WSU Tri-Cities and WSU Everett are proud to partner with Amazon’s Career Choice Program. Through this partnership, hourly-wage Amazon employees can take advantage of pre-paid tuition to start or continue their education on these campuses.

Amazon’s Career Choice program is an educational benefit that empowers employees to learn new skills for career success at Amazon or elsewhere. The program meets individual learners where they are on their education journey through a variety of education and upskilling opportunities, including pre-paid college tuition, industry certifications designed to lead to in-demand jobs, and foundational skills such as English language proficiency, high school diplomas, and GEDs. In the U.S., the company is investing $1.2 billion to upskill more than 300,000 employees by 2025 to help move them into higher-paying, in-demand jobs.

The 2018 Amazon Catalyst grant recipients and their winning projects are:

LOW-COST, ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS MATERIALS FOR ROAD MAINTENANCE: Recycled restaurant cooking oil waste and reclaimed asphalt are combined into a low-cost, recycled road paving material.

Kun Zhang, clinical assistant professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

BIO-PESTICIDES PROTECTING CROPS FROM DEVASTATING PESTS: An environmentally safer way to protect crop yield and quantity using bio-pesticides to fight underground crop pests.

Lei Zhang, research associate, Department of Plant Pathology.

REDUCING BEE MORTALITY AND COLONY COLLAPSE THROUGH PESTICIDE FIGHTERS: A combination of microparticles mixed with bee feed protects bees from the harmful effects of encountering pesticides during pollination.

Waled Suliman, postdoctoral student, School of Biological Systems Engineering.

NEW WOUND DRESSING FOR ADVANCED WOUND MANAGEMENT: An electrochemical scaffold wound dressing that treats infections and stimulates healing by continuously generating antimicrobial agents in wounds.

Abdelrhman Mohamed, Ph.D. graduate student, Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering.

THE FIRST HYBRID HYDROGEN FUEL CELL ELECTRIC VEHICLE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST: Retrofitting of an existing battery-electric Zenn car to enable recharging with a modular, on-board, hydrogen fuel-cell system.

Jacob Leachman, associate professor, School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.

MEDICAL CONDITION-SPECIFIC AIR QUALITY FORECASTS AND WARNINGS: The Cardiopulmonary Events from Smoke Estimator (CENSE) will evaluate smoke particulate pollution information and convert it into air quality forecasts for medical condition-specific warnings, and deliver these warnings to caregivers and patients in high-risk populations.

Joseph Vaughan, associate research professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

DRYWALL WASTE BLOCK: A NEW BUILDING MATERIAL: The Drywall Waste Block converts low-value gypsum wallboard scrap waste into a high-performance building material that is inexpensive to produce, easy to build with, and provides energy-efficient and affordable homes for people in need.

Taiji Miyasaka, professor of architecture, School of Design and Construction.

KULÉ© TECH: SMART-THERMOMETERS FOR SAFER MILK: Creating and deploying smart-thermometers among the pastoral Maasai in Tanzania to increase milk pasteurization knowledge and habits through the use of a culturally-targeted solution that limits the transmission of antimicrobial resistance among the tribes, making milk safer and people healthier.

Mark Caudell, postdoctoral research associate, Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health.

RAPID RESPONDER: An accurate and efficient way to retrieve information and dispatch it effectively in an emergency.

Shusanta Bhattarai, an undergraduate computer science student, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture.

EPI-N: An app for epinephrine users that helps people with severe allergies and reactions to track their EpiPens, manage their medication supply and notify caretakers of a reaction emergency.

David Kurz, undergraduate entrepreneurship student, Carson College of Business.