MSRIP 2015 Faculty Research Projects
The following faculty research projects are organized by colleges, and then alphabetically by department. Students are encouraged to look at related fields, as well as within their major departments for research projects, which might be interesting to them. For example, the research project in the Theater department might also be interesting to sociology or education majors.
Anderson Graduate School of Management
Management
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Amnon Rapoport
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Rapoport will be analyzing decision making research. Overall, Dr. Rapoport’s research includes judgment and decisionmaking and behavioral economics.
Bourns College of Engineering
Bioengineering
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Huinan Liu
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr Liu’s Lab research involves design, fabrication and evaluation of novel biomaterials for tissue regeneration and controlled drug delivery and medical implant/device applications. Medical applications for nonomaterials and nontechnology are actively explored through both fundamental studies and applied research. Materials studied in the lab include polymer, ceramic, nanoparticles, polymer/ceramic nanocomposites and resorbable metals.
Students will be involved in developing a novel material that promotes nerve regeneration. Students will acquire lab skills in material synthesis, characterization, electron microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, and cell culture.
Chemical and Environmental Engineering and Material Science
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Bryan M. Wong
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr Wong’s research focuses on the development and application of theoretical tolls to calculate, understand, and rationally design functional materials—working closely with experimentalists during each step. The ultimate motivation of our research is to accurately predict the properties of multifunctional materials—either previously synthesized or yet to be made—
1

largely using first-principles calculation techniques. Of particular interest to us are technologically important problems in energy generation and conversion, especially those requiring an accurate understanding of electron dynamics .
Examples of techniques and systems that are currently studied in our group include time-dependent density functional theory for photovoltaic materials, electron transport in chromophore-functionalized carbon nanosystems, optoelectronic effects in core-shell semiconductor nanowires, and large-scale, first principles calculations for predicting growth and electronic properties of nanomaterials. Students that are interested in running computer simulations in chemistry, phsycis, and materials science are highly encouraged to apply.
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Elaine Haberer
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Haberer will be working on projects based on synthesizing and assembling of nanoscale materials (i.e. semiconductors, metals, etc.) using biological molecules such as peptides and proteins.
Mechanical Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Guillermo Aguilar
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Guillermo’s research involves biomedical optics and fluid mechanics.
College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Anthropology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Juliet McMullin
Research Setting: Lab, Library and field
Research Project: Research assistant(s) will be working on the Graphic Medicine:
Narrative and Community Building Project. The project analyzes the role of biotechnology, environment, and inequality in building notions of community in the emerging field of graphic medicine.
Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Elizabeth Davis
Research Setting: Child Development Lab
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Davis will research how emotion regulation relates to adaptive outcomes (e.g., learning) and maladaptive outcomes (e.g., anxiety) in childhood. Emotion regulation can be broadly defined as the set of processes by which people influence the timing, expression, and experience of their emotions. Dr. Davis’ research has aimed to identify regulatory strategies
2

that children can use to effectively alleviate negative emotion, and to identify individual differences in children’s biology and social experiences that determine whether they can regulate emotion effectively. Her work also focuses on identifying mechanisms responsible for effective emotion regulation (e.g., attentional focus) to explain why certain emotion regulation strategies attenuate negative emotion and distress.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Carolyn Murray
Research Setting: Lab, Library and field
Research Project: Research assistant(s) will have the following options for possible research projects: self-handicapping, measuring prejudice, black high student focus group data, and achievement motivation.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Megan Robbins
Research Setting: Laboratory
Research Project: Dr. Robbins is currently analyzing psychologically relevant factors within sound files from the daily lives of couples coping with breast cancer or rheumatoid arthritis. Students working with Dr. Robbins will have the opportunity to process field data.
Sociology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Aldaberto Aguirre Jr.
Research Setting: Library and field
Research Project: Dr. Aguirre’s research engages topics of immigration and higher education. His work focuses largely around social inequality, the sociology of education, and critical race theory.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Tanya Nieri
Research Setting: Lab, Library, and field
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Nieri will be working on the Zumba
Experience project, which analyzes women’s experience of Zumba fitness and
Zumba’s impact on health disparities.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ellen Reese
Research Setting: Lab, Library, and field
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Reese will provide research assistance to help with the completion of the edited volume, Unsustainable Development:
Struggles for Labor and Environmental Justice in Southern California’s Logistics
Industry . A student who is fluent in Spanish would be ideal as we may need to conduct interviews with Latino immigrant workers in Spanish in addition to doing library research for this project.
College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences
Biology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Theodore Garland, Jr.
3

Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Behavior, physiology, and neurobiology of lines of mice that have been selectively bred for high voluntary wheel running. Students will gather behavioral data and analyze how this data relates to the physiology of the mouse and to the mammal as a species. Publications on these mice can found here: http://biology.ucr.edu/people/faculty/Garland/Experimental_Evolution_Publications_by_Ted_Garland.html
.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Joel Sachs
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Sach’s will research the interactions between beneficial soil backterial and native legume hosts.
Botany and Plant Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Amy Litt
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Litt’s students will be investigating the genetic basis of flower and fruit development and evolution in the tomato family. This family includes a diversity of economically important species such as potato, chili pepper, petunia, and tobacco. This research project combines molecular methods with microscopy and computational analyses to identify changes in genetic pathways that have resulted in the diversity of flower and fruit forms.
Cell Biology and Neuroscience
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Margarita C. Curras-Collazo
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: One main focus of Dr. Collazo’s research is autistic-like changes in behavior and neuropeptide genes after developmental exposure to organohalogen pollutants.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Weifend Gu
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Gu’s research engages small RNA analysis. Non-coding small
RNAs, usually 20-30 nt long, were first identified two decades ago, and over the last decade, many species of non-coding small RNAs have been identified, such as miRNAs, siRNAs, piRNAs, capped small RNAs, etc. Overall the number of these small RNAs is much more than that of the protein coding genes in many organisms including human.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Fedor Karginov
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: The main focus of Dr. Karginov’s research is molecular biology of small RNAs/RNA-binding proteins. Our research focuses on understanding the overall mapping and principles of the interactions between mRNAs and their controlling factors - microRNAs and RBPs, and the interplay between these factors.
4

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Martin Riccomango
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Roccomango will be studying the role for
Cas adaptor proteins during brain development; cortical neural circuit refinement.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Prue Talbot
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Talbot over the summer with be studying health effects of new tobacco products or third-hand smoke.
Chemistry
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Chia-en Chang
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Chang’s research is related to computational chemistry/biophysics projects. This research involves the development and application of computational methods and theoretical models to address medically and chemically important problems. These methods are of practical importance in studying biomolecular function, and in the design of new molecules that bind strongly to their receptors. Systems of particular interest include existing or potential drug targets, cell signaling complexes and chemical host-guest systems.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. De-en Jiang
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students working in Dr. Jiang’s lab will be working on computational materials chemistry and nanoscience in catalysis, energy storage, and carbon capture.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Catherine Larsen
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Potential research projects in Dr. Larsen’s lab include: synthesis of organic compounds for anticancer and antimalarial testing; synthesis of novel organometallic complexes as catalysts; synthesis of novel organometallic complexes for biomedical testing.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Yadong Yin
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Possible research projects for Dr. Yin’s lab are synthesis of noble metal nanoparticles with tunable optical properties, fabrication of rewritable paper by using photocatalytic reactions and synethesis of magnetic nanostructures.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jingsong Zhang
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Zhang’s research concentrates on atmospheric chemistry, air pollution measurements, analytical instrument development, optical spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and chemical reaction mechanisms.
Mathematics
5

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Daniel Zhuang-dan
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students working with Dr. Zhuang-dan will be researching integrals and Kahler-einstein metrics.
Physics and Astonomy
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Gillian Wilson
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students will have the opportunity to make new discoveries about distant galaxies by working with data from some of the best telescopes in the world (e.g.,
Keck, Gemini, Hubble Space Telescope and/or Spitzer Space Telescope). Students will be provided with a desktop computer and lab space, and will work closely with Dr.
Wilson and her research group at UCR, and with internationally-based colleagues.
There may also be opportunities to take data remotely using UCR's Keck observing room. It is anticipated that the student(s) will present their work in poster form at a conference, and lead or co-author a publication.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jory Yarmoff
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: The main focus of Dr. Yarmoff’s research is surface studies of topological insulators or metal nonoclusters.
6