Cal Lutheran students to present research

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Oct. 8, 2018) Fifty of California Lutheran University’s top undergraduates will present their findings at the 15th Annual Student Research Symposium on Saturday, Oct. 20.

Most of the students spent the summer working full time on their projects in collaboration with faculty mentors. Donors and federal grants from the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement and Hispanic-Serving Institutions STEM programs funded the paid fellowships. Every year, many of these students present their original findings at professional conferences and have them published in peer-reviewed journals.

Six students will give oral presentations on some of the top projects from 9 to 10:30 a.m. in Lundring Events Center on the Thousand Oaks campus. Nakiessa Abbassi, a senior from Woodland Hills majoring in political science and minoring in environmental studies, used an environmental justice perspective to examine how communities along the Los Angeles River are affected by ecological restoration and community revitalization projects. Vanessa Avalos, a junior from Fresno majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry, studied the effects of pesticides on an organism called Caenorhabditis elegans. Jonathan Goldstein, a senior exercise science major from Camarillo, studied the movements of football players executing long snaps, or backward passes. Amir Mejia, a sophomore from Banning who is majoring in biology, will speak about his experiences studying bird song acoustics in the Costa Rican rainforest. Luis Perez, a junior from Oxnard who is majoring in mathematics and computer science, researched a type of error-correcting code, how it can be expressed through set theory and graph theory, and applications that go beyond traditional data transmission such as a logic-based team competition and a card trick. Danny Suarez, a junior from Thousand Oaks who is majoring in computer science and minoring in mathematics, compared scheduling strategies for database and data integration queries.

All of the students will present their results in demonstrations and posters and talk to visitors from 10:30 a.m. to noon in Soiland Recreation Center. Additional topics that will be featured in this session include how people respond to feminine and masculine communication styles during a crisis, impacts of the Rwandan government’s promotion of traditional culture on efforts to recover from ethnic conflict, and invasive Japanese Pacific oysters that were recently found in Channel Islands Harbor.

Cal Lutheran’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship and ALLIES in STEM and McNair programs are sponsoring the free events. The locations are inside the Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center on the north side of Olsen Road. For a complete schedule, visit CalLutheran.edu/srs. For more information, call 805-493-3796 or email OURCS@callutheran.edu.