Current SDSU Undergraduate RSCA Program (SURP) Projects

Lauren Schmidt in the Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures Department will mentor Adria Lopez to further develop the open-access Spanish in San Diego Language Corpus of how Spanish is spoken in the U.S.-Mexico border region by conducting interviews and building a public-facing presence for the project.

Miles Tomlinson will be advised by Trent Biggs and Adam Oliphant to analyze regional differences in agricultural responses to changes in water availability and the impacts of direct payments for water conservation.

Josephine Claire Ante and her mentor Charlene Holkenbrink from the Sociology Department will investigate what ethical, sustainable AI could look like through data collection and group facilitation.

Felisha Herrera Villarreal will mentor two students - Ariadna Rivera Ibarra and Mariana Sanchez Vidrio - to interview and survey institutional agents and students about STEM experiential learning at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs).

Haylie Paris Caguioa and Cliantha Marie Gerez, with mentor Zhenqiang Zhao, will examine the factors that influence how sexual minority youth come out and health outcomes that might be associated with stressful coming-out experiences.

Hsien-Chang Lin from the Child and Family Development Department will work with mentee Annika Kan to write a literature review and analyze data about adverse and positive childhood experiences and how they influence substance use in adolescence.

Pranathi Karuturi, with mentor Jun Chen, will develop a simulation environment to explore how aerial robots (i.e., drones) with robotic arms might fly and manipulate objects in realistic scenarios.

Satish Sharma and his student Ian Lin plan to use 3D metal printing, in partnership with a local company, to prototype a miniaturized antenna with expected frequency range between 10 and 30 gigahertz and test it in SDSU's anechoic chamber.

Kai Binger and mentor Gloria Faraone will investigate the performance of different connection types in timber structures, analyzing data on whether timber is an effective sustainable construction material.

Two students, Felix Nguyen and Preston Hiramoto, will design, test, and optimize 3D-printed micron-scale needles made from a biocompatible polymer in Yang Yang's lab.

George Youssef's mentee Chloe Simon will explore additive manufacturing modalities, attempting to integrate antibacterial nanoparticles into organic solvents, and then analyze biomechanical performance of printed structures.

In Natalie Mladenov's lab, Nicolette Caci will evaluate the most effective media for removing tire-derived chemicals in newly designed trash capture devices.

Tyler Mazon will work with mentor Tong Huang to develop easy-to-use AI agents and deep learning models to visualize results and identify high-risk scenarios in power grid optimization, aiming for more responsive and resilient energy infrastructure.

Luke Livezey will work with Zhijie Wang from the Department of Mechanical Engineering to establish a proof-of-concept and obtain real-time mechanical sensing of aneurysm walls via 3D-printed piezoelectric sensors.

Manoj Kumar Dhadwal will mentor students Noah Nordstrand and Zachary Bernard to investigate how origami-inspired design principles might inform new structures that are lightweight, compact, and efficient for next-generation spacecraft and satellites.

Mentor Julio Valdes and mentee Avery King will develop a novel material capable of removing heat through evaporative cooling, inspired by elephants' natural cooling strategies.

Landyn Neil and mentor Christy Dykstra aim to improve decentralized wastewater treatment by evaluating performance of an anaerobic, baffled reactor and working toward NSF/ANSI certification.

Lizbeth Jimenez will help develop bilingual intervention materials and provide training for YMCA coaches to promote healthy eating among Latina mothers and daughters, together with mentor Guadalupe Xochitl Ayala.

Teresa Girolamo's mentee Abigail Asare will analyze data and develop a coding protocol to evaluate the effectiveness of measures for assessing language skills in autistic young adults.

By coding Spanish and English language produced by preschool-aged bilingual children, Ava Gutierrez and mentor Sonja Pruitt-Lord will aid in diagnosing and providing interventions for children with developmental language disorders.

Jocelyn Garcilazo will analyze language and physiological data from children who stutter, gathered naturalistically in their everyday lives, with mentorship from Hatun Zengin-Bolatkale.

Amanda McClain and student Ashley Diaz Mendez will pilot an evidence-based behavior change intervention to promote food security and diet quality among Hispanic/Latino adults in a Federally Qualified Health Center.

Using motion capture and clinical assessments to analyze biomechanical data, Marcus Garcia and mentor Aram Kim will study how fatigue manifests and affects social, cognitive, and physical functioning for people with Parkinson's disease.

Jorge Toledo Negrete will help Dianne Ciro analyze focus group and survey data from clinicians and program leaders who provide trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy in Colombia to adapt delivery of therapy in more culturally appropriate ways.

Christal Sohl and student Roberto Benavides will study fundamental kinetic, structural, and cellular features of enzymes underpinning tumor formation, specifically a class of commonly mutated enzymes in cancer called human isocitrate dehydrogenases.

Harris Azhand and Blake Bays will explore the impacts of thirdhand smoke dust on breast cancer tumors and responses to toxicity in mouse models with mentor Teresa Monkkonen.

Benjamin Ricardo will analyze survey data from a peer support program in a healthcare system in Milwaukee, WI, developing skills in analytical software programs and writing manuscripts with Lisa Kath.

Fernanda Cuevas Alviar with mentor Ariana Stickel will conduct hearing tests and cognitive exams and interview Latino adults to better understand facilitators and barriers to hearing aid use and links between hearing loss, diabetes, and cognitive decline.

To develop conservation planning tools for wildlife managers monitoring Kodiak brown bears, Cole Gibson and Caroline Walley, with mentor Arun Sethuraman, will analyze advanced long-read DNA sequencing and genomic differences among individual bears.

Sylvanna Vargas and students Lauren Guss and Adalyn Martin del Campo will refine an AI interface to deliver information about training progress and needs of teens working on teen-to-teen mental health helplines.

Working toward entanglement-enhanced sensing and nonclassical light generation, Hailey Balch and Shawn Foster will conduct experiments and theorize on methods to engineer moiré exciton polaritrons in twisted 2D heterostructures in Sanjay Behura's Quantum Photonics and Optoelectronics Lab.

Tanner Kocher will adapt extend an existing 3D-scene understanding framework into a more generalized, multi-domain toolset, applying it to bioinformatics data, with mentorship from Bryan Donyanavard.

Elva Arredondo and mentee Alina Perez will collect survey and anthropometric data from participants to assess the effectiveness of different ways of promoting physical activity among Latina women.

Jeff Wang will mentor Phat Tran to examine disruptions, such as the Silicon Valley Bank crash, to financial processing and reporting tasks among public firms.

Sarah Serrano, together with mentor Kaveh Abhari, will explore how innovation systems could be designed with artificial intelligence as an active co-participant in ideation, evaluation, and experimentation alongside humans.

Camila Canez, with guidance from Lucas Corcoran, will investigate how educators can use AI to generate effective writing prompts and nuanced assessment

Carlos Herrera will mentor David Campos to preserve narratives from residents who participated in civil rights advocacy in the Imperial Valley region before and after the 1960s.

Andrew Alfaro and mentor Jeffery Osborne will focus on how AI is used and discussed in real-world criminal justice practice, including policing, investigations and corrections.

Mentor Miguel Angel Zavala Perez will mentor Daniel Vega and Joaquin Salceda to assess air pollution in communities near the Salton Sea, where residents may experience disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards.