SDSU Undergraduate Research Program Projects for 2024

Timothy Boyd is working with Ming-Hsiang Tsou from the Department of Geography's Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age. Together with one Ph.D. student, they will analyze and visualize anonymized phone location data to compare human movement change patterns between regions in San Diego where COVID-19 cases were high and low.

Jessica Barlow will mentor Devina Naik to create ArcGIS storymaps documenting research and community engagement activities of the Center for Regional Sustainability.

Political science students Senait Hagos and Kaisly Moreno, with guidance from Kristen Maher, will analyze interviews of Cape Town, South Africa residents about the lingering urban divides created by apartheid.

Cassie Lapham will work with Daniel Davis to assess undergraduate student career choice and the factors that influence student perceptions of career confidence and preparation.

Joseph Sabia will advise Nathan Rosenthal in analyzing nationally representative datasets and qualitative interview data to document barriers to accessing social security and disability insurance supplemental income for LGBT persons with disabilities.

Joel Varon, with guidance from Rutger Hadge, will investigate the GPA gap between first-generation and non-first-generation college students in an introductory philosophy course through surveys and interviews.

With mentorship from Marissa Vasquez in the Department of Administration, Rehabilitation and Postsecondary Education, Jahaziel Sanchez will help evaluate the effectiveness of components of an equity-centered program for community college students transferring to a bachelor's degree-granting institution.

Felicia Black will mentor Skye Pooler and Alena Chavez to systematically gather literature on domestic childcare work in Black and Afro-Diasporic communities and analyze data using poetry-making and first-person narratives as arts-based inquiry methods.

With mentorship from Elizabeth Buffington, Shaye Phung will continue reviewing current course offerings in the College of Education and how well they support development of cultural competency for career preparation and graduate level coursework.

As part of the Research and Equity Scholarship Institute (RESISTE), Felicia Herrera Villarreal will mentor Daniela Ortega-Ramos to examine STEM pathways and support for Latine and other racially minoritized students at two- and four-year Hispanic-Serving Institutions.

Gloria Faraone (Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering) will advise Ashley Funk and Jefferson Young to measure the force capacity of different types of connections in mass timber structures, providing more information about their earthquake performance.

Everett Richards and Robert Ashe will work alongside Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering professor Reza Akhavian to create a virtual reality simulation of high-risk industrial settings to test robot perception and worker trust.

Mechanical engineer Sara Adibi will mentor Praneel Singla and Oscar Osuna to develop and test artificial intelligence and machine learning models to design new materials.

Matthew Chang and Kyler Brown are working with John Kang (Mechanical Engineering) to leverage real-time defect-monitoring sensors and machine learning to improve powder-based additive manufacturing.

Ansel Flanagan will assist George Youssef in developing multifunctional inks that have magnetic and electroactive properties for additive manufacturing and biomedical applications.

Mentored by Marta Miletic, Ava Halkola and Selin Childs will test the structural and thermal performance of tiles designed for lunar rocket landings.

Tiffany Casaje and Adrianna de los Garzas will work with Julio Valdes to improve earthquake resistance of sandy soils by developing biodegradable, injectable clay-water mixtures.

Junfei Xie will serve as the faculty mentor for Pablo Olivares and Alejandro Rivera Lara as they work to iterate on hands-on learning activities for an AI and robotics course using an easily accessible hardware testbed platform.

Eric Smith and Arthur Gratas will work on developing and enhancing the efficiency of miniaturized antenna systems as part of Satish Sharma's Antenna and Microwave Lab.

Sean Park's student Jesus Vargas will gain hands-on experience with micro and nanotechnology as they develop a compact, lightweight means of using rooftop solar energy for controllable indoor lighting.

Mentee Mia Mangney will work with Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences professor Giang Pham to study overarching structure and sentence-level grammar in kids' storytelling in Spanish and English. This will inform researchers' understanding of how skills in one language might be used to learn another.

Exercise and Nutritional Sciences professor Sara Gombatto will mentor Sarah Konig and Ella Yarrow to identify potentially risky movements and other behaviors to design better strength, conditioning and rehabilitation programs for male baseball players.

Public health professors Jennifer Felner and Jerel Calzo, through the Action for Research on Community Health and Stigma (ARCHES) Lab, will advise Irishrhea Edusada as they develop and evaluate arts-based interventions to address risk factors for smoking and human trafficking among housing-insecure youth in San Diego.

Henrike Blumenfeld and Emily Mu will adapt and validate a Mandarin translation of a language proficiency tool used by speech language pathologists to assess bilingual language skills and disorders.

Noelle Villegas and Lluvia Vazquez will contribute to Laura Coco's project evaluating differences between self-fitted hearing aid settings and professionally prescribed settings among older adults by administering hearing tests.

Megan Ebor will mentor Jen Lothridge and Marlena Ngim in the process of collecting data, engaging community members and producing health communication multimedia focused on Black women and girls living with or vulnerable to HIV.

