Cal State San Marcos researchers – along with colleagues from the San Diego Natural History Museum, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Research Experiences for Southern California Undergraduate Ecologists network (RESCUE-Net) – recently discovered a population of banana slugs at Palomar Mountain.

Now they are trying to determine if they stumbled on a new species of the slug, or if it is an existing species far from its usual home.

The team was so excited about its discovery that it blasted the news on social media after a population was found in photos on a nature app.

Fun fact: The mascot for UC Santa Cruz is the banana slug, which was selected in the 1980s. And in 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation making the banana slug the state’s official slug.

“This tells you about the importance of this slug … in the California culture,” said Sergio Nigenda Morales, a CSUSM assistant professor of biological sciences. “If it’s a different species and a really isolated population, that’s what I’m interested in studying. And it’s in our backyard, so we can just go and try to study them.”

“Great discoveries often begin with curiosity,” said Jackie Trischman, dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. “Dr. Nigenda Morales recognized a fascinating scientific mystery right here in our area and engaged students in the process of exploring it. That's exactly the kind of hands-on learning and discovery we value at CSUSM.”

The banana slug is a decomposer that eats dead organic matter such as fallen leaves, plants and moss, then recycles it into waste that fertilizes the soil. It got its name because it resembles a ripe banana, and it’s usually found on moist forest floors in the Pacific Northwest.

Nigenda Morales said there are two ways that the population of slugs could exist here in San Diego County. One, they could have been introduced from a population farther north. Two, the slugs could have existed on Palomar Mountain for a while but are now trapped there because of the hot, dry conditions in the area surrounding the mountain.

California is home to all six currently recognized banana slug species, which explains the cultural importance of these slugs for Californians, according to Nigenda Morales.

CSUSM got involved in the project after Nigenda Morales, who joined the faculty in 2023, spoke about his genetic research on mammals, particularly whales, at UC Santa Cruz in the spring of 2025. That’s when he was approached by Janet Leonard, a UCSC researcher who’s a leading expert on banana slug reproduction.

Leonard asked if he’d be willing to partner on research on the genetic makeup of banana slugs. UCSC provided the samples, and Nigenda Morales decided that the research would make a great class and lab for students at CSUSM in a course called “Population Genetics.”

The group started the process of extracting the DNA of the samples, and a few days later, Leonard connected Nigenda Morales with some researchers and scientists from Los Angeles.

The research and initial work began last August. A short time later, a discussion was held about possible banana slug sightings at Palomar Mountain, dating back to the 1980s or even '90s, that were never proven. However, on the iNaturalist app/website, which relies on citizen science for its data, photos of the slugs on the mountain were recorded for about 10 years before a decision was made to pursue the research.

The group decided to organize an expedition to the site and tried seven times to find the slug. Luckily, eight was the magic number.

As far as next steps, the group will send the samples it collected off to be studied against the other six known populations of slugs. Once that is done, an analysis will be conducted at CSUSM with students in Nigenda Morales’ lab.

“Once we get the samples back, we can work on figuring out how much genetic diversity there is and how big the population is,” Nigenda Morales said.

The researchers also are also studying to see if the slugs can survive on the mountain.

“With small populations, you can have genetic problems such as inbreeding; if we know about that, then we can take better care of them,” he said. “We cannot intervene, but because Palomar Mountain is a California state park, we can give some recommendations to the rangers.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Perron is leading a three-year, $1,085,815 project supported by the Laboratory for Physical Sciences, targeting one of the most demanding areas in modern science: quantum information science and technology (QIST).  

The effort builds on a previous Department of Energy RENEW award that equipped CSU undergraduate faculty to integrate quantum concepts into their courses. Now Perron is tackling the next barrier: getting students hands-on experience with the technology itself. 

"Most undergraduate QIST education is theoretical or textbook-focused," Perron said. "While simulations and cloud-accessible systems are valuable, the quantum sector also needs scientists and engineers with hands-on experience operating these systems. Because quantum technology is expensive and typically limited to research and industry settings, most students don't have access to that kind of training." 

