Completed Projects
Completed Projects
Wellspring
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur at a young age. In college-aged adolescents ACEs are associated with increased engagement in high-risk behaviors, teen pregnancy/paternity, increased sexually transmitted infections, mental health conditions, and substance use. The purpose of our study is to determine the prevalence of ACEs in freshman and transfer students and to provide students with health and wellness services.
Team Members: Jennifer Nguyen, Lian Dial, Lauren Murkar, Isabel Altamirano, Reuben Saldivar, Savannah Robinson, Faith Vaquez
Mentor: Juanita Jellyman
BLADE
The BLADE (Ballon Launch Assessment Directive for Everyone) project hopes to contribute to the amateur and university high-altitude balloon (HAB) community by researching, establishing, and documenting how to best incorporate the industry's best practices in to an efficient and replicable platform for balloon based research.
Team Members: Nathaniel Hebert, Aaron Lowe, Benjamin Narita, Michael Pham, William McKinney, Gustavo Salgado
Mentor: Eduardo Corpuz
Horse Wellness
Team Horse Wellness did an evaluation of vasodilation and stress properties with the application of Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy on th Equine Distal Limb. The motivation for this project was our love for equines, lack of investigation on the concept, and most importantly the sad truth that equine limb injuries are extremely common.
Team Members: Samantha Campos, Stephanie Inzunza, Jackeline Alvarez, Hannah Esqueda
Mentor: Holly Greene
Team Parma
The project is focused on an experimental approach to investigating the ballistic mitigation of high-tensile-strength fabrics infused with shear-thickening fluids (STF). After ascertaining some of the viscoelastic properties, they will be intercalated into Kevlar fabric and the energy absorption characteristics of each pairing will be determined through a variety of impact tests. The STF-fabric combination that demonstrates the best merits will then be subject to a ballistic test commensurate with an NIJ level 3 threat.
Team Members: Joseph Baur, Garret Kawaguchi, Benjamin Lopez, Ethan Cam
Mentor: Brian Ramirez
Scientists Podcast
Kimberly and Jennifer have created a podcast where they interview STEM faculty at Cal Poly Pomona, highlighting their past academic and career experience to pass on the cultural capital of academia. This podcast is currently being implemented into an introductory biology major's lab as an education tool to determine the impact faculty narratives have on our biology students.
Team Members: Kimberly Aguilar, Jennifer Flores
Mentor: Kenneth Lamb
Solar Trackers
Solar panels provide a renewable source of energy that can power our society’s residential, commercial, and industrial applications. By adding batteries to our solar panel system, we can store the excess energy produced by the panels during the day and utilize that energy during the night and when energy companies typically have more expensive “on-peak” utility rates. By adding actuators that can track and optimize the panel angle to the sun during the day, we create a system that can acquire more energy that can either be delivered to batteries on standby or be sent to the grid to help with electrical load demands.
Team Members: Alexis Garcia, Brandon Ortiz, Emmanuel John Umali
Mentor: Sean Monemi
Open Lab
OpenLab is a platform in Virtual Reality (VR) where students can learn biology and chemistry laboratory techniques while having an immersive and interactive experience. Through a headset, students interact with virtual pipettes, test tubes, and expensive or dangerous machines, all in a safe environment. Students visualize the world down to the molecular level to help reduce the gap between practice and theory. In addition, OpenLab tests students on each step they perform inside the virtual lab to track their progress.
Team Members: Pierlorenzo Peruzzo
Mentor: Juanita Jellyman
Team Eggscellence
Legalization of cannabis for recreational and medicinal use in several States has led to increased use of the drugs, including by pregrant women. Little is known about the effects of Δ9-THC before birth, however studies in humans and rodents suggest that Δ9-THC may impair prenatal growth. The current study uses a chick embryo model to investigate the effects of Δ9-THC on growth, independent of any effects of the drug on maternal physiology or the physiology of the placenta.
Team Members: Maya Shattuck, Diana Truong, Kenneth Paredes
Mentor: Juanita Jellyman
Super Success
This study’s focus is to analyze the effectiveness of peer mentorship programs and to what extent mentoring impacts students’ academic success. It investigates the impact that mentorship programs have on those who serve as peer mentors and those who are mentored. The objective is to examine if peer mentoring programs increase retention and graduation, social and cultural capital, fosters a sense of social belonging, and helps socially integrate students on campus. Additionally, the goal is to find out whether being mentored by peer mentors of the same racial, cultural, generation, or gender background benefits students’ sense of social belonging and academic success. Overall, our objective is to understand how mentorship affects academic success (grade point average, and retention and graduation rates), social integration, fosters a sense of social belonging, and creates social and cultural capital, and what long-term effects it has on students.
