Cal Poly hosted the 38th annual California State University Student Research Competition on April 26 and 27 in the Engineering Plaza. Bringing people from all 23 Cal State campuses to present their research, this competition featured about 200 presentations and more than 500 participants.
According to the Director of the Office of Student Research Dr. Jane Lehr, Cal Poly SLO hosted this event in 2017 and was given the chance to host again in 2024 after another Cal State campus backed out. Cal Poly was informed that it was hosting this event in 2021 and started preparing for the event more than a year ago.
Preparations for the event included creating the schedule, reserving a room, advertising, providing food and creating a website. Cal Poly worked with supporters from the CSU Chancellor’s Office, representatives from San Diego and people from Cal Poly Humboldt.
Each Cal State campus can bring up to ten delegates to present in the competition. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo held the Cal Poly Internal Research Competition in winter quarter and had around 45 presentations which they chose 10 from to compete in the CSU Student Research Competition.
“It’s always a really tough competition on this campus because we have amazing students engaged in amazing research projects, research scholarly and creative works across the entire campus,” Interim Vice President of Research for Cal Poly Dawn Neill said.
During the awards ceremony, two presentations from each of the 23 topics were awarded second and first place by a panel of jurors. Some of the juror panels also gave out honorable mentions.
There were five winning undergraduate presentations from Cal Poly SLO. Biomedical engineering senior Anna Dion, with research co-contributors James Roake, Kate Mayeda and Nicholas Elich who did not present, biomedical engineering senior Harrison Oen, biological science senior Lily Nielsen and biological sciences senior Emily Prince and microbiology junior Adam Marin, with co-contributors being Serena Jenson and Chris Athens, were all current Cal Poly students who received an award for their work.
Dion’s presentation, which was in the Behavioral, Social Sciences & Public Administration (undergraduate) I session, focused on free clinics on the Central Coast of California for people who may not have insurance. The research focused on the SLO Noor Clinic and looked to quantify the conditions that patients were coming in with and the demographics of those patients.
“While these clinics have started to gain a lot of popularity, not very many studies have currently existed at all that have gone into how either cost-effective they are or the patients that are being treated by them and the conditions that they are coming in to be treated by,” Dion said.
Oen’s research, which was presented in the Health, Nutrition & Clinical Sciences (U/G) I session, was based in the tissue engineering lab within Cal Poly biomedical engineering and focused on creating blood vessel models made out of silicon to test neurovascular devices that treat stroke patients.
Oen reflected on his reaction to receiving an award for his work.
“My first reaction was very pleased. I was happy and I was honored to be able to represent the tissue engineering lab as well as Cal Poly biomedical engineering. I was honored and overwhelmed with happiness,” Oen said.
Prince and Marin presented in the Health, Nutrition & Clinical Sciences (U/G) II session with their research on new ways to treat UTIs by looking at ways to inhibit bacteria that cause UTIs. They are trying to find ways to stop this bacteria from taking in iron.
“If you are able to have a more targeted approach and target only UTI-causing bacteria through this iron uptake mechanism, then we would be able to mitigate things like antibiotic resistance and that would just help alleviate the healthcare system,” Prince said.
Marin said it felt good to have their work acknowledged and their advisor said she was proud.
Nielsen competed in the Biological & Agricultural Sciences (undergraduate) II session and she was studying how HIV assembles itself through the study of the protein YB-1 and the shape the protein is taking on. They are using phosphomimicry to create the different shapes of YB-1.
“We’re curious to see if this YB-1 protein is somehow being hijacked or co-opted by HIV in order to help facilitate this assembly process,” Neilsen said.
Hector Reyes, a recent Cal Poly psychology graduate, who is now a master’s student at San Diego State University, came back to present his research on Nuestra Ciencia, or “Our Science.” The research focuses on teaching microbiology in Spanish to kids at an elementary age. Working with co-applicants Xavier Aguilar who he presented with and Chanel De Smet who helped with the abstract, he won an award in the Education (undergraduate) category.
“We saw two different parallel sets of issues. One around Latinx in STEM,” Reyes said. “The other one around microbiology, so we sort of tried to tackle both of them at the same time by addressing these common microbiology misconceptions and by helping to inspire Latinx students to pursue careers in STEM.”
Lehr was delighted by how much she and members of her organizing team enjoyed the event.
“For those of us who are doing the logistics, it can feel less fun in the lead up to a big event like that,but I was delighted by how much I and members of our organizing team enjoyed it,” Lehr said. “[I was] just so happy that so many participants, students from the different CSU campuses, faculty and staff from the campuses and the chancellor’s office and then their supporters, seemed to generally have fun, so that was a hope but also a great surprise.”