Perron’s team is developing a curriculum that teaches core QIST lab competencies without requiring access to a full quantum system. The model will draw on data from quantum industry stakeholders to define workforce needs, then design and test the curriculum at CSUSM and partner institutions, measuring its effectiveness from the perspectives of students, faculty and potential employers. 

While Perron’s project focuses on preparing students for emerging careers in quantum science, other newly funded CSUSM projects are reimagining how students engage with mathematics and biology from the start of their academic journeys. 

"It's exciting to see our faculty leading nationally competitive projects that connect research and teaching in powerful ways," said Charles De Leone, dean of graduate studies and research. "These grants reflect what's possible at an institution like ours, where faculty are deeply invested in student success and bring that commitment into cutting-edge work." 

Additional projects funded this academic year include: 

• Rethinking the gateway to calculus 
  A $173,098 grant from the National Science Foundation supports a collaborative project led by mathematics professor Kimberly Ayers, in partnership with Florida International University, Clark College and the University of Virginia. The project introduces a more interactive model for teaching introductory calculus, a course that serves as a gateway to most STEM majors but has some of the highest failure and withdrawal rates nationally in undergraduate education. 
  Rather than lecture-centered instruction, students work in small groups to solve problems and explain their thinking out loud, building procedural skills alongside the mathematical confidence that research shows is essential to staying in STEM. The collaboration across four institutions allows the team to test the approach across different student populations and refine what works.
• Putting field research into the biology curriculum 
  Funded with a $499,970 grant from the National Science Foundation, a project led by biology professors Mallory Rice, George Vourlitis and Jane Kim will embed hands-on, community-driven scientific research directly into biology courses at CSUSM. Students will investigate biological questions about how urban development is affecting wildlife and natural resources across North San Diego County.
• Building the region’s behavioral and mental health workforce 
  CSUSM received a $450,000 grant from the County of San Diego to help strengthen the region’s health and human services workforce through a partnership with the county’s Health and Human Services Agency and San Diego State University.
• Preparing future public health leaders 
  Kim Pulvers, a professor of psychology, and Richard Armenta, an associate professor of kinesiology, received a competitive renewal award for the Research & Action for Community Health (REACH): CSUSM/UCSD Smoke and Vape Free Scholars Program in partnership with UC San Diego. The program trains undergraduate and master’s students to address tobacco-related health disparities through research, community engagement and public health workforce development. Since the program’s launch in 2022, scholars have presented their work more than 30 times, published nine papers and gone on to graduate programs and health-related careers. This $1,331,620 grant is funded by the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program. 

“What’s especially meaningful about these projects is the way they connect research, teaching and workforce preparation,” De Leone said. 

Research funding is an integral part of CSUSM’s “Blueprint for the Future” fundraising campaign, helping advance the university’s $200 million goal through both philanthropy and grants. 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

When she was growing up, her mother always made dentist trips a positive experience for Johnson and her brothers by offering them rewards for doing well in the office. Those positive childhood moments led Johnson to dream of working in health care and dentistry. 

Today, Johnson is one step closer to fulfilling that dream.

“I’m so excited. I feel like the finish line is right there,” said Johnson, a fifth-year general biology major and pre-dental student who's graduating from Cal State San Marcos this month. “I’m really excited to navigate the world outside of school, spend time with my family and husband, and start working as a dental assistant during my gap year.”

Along with a gap year to gain experience, Johnson plans to move to North Carolina with her family. She hopes to attend her top choice, the University of North Carolina, to study dentistry and become a dentist.

Johnson was an active member of the Pre-Dental Society at CSUSM. She joined the campus organization in spring 2024 and became the social media officer during the 2024-25 academic year. Her efforts in the club helped her achieve the role of senior president this fall.

“Being a part of that club taught me a lot about confidence and allowed me to be really comfortable speaking with other students,” she said. “I loved the leadership roles because of what they brought out in myself, and I loved being able to help and support others.”

Not only did the Pre-Dental Society give Johnson a place where she belonged, but it also helped her understand the path to dental school.

As club president, Johnson has tried to make clear to newer members that they should take their educational journey at their own pace. She often talks about her experience as a fifth-year student and how that extra time has benefited her academically.

