MSRIP 2012 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.
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. 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.
Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ian Wheeldon
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Wheeldon’s Lab research is focused on developing protein
engineering technologies and bio-inspired designs to address current challenges
in bioenergy, biocatalysis, and biological materials. Over the summer students
can be involved in various projects including: 1) biosynthesis of liquid fuels,
2) nanostructure enzyme catalysts and 3) microbial and enzymatic fuel cells.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jianzhong Wu
Research Setting: Lab (computational)
Research Project: Dr. Wu’s Lab research concerns development and application of
molecular theory and simulation methods for predicting microscopic structure and
thermodynamic properties of soft matter and biological systems. This research is
useful for a variety of engineering applications including energy production and
storage, environmental protection, rational design and fabrication of polymeric
materials and pharmaceutics, and target delivery of biomolecular drugs. This
summer students will be researching superhydrophobic surfaces against ice
formation.
Computer Science and Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Frank Vahid
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Vahid’s Lab research involves 1) developing systems that use
sensors/webcams to provide at-home monitoring/notification to help the aging
(e.g. fall detection), deaf, blind, and others, 2)developing graphical software for
in-home assistive monitoring and 3)developing novel online learning materials for
intro programming or digital design.
Mechanical Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Marko Princevac
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Princevak’s research interests lie in the fundamental and applied
fluid mechanics research - in particular, the application of fundamental turbulence
concepts to studies in environmental. Summer projects that students will be
involved in include superfog formation and dispersion from highways.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Masaru Rao
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Rao's research interests lie in the development and application of
novel micro/nanofabrication methods and materials for MEMS, microfluidics, and
biomedical microdevices. Dr. Rao’s current lab research involves biomedical
microdevice fabrication and characterization.
College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Art History
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Elizabeth Kotz
Research Setting: local archives and collections (the Hungtington, the Getty) and UCR
libraries.
Research Project: Dr. Kotz’ research focuses on different aspects of the crossdisciplinary and inter-media aesthetic practices that emerged in the post WWII
era. The core of Dr. Kotz’ project derives from the study of modernity, modernist
aesthetics and the historical avant-gardes, as these emerge in relation to new
technologies of recording, reproduction and transmission in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.
Management
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Tom Novak
Research Setting: Lab/Online surveys and experiments
Research Project: Dr. Novak is a co-director of the UCR Sloan Center for Internet
Retailing. The Center’s research is focused on researching how people are
influenced nonconsciously by others, how people nonconsciously attempt to
protect themselves from decision biases, and how people can sometimes make
choices that contradict their preferences. Center Lab has one or two opening for
the summer 2012 for undergraduate research assistants interested in getting
experience studying online consumer behavior. Students will be immersed in
training of the research process, including data generation, literature review,
study design, and data analysis and implementation.
Philosophy
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Peter Graham
Research Setting: Library
Research Project: Dr. Graham’s research focuses on radical skepticism about the
external world, the nature and function of perception, language understanding
and speech acts, and testimonial entitlement and trust.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Georgia Warnke
Research Setting: Library and Office
Research Project: Dr. Warnke researches feminism, gender studies, identity, identity
politics, political philosophy, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Students will be
assisting in Dr. Warnke’s research project that focuses on race and gender
theory over the summer.
Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Khaleel Abdulrazak
Research Setting: lab
Research Project: Dr. Abdulrazak is interested in the development of sensory
processing. Current projects in the lab focus on the development of both sound
localization and echolocation behaviors in the pallid bat. Using single and multielectrode recordings, tract tracing, neuropharmacology and behavioral analyses,
the research seeks to understand development of the mechanisms underlying
echolocation and passive sound localization. Dr. Abdulrazak’s lab also studies
the mouse auditory cortex to determine relative contributions of genetic and
experience-driven factors underlying plasticity of complex sound representation.
Students interested in taking an integrative approach to sensory processing and
neural development are welcome to join Dr. Abdulrazak’s lab through MSRIP
program.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Aaron Seitz
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Seitz’ research focuses on investigating links between behavioral
learning and rules of synaptic plasticity.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Tuppet Yates
Research Setting: Child Laboratory
Research Project: Dr. Yates currently has 2 studies in his lab. The first follows 250
preschool children across the transition into formal school and the second follows
200 foster youth as they age out of foster care. Lab’s research studies explore
processes underlying risk and resilience among vulnerable pediatric populations.