Charlize Chu, with guidance from Shira Goldenberg and the Migration, Health and Human Rights lab, will investigate how policies such as immigration detention and rapid deportations shape social determinants of health (e.g., precarious housing, food insecurity) among asylum seekers.

Surabhi Bhutani's student London Caceres will study the food preferences of people who prefer to stay up late and be more active later in the day through in-lab and at-home data collection.

In Computer Science, Hyunjong Choi will mentor Pascal Reich to integrate multiple self-driving technologies within a resource-constrained context by leveraging cloud-based processing of Lidar data.

Psychology professor Lisa Kath and graduate students will mentor Vivian Magahis to study possible psychological effects that pediatric healthcare workers experience when patients are aggressive toward them.

Using metagenomics and microbiology techniques, Yesenia Rodriguez will study bacteria in nematodes that cause these animals to lose their heads as part of Robert Luallen's lab.

Michidmaa (Miche) Maral and Mary Becker, with mentorship from Physics professor Sanjay Behura, will characterize the structural and electronic properties of quantum materials using machine learning for data analysis.

Jessica Baker will advise Maya Rusnak and Dorsa Naderpour as they examine the effectiveness of combining nutritional and exercise-based interventions to treat fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

Sam Stenzel will work under the guidance of Cat Schrankel to characterize gut epithelia in wild and experimental sea urchin larvae to assess the role of a protein in the organisms' defense against environmental toxins.

Kylie Neubauer will join Marina Kalyuzhnaya's lab to further elucidate the photosynthetic machinery used by methane-eating bacteria using bioinformatics and microbiology techniques.

In Computer Science, Bryan (Donny) Donyanavard will mentor David Kaauwai and Alyssa Serrano to measure and modify the behavior of an autonomous driving software in real-world scenarios, specifically for lane-keeping and navigation algorithms.

With mentorship from Jennifer Thomas, Savana Hampton will measure the effects of prenatal edible CBD doses in pregnant rats to better understand potential risks, benefits and implications for humans.

As part of Jillian Lee Wiggins's Lab, Madelin Gredvig will investigate potential mechanisms for how trauma-exposed adolescents do or do not develop symptoms of anxiety.

Kinsey Brock and a graduate student in the Department of Biology's evolution-focused track will mentor Rory Mendelow to analyze body measurement data in lizards across urban and less urban habitats in the Greek island of Naxos.

Jordan Edens will investigate metabolites from mice infected with a diarrhea-causing parasite of global importance, alongside mentor Laura-Isobel McCall.

Together with mentor Matt Anderson, Faith Poutoa will improve oil sensors to detect patterns in fluorescence over time from different types of spilled oil through machine learning and image analysis algorithms.

Nicholas Barber's student Alec Juliano will extract and prepare DNA samples from soils collected from restored prairies and unplowed prairies to build a comprehensive grassland soil dataset.

Isabelle Bernal, along with mentor Patrick Shoemaker, will develop code to retrieve data from a database of all the neurons in the fruit fly brain to better understand how the neurons responsible for responding to moving visual objects are connected.

Roberto Marquez, with guidance from mentor Ricardo Carretero, will solve numerically complex equations of motion using computational techniques to understand behavior of microscopic twisters in Bose-Einstein condensates, the coldest form of matter in the universe.

Cesar Lopez, with Management mentor Ami Doshi, will investigate how wine producers in the U.S. and Mexico adapt to shifting climate patterns and water governance practices through problem-solving and economic decision-making.

Tonni Xia will advise Daniela Cecena to analyze characteristics of and stock market consequences of child labor law violations, including investor pressure and reactions.

Justin Deppiesse will explore how accounting students us AI tools and how universities can guide responsible and effective use with mentor Aner Zhou.

Mentor Liang Ma will guide Daniel Diner in collecting data on demographics, employment history, educational backgrounds and professional networks of board members for closed-end funds.

Alexia Reyes, Neyda Jimenez, Adrian Guzman Herrera and Perla Soto-Urzua will explore their own and others' stories as transfronterizx students to characterize how a sense of belonging contributes to well-being and academic success. Vanessa Falcón Orta will be their mentor.

Jonathan Angulo will mentor Desiree Alexis Ortiz and Estephanie Esmeralda Palomares Fernandez to preserve oral histories in the borderland region. They will create a digital collections website of interviews with students, faculty and community residents.

Caleb Molina will assist Tingting Tang in developing a mathematical framework for evaluating the impact of different types of human disturbances on ecosystems and species life cycles.

Linda Abarbanell will mentor Linda Diaz to analyze interviews with Imperial Valley adults' experiences with cancer and cancer care in the United States and Mexico.

Magdalena Altamirano will guide Maya Hossaini in analyzing written works, images, paintings and textiles as artifacts of womens' work, the barriers they faced and how they overcame them in early modern Spain.