“I feel like a lot of members think they need to graduate within a certain time, because in high school that’s what we’re told,” Johnson said. “We’re told, ‘You have to graduate college in four years,’ and sometimes that can be a little discouraging. I think it's nice for the members to hear that I’m a fifth-year and see that I’m not defeated by it. I’m enjoying the ride.”

Johnson also works hard to make the Pre-Dental Society a welcoming place for students. She encourages members to ask questions, informs them about volunteer opportunities and helps them connect with academic resources and see what lies ahead on the path to dentistry.

Her passion for creating and fostering a loving environment is evident to her peers and professors. James Kezos, an assistant professor of biology, has worked closely with Johnson in the classroom and lab.

“She is a very determined, hard-working and compassionate individual who has set high goals for herself,” Kezos said. “She is willing to learn and help with any task, showing exceptional levels of initiative and dedication. She excels at whatever responsibilities she undertakes, including her classwork, her research and her extracurriculars such as being president of the Pre-Dental Society.”

In the Fly Lab with Kezos, Johnson began studying the physiological adaptations to chronic high-sugar diets in Drosophila (fruit flies) and how these diets affect their heart health and lifespan. Johnson explained that because Drosophila share many genetic traits with humans and have such a short lifespan, they’re ideal subjects for biological study.

Alongside the study on high-sugar diets, Johnson has analyzed the Hedgehog signaling pathway in Drosophila heart function.

“If we’re discovering new things that could help someone else’s future research, if it could be applied in any way and help the human population, I think that’s really neat,” Johnson said. “I love that we’re taking steps forward to potentially help people. That’s what I want to do in my future, help people.”

As the Fly Lab’s sole data analyst, Johnson works closely with the flies’ heartbeats – noting that, in some cases, the flies have a fluorescent heart – by watching videos and turning that information into data through programs like Microsoft Excel.

“The biggest impact she has made has been her efforts in implementing a large statistical code to process and analyze our fly cardiac videos,” Kezos said. “Without her help, we would not be able to analyze any of our data, and probably would be struggling with fixing the code.”

Creating the code was a challenge that Johnson felt confident in tackling. She had data analysis experience from EOS Fitness, where she worked as a data coordinator. She also took a class on biological data analysis, so when Kezos mentioned that he had code that needed fixing, Johnson was quick to take on the project.

It took Johnson roughly two months to go through the nearly 3,000 lines of code. She watched thousands of videos, quantified the data and made it possible for the lab to analyze all of their hard work. Johnson referred to the project as the ultimate puzzle.

“It was so frustrating but also really rewarding,” she said. “That went beyond what I thought I was capable of, and just having the belief in myself that I could achieve that, it was such a rewarding feeling. It also strengthened my confidence in myself; I am capable of doing something like that. That was super empowering for me.”

Johnson has used these new skills to teach other students in the lab how to use the code to analyze data.

“Quetzalli has been an integral member of my lab, and has been a tremendous help in establishing the data analysis process,” Kezos said. “Without her efforts, initiative and care, we would not be as productive as we are today.”

When looking back on her time at CSUSM, Johnson said her biggest advice for future students is to get involved.

Transferring from Palomar College, Johnson thought she could handle everything on her own at CSUSM. She wasn’t thinking about joining clubs or finding community. But as she delved deeper into her coursework, she realized there was much she still needed to learn about the path ahead.

She first heard about the Pre-Dental Society in a Biology 101 class, and the timing felt right. She decided to go to a meeting, and the organization ended up giving her the guidance and support she hadn’t realized she was missing.

“I attended a meeting and thought, ‘This is so helpful,’ ” Johnson said. “Then, while I was at these meetings, I saw this community and the relationship between officers and members. I was like, ‘I really want to be a part of this,’ which was new for me. I had never felt like that before.”

Being a member of the Pre-Dental Society and volunteering with the Fly Lab helped Johnson grow as a student. The knowledge she gained from both, combined with community support, helped her see how she could give back.