Students have the opportunity to work directly with high-risk children and
families, as well as coding observational data and collecting physiological and
cardiac data.
Sociology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Adalberto Aguirre
Research Setting: Library
Research Project: Over the summer students working with Dr. Aguirre can be involved
in the following research projects: a) immigrant detention centers in the U.S.
b)organizational analysis of check cashing businesses and c)citizenship studies.
College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences
Cell Biology and Neuroscience
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Margarita Curras-Collazo
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: The research would involve the investigation of neutoxicological
effects of indoor flame retardants on social behavior related to autism and
exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity related to chronic stress and environmental
toxicant exposure.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Prudence Talbot
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Talbot’s Lab research involves developing new assays that can
detect and identify environmental toxicants and drugs before they can cause
harm to humans. Because human embryonic stem cells are difficult to use in
toxicological assays, we are developing a new platforms using state-of-the-art
equipment to study morphological and molecular endpoints in video data
collected from stem cells during various experimental conditions. Much of current
work is done using embryonic stem cells to model the pre and post-implantation
stages of development. Summer project will involve working with lab teams on
projects that involve stem cells and analysis of data from stem cell experiments.
Chemistry
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ludwig Bartels
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Bartels’ Lab research concerns 1) investigation of surface
properties at the atomic and/or single-molecule scale, 2) development of means
to control molecular motion at surfaces with a long-term aim at developing
molecular machinery, 3) Development of organic and metal-organic networks at
surfaces for surface functionalization and as means of trapping adsorbates, and
4) development of instrumentation capable of resolving surface process at high
speed using a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and ultrafast optical
excitation. Students will be involved in a project related to imaging and simulation
of individual molecules and molecular motion at surfaces.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Guy Bertrand
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Bertrand’s lab research is focused on the main group elements
from groups 13 to 16, at the border between organic, organometallic and
inorganic chemistry, with some developments in the field of material science. We
use the specific properties of main group elements, especially boron, silicon and
phosphorus, to stabilize organic species, which are supposed to be only transient
intermediates, such as carbenes, nitrenes, radicals and biradicals, 1,3-dipoles,
anti-aromatic heterocycles. Over the summer students will be involved in
synthesis of stable carbenes and their use as ligand for transition metal catalysts.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jack Eichler
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: For summer project students will be involved in synthesis and
charecterization of gold-based anticancer compounds.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Cynthia Larive
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Students will be involved in a project related to the characterization of
complex carbohydrates called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). Dr. Larive’s lab
research is focused on GAGs, herapin and herapin sulfate. These
polysaccharides play an important role in normal tissue differentiation and
development, and are involved in several diseases including Alzheimer’s
disease, cancer and heart disease. The student working on this project will help
purify and isolate individual oligosaccharides and determine their structures using
nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Yadong Yin
Research Setting: Lab (Chemistry Laboratory for Materials Science)
Research Project: The lab works with magnetically tunable photonic materials; Students
will be involved in of nanometer scale colloidal particles; synthesis and selfassembly of magnetic particles and fabrication of magnetically responsive
photonic nanostructures.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Wenwan Zhong
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Zhong’s Lab research has two main focuses. One is the
development of novel bio-analytical techniques with unique specificity and
sensitivity for high-throughput detection of biomolecules; the other is to
investigate host-pathogen interaction using proteomic approaches, both relying
on various techniques like chromatography, mass spectrometry, microscopy
imaging, and flow cytometry.
Earth Sciences
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Michael McKibben
Research Setting: Geochemistry Lab
Research Project: Dr. McKibben’s Lab is involved in research on seafloor mining and
ocean acidification. Another focus of interest is heavy metal contamination of
groundwater.
Physics
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Allen Mills
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Dr. Mills’ Lab research is focused on dense positronium (Ps) physics,
with the long term goal of creating a Bose-Einstein condensation of Ps, and
thence an annihilation gamma ray laser. Over the summer students will be
involved in a project concerned with positron lifetimes.
Plant Pathology/Microbiology
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Michael Coffey
Research Setting: Lab
Research Project: Over the summer students working in Dr. Coffey’s lab will be involved
in a project concerned with microbiology/molecular diagnostics of a plant
pathogenic microbe - phytophtora.