Olson Labs continue legacy of applied research, fuel research growth

Key investments paved the way for the university's long-term research growth and ascent toward R1 classification. 

South Dakota State University has a long legacy of solving the state's problems through applied research. This can be most visible from the university's research laboratories, which are named after scientists and faculty members who solved some of the most pressing issues of their time.

For example, the Edgar S. McFadden Biostress Lab is named after a wheat breeder who created a variety that was resistant to stem and leaf rust — a disease that at one time wiped out the country's largest inland wheat market in Eureka, South Dakota. Another example is the Young Brothers Seed Technology Laboratory, named after a group of brothers — Eugene, Guilford, Dwight and George — who were pioneers in innovative farm practices during the state's homesteading period.

Nestled in the Animal Science Complex on the north side of SDSU's campus is a lab named after another scientist with an equally impactful legacy of applied research. The Olson Research Laboratories are named after Oscar Olson, a biochemist at the university between 1937 and 1984 who helped solve a South Dakota agricultural mystery and became one of the country's foremost researchers on selenium in the process.

Today, the Olson Labs serve as an interdisciplinary research space that is helping solve critical challenges in agriculture, advancing fundamental science and fueling the university's research growth.

South Dakota's selenium challenges

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, letters poured into South Dakota's agricultural college — now known as SDSU — from homesteaders and farmers around the state. Many cattle, horses and oxen had visible hair loss, hoof deformities and infertility. Livestock were becoming so malformed that the animals "walked" on their knees. Some cows had hooves that curled upward and were up to 10 inches long. Producers in South Dakota, who relied on these animals for their livelihood, were desperate for answers.

As the state's land-grant institution, researchers at SDSU began investigating the problem. They soon discovered the animals were dealing with widespread cases of alkali disease — an ailment with no known cure. But what was causing the disease? South Dakota's ground waters are high in salinity, and initially scientists believed animals could be picking up the disease from drinking ground water.

In the late 1920s, K.W. Franke arrived as the new South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station director and began studying this mystery. Using unpublished investigations from a soil survey completed earlier in the century, he concluded that the ground water the animals were consuming was harmless. The problem, he found, was the plants. Analysis of plant tissues found they were rich in the chemical element selenium, which in the form of salt can be toxic. Researchers determined livestock were consuming selenium-rich plants and becoming poisoned. During this period, Franke also made the connection between alkali disease and soils derived from Pierre shale.

In 1936, Franke's career was cut short when he passed away from undulant fever. A young scientist named Oscar Olson, who at the time was just finishing his master's degree, was hired to take his place. Olson, along with graduate researcher Alvin Moxon, set off around South Dakota to better understand the relationship between soils, plants and selenium. They discovered that South Dakota's soils were high in selenium, and some types of plants were considered "selenium indicators" because they could only grow in selenium-rich soils.

Research on selenium continued at the university throughout the 1900s, in a lab known as "Station Biochemistry" — a research space associated with the South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station. Eventually, Olson developed a method to measure selenium in soils, water, food products and humans. The method gained worldwide acclaim and helped reveal that while selenium can be toxic in some cases, it is also vital to cellular function. This work directly led to the discovery that selenium can lessen the impact of colon cancer.

Olson is now widely regarded as a pioneering figure in selenium research whose work continues to have an impact to this day. He passed away in 1999.

Renovations continue Olson's legacy

By 2010, selenium research at the university had slowed, and the country's national recession had forced a budgetary pinch. In 2011, university leadership made the difficult decision to sunset the biochemistry station, which by then had transitioned into an on-campus analytical services lab. The move wasn't purely driven by economics. The city of Brookings had private labs providing the same testing services the university's lab provided, and SDSU, which was steadily growing in enrollment, needed additional space for its burgeoning research enterprise.

Barry Dunn, then dean of SDSU's College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences and now the university’s president, had a vision. Rather than analytical testing services, Dunn believed the space could be better utilized to carry on Olson's legacy of applied research. In 2012, the university invested approximately $1.5 million to modernize the space with cutting-edge scientific equipment, a Biosafety Level 2 area and graduate student offices. After the lab's renovations were complete, the university rededicated it with its current name — the Oscar E. Olson Research Laboratories.