Johnson’s newfound desire to get involved led her to participate in events such as the Student Poster Showcase. She presented a poster on the physiological responses to chronic high-sugar diets in Drosophila, the research she had done in the Fly Lab.

“Get involved, because it doesn’t hurt; it only helps. You build such a great community and you learn so much. You’re able to meet like-minded people and grow as a human being,” she said. “Enjoy the ride. Enjoy where you’re at in the moment. Enjoy the people around you. Slow down and just enjoy where you’re at.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

“Being in Dr. Luna’s lab has been such a great experience. He’s not only an amazing PI, but also a really great mentor,” said Oscar Loyola Torres, a molecular and cellular biology student.  

Luna, a biology professor at Cal State San Marcos, received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Universidad de Sonora in Mexico and a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Maryland. He decided to pursue postdoctoral research closer to his parents, who live in Mexico, which brought him to UC San Diego. 

Luna always knew he wanted to pursue a career in the STEM field, as his father is a mechanical engineer and his mother a nurse. During his Ph.D. studies, he joined the Summer Program in Neuroscience, Excellence and Success (SPINES), where he met a former CSUSM biology professor who further inspired his move to San Diego and his pursuit of a job at CSUSM. 

Luna believes that finding a good balance between research and teaching is important. He explained that one of his biophysics professors would play soccer with his students and invite them to important seminars, creating a meaningful relationship with the students beyond just research. So when he was told of the community between faculty and students at CSUSM, it felt like the right choice to apply. 

Luna has taught upper-division cellular and molecular biotechnology classes as well as biostatistics and bioengineering classes at CSUSM since 2017. He also occasionally teaches advanced molecular seminars, and currently he and his lab students are studying the effects of fat cells on breast cancer growth. 

The tests examine how lipid metabolism is driving parts of cancer growth. Lipid metabolism is the process of creating or breaking down lipids (fats) to help with energy storage, structural cell membrane support and cell signaling. Since breast tissue is full of lipids, it creates the perfect environment for cancer cells to thrive, utilizing these functions to their advantage.  

Luna and his students monitor the interactions between cancer cells and two different types of fat cells, white and brown adipocytes. These cells work to store energy, produce hormones and regulate body temperature, all basic functions crucial to the success of the human body.  

Utilizing his background in engineering, Luna and his students built a device that creates spheroids, 3D circular clusters of cells. The spheroid is made of biomaterials replicating human tissue, allowing the students to get the most accurate results from their cancer research. 

“There are so many things I get to learn from him and the lab that are helping me grow as both a student and a future physician,” Loyola Torres said. 

Luna said this is only a portion of what their research encapsulates. Every time a new discovery is made, it opens a door for further questioning, and the research continues. 

“When you have something in your mind and you get the chance and the resources to be able to put that into the world, it’s so exciting,” Luna said. 

Luna loves watching his students grow and be creative, as it reminds him of when he was a kid. Not only can he exercise his own creativity, but he gets to bring his students along for the journey. With him having watched some of them grow from first years to graduating Ph.D. students, the relationship Lopez has been able to create with his students makes his job all the more rewarding.  

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Growing up, Loyola Torres was interested in filmmaking and acting. But he found himself gravitating toward the medical field after taking anatomy and a biomedical elective course at San Marcos High School (it was in the latter class that he saw the sheep’s brain).  

Loyola Torres, a molecular and cellular biology major at Cal State San Marcos, is the first person in his family to attend college. Elementary school teachers told him that there would be a spot for him at CSUSM when the time came, thanks to CSUSM's K-12 Alliance, which motivated him to work hard from an early age. 

Loyola Torres’ efforts paid off, as he was honored recently as CSUSM’s recipient of the 2025 CSU Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement, California State University’s highest recognition of student accomplishment.  

The CSU recognizes 23 students every year – one from each campus – with the Trustees’ Award. Students are selected based on academic achievements, financial need, excellence in community service and personal hardship. Awardees have all demonstrated inspirational resolve along the path to college success, and many are the first in their families to attend college.  

“It's almost like imposter syndrome,” Loyola Torres said. “It was just an honor to receive the nomination.” 

