skip to main content
Research
and Innovation
Menu

SDSU Undergraduate RSCA Program Projects for 2025

College of Arts & Letters

Anna Keaveny is continuing her work with Kyle Jerro to conduct literature reviews and collect and analyze data on African languages to build on the broader research of the documentation and revitalization of underrepresented Bantu languages spoken in East Africa.

With guidance from Amanda Kearny, Parmis Mazdeh will focus on an ethnographic study that explores ethical psychedelic research and cross-cultural healing practices involving plant medicine for mental health treatment.

Co-mentored by Trent Biggs and Adam Oliphant, Katrina Rodrigues will analyze spatial and agricultural data, assess crop and water trends, and help code qualitative interviews to identify regional responses to reduced water inflow.

Isabella Torcat, mentored by Edward Blum, will explore the origins, debates, and evolutions of the United States Constitution in comparison with other constitutions - particularly in Central and South America.

London Gibbs, co-mentored by Jessica Barlow and Madison Swayne, will analyze EPA Brownfields Program funding from 2018 to 2025 to identify which types of entities receive support and how funding patterns have evolved, with the goal of informing more equitable and inclusive environmental policy.

Lauren Schmidt will mentor Amaris Cruz in developing an open-access digital language corpus, made up of sociolinguistic interviews conducted with local Spanish-speaking individuals living, working, and studying in San Diego. The goal is to document the linguistic varieties of Spanish spoken in our local borderlands community.

Rosabel Ibrahim, co-mentored by Jennifer Burke Reifman and Sydney Sullivan, will study how the use of AI impacts student writing processes. They plan to observe students use AI as they write and have them reflect on their use in order to better understand how writing is a tool that restructures cognition.

Jaime Antoshak will join Gregory Keating and his team to study how Spanish-English heritage speakers interpret ambiguous relative clauses in each language. The team will use eye-tracking to explore whether they apply separate strategies in each language.

College of Education

Ana Dueñas will advise Paola Fernanda Cuevas in their study to analyze parent-mediated intervention sessions to examine how providers recommend English language use to bilingual families, aiming to understand the frequency, context, and impact of these messages on family language practices and support for home languages.

Daniela Ortega-Ramos, with guidance from Felisha Herrera Villarreal, will identify best practices for supporting STEM students in experiential learning programs at Hispanic-Serving Institutions and emerging HSIs through interviews with institutional agents and qualitative analysis.

College of Engineering

Kaden Buehrig will be working with Yang Yang on a bio-inspired 3D printing technique based on spider silk mechanics. Their research will focus on modifying an Ender 5 Pro printer to optimize the extrusion parameters and improve tensile strength.
Matthew Steel, with guidance from John Kang, aims to develop and validate an advanced optical system to accurately measure 3D surface deformations occurring in semiconductor packages during manufacturing. The system incorporates Digital Fringe Projection and machine learning to help prevent defects or failures in electronic devices, improving reliability and performance.
Wynter Trumpfheller, advised by Sara Adibi, will investigate how AI, combined with mechanical engineering simulations, can accelerate the design of stronger, more efficient materials by developing data-driven models to predict and enhance material behavior for real-world applications.
Varun Aruldas, with guidance from Pablo Machuca, will support the 2029 JAXA Comet Interceptor mission by developing image-based methods for spacecraft orientation and navigation through a comet's dust cloud, combining star tracker simulations, dust modeling, and machine learning techniques.
Reza Akhavian will mentor Behrad Beheshti and Nhan Nguyen in developing and testing an adaptive robotic navigation system that improves safety and efficiency in navigating cluttered, dynamic construction sites. Their work includes creating a simulation-based framework for real-time robot pathfinding to contribute to advancement in construction robotics.
Junfei Xie will mentor Eric Jay Tantay to develop a Python-based middleware to simplify programming autonomous drone behaviors on open-source platforms like Pixhawk, enabling easier UAV application development without requiring deep technical expertise.
Jaume Toomer will join Natalie Mladenov to investigate how the fluorescent properties of trace organic chemicals (TOrCs) change under simulated sunlight to develop a faster method for tracking their degradation, with applications for managing stormwater and wastewater contaminants.
Damaris Menendez, mentored by Parag Katira, will explore the relationship between enzyme mass, catalytic rate, and lifetime by combining database analysis and theoretical modeling to test whether an enzyme's energetic capacity determines its functional durability, with implications for enzyme engineering and biophysical understanding.