The investment into the labs was an early indication of the university's broader ambitions to grow its research enterprise. In 2023, SDSU announced it would be moving toward Research 1 (R1) classification — the highest designation for research institutions, as defined by the Carnegie Classifications of Higher Education. Fewer than 200 universities across the country are classified as R1, and achieving R1 status would not only put SDSU among the country's elite research institutions but — more importantly — would help grow and vary the state's economy through the commercialization of research projects and technology transfer.

To reach R1 status, the university would need to expand its doctoral education and continue to attract external funding for research. Modernized labs — like the Olson Labs — would be central to this effort.

Research in cattle, bison and biology

Roughly a decade after the labs' renovations were complete, crucial work is still being carried out in the Olson Labs, continuing the university's legacy of applied research. That work is subsequently moving the university closer to R1 status.

Michael Gonda, professor in the Department of Animal Science, is conducting research on cattle and bison in the Olson Labs to support the state's producers. Gonda’s laboratory is studying the genetics of feed efficiency of cows and calves on pasture, which has been largely ignored until now by the scientific community. The largest cost for beef cattle producers is feed. Improving feed efficiency would lower costs for beef producers, increasing their profitability. Beef cattle producers have genetic tools called “expected progeny differences," or EPDs, to select cattle that are more feed efficient in feedlots, but no EPDs are available to select for feed efficiency on pasture.

"The Olson Labs provide me with a laboratory space that allows us to accomplish our research goals, which are aimed at improving profitability of beef cattle operations,” Gonda said. “Our progress would be slower if these labs weren’t renovated ten years ago.”

His work in the Olson Labs also assists the university's collaborative U.S. Department of Agriculture project, "Producers first: incentivizing land management and advancing markets for U.S. beef and bison operations." This project directly supports the state's producers and is helping improve feed efficiency in cattle.

Gonda's graduate and undergraduate students work in the Olson Labs, which provides them the space to conduct doctoral-level research. Their work is focused on bison and cattle genetics and is one of only a handful of research projects in the country to concentrate on this topic for bison producers.

The Olson Labs bring together faculty from across campus. The interdisciplinary nature of the space creates opportunities for collaboration between the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences and the College of Natural Sciences. Across the hall from Gonda, Gergely Imre, assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Microbiology, is investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms that comprise life.

"We focus on increasing knowledge toward the understanding of molecular processes underlying cellular function and how disease impairs these processes," Imre said. "Our goals are to determine how cells and tissues respond to signals, avoid and combat pathogens, heal wounds and maintain genome stability — areas that are relevant to health and disease."

Recently, Imre's team published a pivotal study that identified a protein that can help boost cells' self-healing abilities. This work may lead to the development of new therapeutic strategies for those with chronic inflammatory conditions.

Fueling SDSU's path to R1

The Olson Labs are a key piece of the university's research growth over the past decade. Expanded office and laboratory space has allowed the university to recruit and train more doctoral candidates — graduate student researchers who conduct original work, support faculty-level projects and are a key component to R1 classification. Universitywide doctoral enrollment now stands at 290, a significant increase from a decade ago, and continues to grow as SDSU works toward the 70 annual doctoral graduates required for R1 classification.

The combination of modern facilities and advanced equipment has also helped faculty, and the university as a whole, secure competitive research funding. In the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences alone, research expenditures have grown by 112% since 2016. Universitywide, SDSU recorded a record-breaking $94 million in research expenditures in fiscal year 2025 — an 84% increase from just five years and well above the $50 million annual requirement for R1 classification.

Oscar Olson spent nearly five decades at SDSU helping solve South Dakota's selenium challenges for the state's producers. He helped discover that selenium was the root cause of alkali disease affecting livestock in the state. He also helped discover that selenium is of significant value to human health, and that crops produced in South Dakota can be a valuable source of the element, both as a nutrient and as a protectant against disease.

This legacy of discovery through applied research continues today in the labs that bear his name, where researchers carry on his mission to advance science and solve problems for the state's producers — pushing the university's research enterprise to even greater heights.