Loyola Torres’ decision to attend CSUSM over other universities, including UC Riverside, was based on community and affordability. It was a place where he could be close to home while affording school, and his parents supported his decision.  

“My parents weren’t able to pursue higher education, so that motivated me,” Loyola Torres said. “I have the privilege of pursuing it, so I have always planned on it.” 

As a Pathmaker intern at Palomar Medical Center Escondido, Loyola Torres saw the language barriers that Spanish-speaking patients often experience in health care.  

“I have the privilege of speaking both English and Spanish,” he said. “A lot of the patients struggle with understanding what the doctors are saying. I'm going to be able to almost close that gap in the language barrier.” 

Loyola Torres also serves in CSUSM's COMPASS research internship, which recruits local high school students and trains them in stem cell science. Expanding hands-on learning opportunities through internships like this is one of the goals of CSUSM’s recently launched “Blueprint for the Future” fundraising campaign. Research and industry partnerships are a key part of how the university prepares students such as Loyola Torres to thrive in the workforce. 

Loyola Torres works in biology professor Carlos Luna Lopez’s lab, studying breast cancer cells. Along with a master’s student, Loyola Torres investigates cell culture and how breast cancer cells grow.  

This fall, Loyola Torres will serve as president of the campus’ MedLife club, which aims to combat health care shortages and help increase essential health care services to low-income communities in Latin America and Africa. He calls it one of his biggest accomplishments.  

Reflecting on his journey, Loyola Torres is proud of his growth. From entering his first year as a quiet student to working internships, serving as a club president and being nominated for an award, he is thankful for these opportunities.  

“My GEL professor freshman year told me I have to be comfortable with the uncomfortable,” Loyola Torres said. “I'm proud of myself, because I don't know what I would have been doing right now if I didn't open up or didn't receive that advice." 

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

The grants come from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The faculty members involved from CSUSM include assistant biology professor Mallory Rice, associate biology professor Jane Kim, biology professor George Vourlitis, kinesiology professor Todd Astorino and assistant math professor Kim Ayers.

Rice is the principal investigator (with Kim and Vourlitis as co-PIs) of a three-year, $499,970 grant from the NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program). The project aims to increase student success by ensuring that every CSUSM biology student participates in multiple research experiences while enrolled in their lower- and upper-division courses. Research projects will investigate how urban development impacts wildlife and natural resources in North San Diego County.

The grant will be supported by the CSUSM-based National Latino Research Center, with Konane Martinez (faculty director of the NLRC and chair of the anthropology department) serving in a senior personnel role.

Astorino received a $442,590 Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) from the NIH. He will conduct a randomized controlled trial with 60 inactive adults, who will complete 24 sessions of reduced exertion high-intensity interval training (REHIT), a variation of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that requires only two 20-second sprints within a 10-minute session. Astorino then will compare the resultant changes in cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), substrate metabolism and psychological response to a non-exercising control group.

The trial will expand work in the field showing that REHIT increases CRF and other health-related outcomes, but that has been criticized due to its small sample size, serving to question the broad application of REHIT in adults.

Ayers received a $173,098 grant from the NSF in collaboration with Florida International University and the University of Virginia. The three universities will adapt and implement the Modeling Practices in Calculus (MPC) approach, which has been shown to significantly improve learning and success for a broad collection of introductory calculus students. At the core of MPC is the opportunity for students to work cooperatively and discuss key mathematical ideas in a face-to-face, small-group setting. After adoption and implementation, CSUSM and its partners will identify three additional sites that will join the project in its second year. 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

She'll be thinking about her primary Cal State San Marcos mentor, biology professor Carlos Luna Lopez. She'll be thinking about her impending enrollment at UC Irvine to begin a Ph.D. program in cancer research.

Mostly, though, she'll be thinking about her parents.

Rodriguez’s father and mother never got the chance to pursue higher education, with her dad stopping in sixth grade and her mom in first grade. Rodriguez grew up in Oceanside with three siblings, and for the first 18 years of her life, she and her entire family resided in a house owned by a relative. Her father would rise by 5 a.m. seven days a week to do landscaping work, and still it was barely enough to scape by.