College of Health & Human Services

With mentorship from Alyson Abel, Halle Rodriguez will compare the word learning abilities for 5-8 year old children with intellectual disability versus hearing loss, interacting directly with children and their families, to guide clinical practice.
Emily Zhang, co-mentored by Henrike Blumenfeld and Preeti Rishi, will conduct thematic analysis on interviews with Chinese-English people with aphasia (PWA) to understand the communication and service needs of bilingual PWA.
Frankie Wade will advise Jay Barolo in collecting and analyzing data to establish normative gait values for comparison with pathological populations. The data will be based on walking assessments from participants without musculoskeletal or cognitive impairments, as well as clinical tests, cognitive evaluations, and physical activity questionnaires.
Aalok Gokarn and Shawn O'Connor seek to determine whether knee osteoarthritis (OA) and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) patients immediately adapt to the rehabilitative brace by altering gait mechanics and muscle activation to resemble healthy movement. Their study will involve measuring joint motions, muscle activity, and energy expenditure during walking trials.
Kelsey Lam, co-mentored by Teresa Girolamo and Sonja Pruitt-Lord, will analyze unconventional language, such as echolalia, in autistic youth with language impairments to develop better assessment tools and deepen understanding of communication in minimally verbal individuals.
Amanda McClain will guide Celeste Lineiro as they continue community-based research at a Federally Qualified Health Center in San Diego. She will develop and implement a pilot capacity-oriented, culturally relevant behavior change intervention to promote food security and diet quality among Latine adults.
Arianna Dowlatshahi is working with Jerel Calzo and the Action Research on Community Health Equity and Stigma Lab (ARCHES) to develop a real-time, phone-based intervention to reduce and prevent smoking behaviors among LGBTQ+ adolescents and young adults.
Lindsey Sanchez will be mentored by both Laura Dreisbach Hawe and Gayla Poling to optimize an early-warning system for hearing damage in newborns by identifying optimal stimulus parameters to record responses in all newborns. The goal is to preserve communication abilities when newborns are exposed to medications that are damaging to hearing.

College of Professional Studies & Fine Arts

Co-mentored by Denitsa Bliznakova and Teri Tavares, Linda Litchy-Cervantes will participate in all stages of the design and production process of the play, "The Night of the Iguana", written by Tennessee Williams which will be produced at Boston Court Theatre.
Marlena Ngim will work with Eduardo Gonzalez in examining how smartphones support networks of care, agency, and mutual aid among Latin American refugees in transit through Mexico. They will use a co-participatory method to analyze ethnographic data and explore the social, economic and emotional impacts of digital connectivity.
Sarah Prado Ascencio and Chloe Boatright will both be mentored by Jessica Humphrey as they study dancemaking theories and practices behind Portal, a binational dancemaking and dance education platform. Both of them will be supporting the creation of multimedia educational materials for dancemaking based on the choreographic and somatic techniques of Portal.
Adam Manley will mentor Christine (Vianca) David in studying crates housing a single or small collection of tools collected from major art collecting which show the histories of their use. Their goal is to demonstrate that the material culture and creative production of unseen art workers are as valuable as the works of art they care for.
Tavee Binavi and Xareni Solis Sauza will work with Megan Welsh Carroll on the Project for Sanitation Justice to investigate and advocate for equitable access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) resources. Their focus will be on the needs of unhoused and displaced populations through action research, policy analysis, and community collaboration.
Zola Choi will support all phases of production for the short comedy film, Tenure Trap, written and directed by her mentor Jessica McGaugh. The film highlights inequities that women and minority faculty face across campus.
Esmeralda Hernandez Cardena, guided by Nathian Rodriguez, will explore how intersectionally marginalized identities are portrayed in popular summer 2025 streaming media through scene analysis and participant interviews, aiming to uncover themes of representation and inform inclusive media critique.
Miranda Solares will support the post-production packaging and film festival submission strategy for a short narrative film, "Fly", written and directed by Carlton Daniel. Their broader objective is to amplify underrepresented voices in cinema and explore intersectional identity through storytelling.

