The campus’s 2022 Grad Slam finalists are (listed alphabetically by last name):
Vicky Espinoza
Environmental Systems
Title: "Bringing the voice of rural communities to California Water and Land Use"
Advisor: Joshua Viers
Research: Vicky aims to develop strategies for potential agricultural land-use transitions under California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act to address groundwater overdraft while minimizing impacts to already vulnerable groups. She simultaneously addresses the knowledge and decision-making equity gap among marginalized communities and farmers in California through her trilingual CaliWaterAg YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/CaliWaterAg).
Marc Labata
Environmental Systems
Title: "The Future of Energy"
Advisor: Po-Ya Abel Chuang
Research: Marc's project aims to make green hydrogen cheaper so we can get rid of fossil fuels like gasoline and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Michael Leveille
Physics
Title: "'Smart' Polymers"
Advisors: Sayantani Ghosh and Jennifer Lu
Research: Michael's research aims to create and test new materials, smart polymers that are adaptive to their environment, for diverse applications. With remote signaling, there's potential to control these materials from a galaxy far far away.
Karen Mohammadtabar
Mechanical Engineering
Wai Oo
Mechanical Engineering
Title: "Vanishing Friction"
Advisor: Mehmet Baykara
Research: Wai studies “superlubricity,” a special phenomenon where friction vanishes.
Yulissa Perez Rojas
Environmental Systems
Title: "Breathing Rain"
Advisor: Teamrat A. Ghezzehei
Research: For the past six decades, oxygen in rainwater has been overlooked when explaining the drastic carbon dioxide pulses after wetting dry soil. The purpose of this research is to bring a new hypothesis of how dissolved oxygen in rainwater provides another form of oxygen for soil microbial respiration.
Maia Powell
Applied Mathematics
Title: "Preventing Malicious Content Online"
Advisor: Arnold Kim
Research: Maia's research focuses on characterizing language and users on social media to prevent the spread of malicious discourse online.
Negar Seyedhassantehrani
Quantitative & Systems Biology
Advisor: Joel Spencer
Research: Negar is trying to investigate how the aging and the cytotoxic insult including radiotherapy and chemotherapy result in structural and molecular changes in the thymus microenvironment as a critical organ in the immune system.
Susana Tejeda-Garibay
Quantitative & Systems Biology
“Helpful Bacteria vs Valley fever fungus”
Advisor: Katrina Hoyer
Research: Susana studies the interactions between commensal bacteria and Coccidioides and their influence on host innate and adaptive immune responses.
Jessica Wilson
Quantitative & Systems Biology
"CBD: Wonder Drug or Dud"
Advisor: Rudy Ortiz
Research: Jessica’s research investigates the effects of cannabidiol (CBD), an abundant chemical produced by marijuana, on high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes.