Team Members: Talia Fernandez, Victoria Torres
Mentor: Mary Danico
Team Trogocystosis
We investigated the roles of neutrophil receptor CD32a and gene for extracellular degranulation, stxbp2, in the trogocytic killing of the human infective parasite Trichomonas vaginalis. To do this, we confirmed CD32a expression on neutrophil like cells, designed crRNAs to target the CD32a gene to knockout, and determined the role of Fc receptors in the killing of Tv prior to conducting knockout experiments. Additionally, to test our 2nd gene, we developed a model system to test extracellular degranulation in myeloid progenitor cells, designed crRNAs, and conducted a knockout of the gene.
Team Members: Emily Giron Perdomo, Suhani Bhakta
Mentor: Frances K. Mercer
Marvel Wonder
Team Marvel Wonder's study used the Stroop effect to investigate the following relationships: 1) the relationship between probiotic supplements and selective attention; and 2) the relationship between omega-3 fatty acid supplements and selective attention in an adult sample, ages 22 to 34 years old, at Cal Poly Pomona.
Team Members: Sara Catalina Carillo, Yaelle Lee, Natali Mendez, Sarah Pearce, Navi Singh
Mentors: Bonny Burns-Whitmore, Alane Daughtery
Regulatory Foci
Our project uses the motivational theory of regulatory focus and self-construal framework to determine when a social media user would share a post about an event (before vs. after). We aim to see if this "timing of sharing" varies between interdependent and independent cultures.
Team Members: Andrea Escobar Vara, Patrick Ogaz, Sebastian Hernandez, Claire Son
Mentor: Jae Min Jung
Cut the Bias
Cut the Bias is an event combining speakers, entertainment, and a resource fair to confront implicit biases and how prejudice affects society. All proceeds go to charity.
Team Members: Hailey Arzaga, Valerie Marquez, Jay Ramzy, Marmar Tavasol
Mentor: Alex Madva
Food Justice
We aim to examine how the Pomona Valley Certified Farmer’s Market contributes to the development of socioecological community and addresses food access and insecurity in the city of Pomona.
Team Members: Camryn Hamm, Calista Ho, Melissa Provancha
Mentor: Teresa Lloro
Team Insights
The motivation for our project is to prove to business faculty that there is value in having their undergraduate students participate (i.e. survey takers) in business research studies. In addition, we want to show that participating in research is helpful in learning marketing concepts. Our target audience is marketing faculty members. We hope our findings show business faculty that research participation helps students learn.
Team Members: Cailin Kuchenbecker, Guillermo Marquez, Mitchell Pickering
Mentor: Jae Min Jung
Locals Only
We investigate consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions of the products made in their own (vs. other) states and assess factors that could influence them, thisallows us to understand the consumer at a state level.
Team Members: Stephanie Munoz, Jilian Munoz, Jarrod Griffin
Mentor: Jae Min Jung
Pellissier Pirates
Using Geophysical Methods to Locate Archaeological Artifacts from San Salvador, buried during the Great Flood of 1862 in Colton, CA.
Team Members: Veronica Hernandez, Oscar Prado, Chloe Sutkowski
Mentor: Jascha Polet
Pomona Youths
The purpose of this study is to see whether meditation improves continuation high school students’ educational and behavioral outcomes.
Team Members: Monserrat Coria, Jesus Navarro, Viviana Piceno
Mentor: Alejandro Morales
Partner: Kevon Williams
Research Team #1
I am researching how investors decide which startups to fund, and whether investors are actually able to predict down-the-line startup success. Entrepreneurial investing is something with so many factors and a great deal of uncertainty, so the issue we are dealing with is trying to figure out how decision-making cuts through this certainty (effectively or not) and figure out where to devote their resources.
Team Members: Tovin Schwartz
Mentor: Randy Stein
RICH Tribe LA
RICH Tribe LA represents the bridge between streetwear and tradition, unifying street-born designs with cultural practices. The purpose of this project is to continue an ongoing mission to preserve the traditions of handweaving textiles of the indigenous tribes of the Philippines, as well as having an ethical and environmentally conscious approach to designing and producing apparel.
Team Members: Ria Custodio, Christine Hernandez
Mentor: Kit Kwok
Trichonomas Lab
We are studying the interaction of a highly prevalent sexually transmitted infection, Trichomonas vaginalis (Tv), and immune cells, by using a gene-editing method, CRISPR-Cas9, to genetically edit immune cells.
Team Members: Aljona Leka, Jose Moran
Mentor: Frances Mercer
Veterans Nutrition
The goal of the study is to determine whether nutrition education, using motivational interviewing, can improve nutritional intake and body compositions within a student Veteran community.
Team Members: Sommarani Chan, Rosangela Odgers
Mentor: Elke Azpeitia
