The University of Washington, one of OSLI’s eight sponsored university teams from around the world, won the grand prize in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) 2011 iGEM competition.

OSLI’s Regional Water Management Solutions (RWMS) program is investigating the possibility of recycling tailings water between oil sands mining and in situ operations in the Lower Athabasca River Watershed to economically improve the regional environmental net effect of oil sands water use.

The most important point of OSLI’s Faster Forest program, according to Project Lead Terry Forkheim, is its holistic focus on restoring ecological integrity.  Forkheim adds that while the program is designed to reduce the footprint of oil sands development by planting trees in areas disturbed by industrial activity, the focus of the program isn’t on the numbers. It’s on the forest.