BC/CSUB Research Programs

Faculty Research Mentors: Professor Steven Brown – BC Engineering and Professor Saeed Jafarzadeh – CSUB Computer & Electrical Engineering

In this program, participants identified a problem of interest to them and proposed an inventive hardware solution. They designed, fabricated, and tested the proposed invention. This was an iterative process, which involved 3D printing, laser cutting, and electronics. Participants designed and built everything from scratch, and consequently learned a lot in this program. The program started with learning about the available hardware and software tools for fabrication of the proposed ideas. Then, the participants spent a few weeks on developing their inventions.

Faculty Research Mentors: Dr. Saeed Jafarzadeh – CSUB, Computer & Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Dr. Steven Brown – BC, Engineering

A team of students worked on a robotics platform. The participants learned and had hands-on experience with both hardware and software. The microcontroller used in this program is Arduino. Arduino lets the software interact and control the robot. The initial goal is to build the robot and learn its operation. After its initial phase, the students added sensors to empower the robot to identify, solve, and navigate a maze.

Faculty Research Mentors: Professor Anne-Marie Hodge – BC Biology and Professor Lucas Hall – CSUB Biology

Sarcoptic mange is one the leading threats for populations of urban San Joaquin kit foxes (Vulpes macrotis mutica). Between 2013 and 2022, sarcoptic mange reduced the urban population of San Joaquin kit foxes by 2/3. Given that the urban population of San Joaquin kit foxes in Bakersfield is one of four remaining core populations for this species, the need to treat infected foxes has never been greater.

In this summer research project, students learned about impacts of sarcoptic mange on San Joaquin kit foxes while developing a self-treatment system for this species. This system will allow conservation biologists to remotely treat outbreaks of sarcoptic mange in foxes here in Bakersfield. This research was conducted in collaboration with CSUS Endangered Species Recovery Program and UCSB.

Faculty Research Mentors: Professor Maryam Jalalifarahani – BC Engineering and Professor Tat Acharya – CSUB Physics and Engineering

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is an invaluable asset in an engineer’s toolbox. The research activity will involve hands-on computational modeling of a novel engineering problem in sustainable energy. With more than 15 years of experience in CFD, Dr. Acharya, the instructor, has used CFD to study significant engineering problems such as carbon storage and sequestration, designing of petroleum production equipment, urban canopy and air circulation, flow over aerodynamic bodies, and air flow in hospital rooms. Students learned to use the commercial CFD software, ANSYS Fluent and used it to study carbon capture, storage, and sequestration. This summer research project began with brief lectures on the basics of applied fluid mechanics, and geologic carbon sequestration, and then involved CFD modeling of the process with the goal of evaluating the relative permeability curves.

Faculty Research Mentors: Professor Rebecca Zepeda – BC Biology and Professor Kathleen Szick – CSUB Biology

Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a neurotoxin found in extremely diverse taxonomic groups from bacteria to animals such as pufferfish, newts, blue-ringed octopuses and most recently, some species of leeches. The presence of TTX acts as a defense mechanism to prevent predation as, TTX is known to bind to voltage-gated Na+ ion channels that are essential for muscle contraction to occur. Once ingested, TTX ultimately causes paralysis and death in the predator, due to asphyxiation after the diaphragm is paralyzed. Studies on the voltage-gated Na+ ion channel in species that possess TTX have shown that the channel protein has distinct changes that prevents TTX from binding, hence preventing species from self-intoxication. Recent evidence shows that the leech Macrobdella decora has TTX, but the voltage-gated Na+ ion channel has yet to be examined and is the focus of our summer research program. Participants in this collaborative research project learned the fundamentals of research design, analysis and interpretation. In addition, they acquired hands-on molecular research experience including DNA extraction, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), agarose gel electrophoresis, and DNA and protein sequence analysis.

Faculty Research Mentor: Dr. Ehsan Reihani – CSUB, Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

In this project, the team investigated parallelization techniques to run an optimization problem in parallel processes in a remote server. They used OpenMP and MPI tools to perform synchronization and communication between the optimization problem processes. With MPI, each process has its own memory space and executes independently from the other processes. With OpenMP, threads share the same resources and access shared memory. The students learned how to use these tools on a small scale and then applied them to a simple optimization problem. This research resulted in timing benchmarks for Open MP and MPI for a given optimization problem and recommended practices to use each tool for a given class of optimization solvers.

Faculty Research Mentor: Dr. Zhongzhe Liu – CSUB, Engineering

This project focused on energy and resource recovery through synergistic reforming of agricultural wastes and greenhouse gases. The agricultural industry is facing many challenges at the nexus of nutrients, energy, and water with the increase of agricultural production. One of the challenges is how to sustainably and properly dispose of a high volume of agricultural waste such as dairy waste. On the other hand, due to the increasing pressures on the environment and California’s ambitious goal of going carbon neutral by 2045, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide need to be captured or converted. In this project, a new thermochemical method was developed to synergistically treat agricultural waste streams and carbon dioxide along with energy and resource recovery. Students had the chance to operate a conversion system and gain hands-on experience as a process engineer.

Faculty Research Mentors: Professors Gilbert Ayuk – BC, Physics and Professor Brian Ryals – CSUB, Math

In this project, students explored and studied a class of discrete-time dynamical systems. Mathematically, these are different equations that describe how a system evolves over time. The models featured parameters that can be tuned, and one of the main goals in the project will be to study “bifurcations” in the models, which are qualitative changes in the long-term behavior of a system. Students learned important mathematical concepts, such as periodic points, stability, eigenvalues, and what it means mathematically for a system to be chaotic. The project had a mix of low-dimensional systems that can be studied with pen, paper, and a calculator, as well as larger dimensional systems that necessitate running simulations. As such, students learned both how to analyze bifurcations experimentally as well as how to calculate them in a mathematically precise manner. Overall, this project aimed to provide a comprehensive introduction to discrete-time dynamical systems with applications.