College of Sciences

Bianca Rollbusch and Teresa Monkkonen will investigate how inhibiting fibroblast autophagy affects mammary epithelial cell behavior and extracellular matrix deposition in mice to better understand early breast cancer development.
Kinsey Brock's student, Savannah Mercer will study how urbanization affects lizards, specifically focusing on changes in water availability and its impact on their physiology. Together, they will conduct field surveys in both urban and nearby nonurban areas to study the Western Fence Lizard.
Sophia Alvarez will be working alongside Rees Garmann on validating newly discovered RNA bacteriophages through molecular cloning, bacterial transformation, protein expression, and capsid purification to determine whether they assemble into virus-like capsids.
Connor Schmidt, mentored by Mauro Tambasco, will investigate the effects of an emerging radiotherapy (RT) technique, GRID-RT, for cancer treatment by comparing to conventional RT to see the impact on the mechanical characteristics of tumor tissue.
Giovanni Beltran will continue working with Wiston Rodriguez to understand what gives rise to LGBTQ+ selective incivility and how those experiences impact LGBTQ+ health and well-being by collecting daily diary data.
Carrie House and Dishant Vandra will investigate whether the integrin AVB3 enables ovarian cancer cells to survive chemotherapy, aiming to reduce drug resistance and tumor recurrence by genetically knocking down AVB3 and assessing its effects in cell and mouse models.
Fernanda Ronzon will work alongside Jessica McCurley as they partner with community health clinics at Scripps Health and Neighborhood Healthcare to develop and test a new mobile health program that will help young adults who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes learn about and better manage their diabetes and overall health.
Richard Cripps will guide Yiannis Alvarado in carrying out high-level tissue culture and biochemistry assays to identify proteins binding to the muscle protein Uchmaz. The goal is to identify the role of Uchmaz in sarcomeres to better understand how muscle proteins assemble and contribute to inherited muscle diseases.
Robert Luallen and Anupama Singh will work together to guide Alfredo Maldonado Garduno in investigating a newly discovered gut-colonizing bacterium in a wild C. elegans strain to identify the microbe, analyze its genome, and understand its effects on the host, advancing our knowledge of natural host-microbiome interactions.

Fowler College of Business

Amanda Stader and Edgar Pacheco, led by Alex Yao, will investigate whether brands that change their political stance experience measurable changes in consumer perception and behavior. Their research will help understand socially impactful marketing and multi-stakeholder dynamics by examining how evolving brand activism shapes public response and trust.
Reut Segal will work alongside Kaveh Abhari in developing and evaluating an AI-driven coaching system tailored to the unique needs of postdoctoral scholars which will contribute to broader academic workforce development and provide a foundation for securing funding opportunities.
Hossein Shirazi will mentor Remington Steele in exploring how deceptive job advertisements facilitate human trafficking by identifying "red flags" across multilingual job platforms using generative AI models to detect and classify risky postings based on semantic and emotional cues.
Laurel Matthews, guided by Shira Cohen, examines California's 2023 climate risk disclosure legislation by analyzing how companies report climate risks, offering a local case study of a globally significant sustainability issue.

Imperial Valley

Eleni Gaveras will continue to mentor Bryan Alexander as they work together to use participatory mapping and focus groups with formerly incarcerated university students to identify community strengths and needs, aiming to inform future interventions that support housing stability and educational success.

Devrim Kaya will mentor Cindy Carranza in examining the impacts of wastewater effluent discharges to assess the human health risks associated with antibiotic resistance genes in the agricultural binational context of surface water samples in the American Canal.

Co-mentored by Shiloh Williams and Stephen Jaime, Bryan Salcedo aims to improve patient-provider communication and support health equity through evidence-based outreach, focusing on provider health literacy practices and patient education strategies in a region with historically low health literacy levels.
Stacy Bodus will mentor Antonio Romo in exploring the hidden cognitive and emotional labor contributing to teacher burnout, alongside stakeholder perceptions of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, using surveys and interviews in California's Imperial Valley to inform strategies for teacher wellbeing.