequestration monitoring, and environmental baseline assessments. Through my research program, I actively train the next generation of geoscientists, producing analytically rigorous, field-ready graduates prepared to meet industry demands. I welcome collaborative partnerships that connect academic insight with real-world carbon management challenges.
Become a Fellow
The SUPER Partnership Academy is a training program aimed at enhancing the skills of WWU faculty and staff in creating, managing, and sustaining successful, high-value external partnerships with regional industries.