Walla Walla University is a Seventh-day Adventist institution of higher education founded in 1892. A fully-accredited institution, WWU offers more than 100 areas of study in professional and technical programs and the liberal arts.
The headquarters of WWU is located on an 83-acre campus in College Place situated in the Walla Walla Valley in Southeastern Washington state. The university also operates four satellite campuses, including a School of Nursing in Portland, Oregon, a marine biology station near Anacortes, Washington, and School of Social Work and Sociology campuses in Missoula and Billings, Montana. Learn more about WWU.
By Kiersten Ekkens, WWU University Relations student writer
Mathematical research
Jackson research on hot spring drainage published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Research by Benjamin Jackson, associate professor of mathematics, and fellow researchers from Montana State University has been published in the scientific journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Their work focused on the effects of water flowing over a microbial mat in Yellowstone National Park’s Octopus Hot Spring on cellular extremophile life forms in the spring water.
Jackson’s contributions to the project included creating a mathematical model of the hot spring drainage system. Developing the model meant making multiple trips to Yellowstone during each season to measure the velocity of water flowing out of the hot spring channel and months of research on cell counts through microscopy and image analysis.
Jackson has been collaborating on this project since 2011 when he was a graduate student at Montana State University. The paper titled “Relationship between Microorganisms Inhabiting Alkaline Siliceous Hot Spring Mat Communities and Overflowing Water” is the culmination of those years of research and was supported by a large research grant.
Westwind, the magazine of Walla Walla University, is published three times a year (March, July, and November) to share news and information about WWU with alumni, parents of current students, and other friends of the university.