Many parents in that situation would have urged their children to drop out of school to help earn money for the family, but Rodriguez’s parents thought differently.

“They have always supported my journey of higher education, which I’m very, very thankful for,” Rodriguez said. “They didn’t choose not to have an education. They didn’t have an opportunity to. My mom used to tell me that if she could have gone to college, she would have become a nurse.”

On her path to a science degree, Rodriguez benefited from more than just parental support. She had a sibling role model in her sister, Tanya, who’s only one year older and resembles Valeria so much that they’re often mistaken for twins. Tanya preceded Valeria at CSUSM (graduating in 2024) and, after taking a gap year, also will be starting a Ph.D. program in the fall, at UC Santa Cruz for immunology.

Then there was her high school. Rodriguez had the advantage of attending Mission Vista, the newest high school in Vista Unified School District, which offers a program called Project Lead the Way that allows students to get a head start in STEM disciplines like biomedicine and engineering.

As a result, Rodriguez arrived at CSUSM having been exposed to and liking science, specifically biology. It was at CSUSM, however, that she discovered research and the notion – previously unimaginable to her – that research could be a career.

After her freshman year, she joined the lab of Luna, the biology professor, for the Summer Scholars program in 2022. She wanted to do research involving the human body, and she liked that Luna specialized in breast cancer research.

Rodriguez has been a member of Luna’s lab ever since. She worked on a project to learn how different types of fat cells (brown and white) affect how breast cancer spreads, growing such cells in the lab and using a special microscope to examine how they change shape. She also helped the lab transition to employing 3D models to study breast cancer cells since, as she points out, “humans are 3D, so hopefully we make research a lot more relevant if we use a model that’s closer to us.”

“Dr. Luna is the best mentor I’ve ever had,” Rodriguez said. “He’s very honest when it comes to meeting realistic goals but also supports me in the path that I want to follow. And he’s a very fun guy.”

After she caught the research bug through Summer Scholars, Rodriguez set her sights even higher for the subsequent two summers, gaining acceptance to premier undergraduate research programs through Stanford University and the Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle.

Outside of the lab, she became heavily involved with both the Center for Training, Research and Educational Excellence (CTREE) – the hub for research-based initiatives at CSUSM – and The Alliance, a program aimed at increasing access to college education for area K-12 students. She also maintained a 3.96 GPA while being honored as one of the first two CSUSM students ever to receive a Barry Goldwater scholarship, a prestigious national award that recognizes leadership potential in research science.  

Of being a first-generation Latina scientist, Rodriguez said: “It has been difficult. Sometimes I feel like I’m behind, like I’m sprinting a marathon rather than jogging it. But I’ve learned to appreciate the small moments, whether it’s winning an award, having a happy time with my family and friends, or just chatting about life with Dr. Luna. Those moments motivate me to continue and overcome the hardships that I’ve gone through.”

Luna and Denise Garcia, the director of CTREE, said Rodriguez is one of the most motivated and talented students they’ve encountered in their careers as professors.

“I put her in the top 1% of students that I’ve worked with,” Luna said. “She displays a great deal of dedication, intellectual capacity and compassion. She is driven to be a leader and role model in the field of cancer research.”

The drive is innate in Rodriguez. It was forged as a child as she watched her parents struggle to assimilate into American culture and establish a livelihood. It carried her through her high school years amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when her whole family was stuck inside the rented room, which simultaneously brought them closer together and drove them crazy.

Now, with her family having moved out and living in their own apartment, that inner drive will propel Rodriguez toward a doctorate in UC Irvine’s Cellular and Molecular Biosciences program, which she could start as soon as next month.

“I’ve always been motivated to get a college degree and a Ph.D.,” she said. “Yes, I want to have a better life for myself, but more importantly, I want to thank my parents and make them proud.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The conference – planned by CSUSM biology professors Jane Kim, Sergio Nigenda-Morales and Carlos Luna Lopez – is one of the oldest events for undergraduates to present their research. 

Some of the conference talk sessions included subjects such as microbiology, neurobiology and physiology. Svasti Haricharan, who started an independent lab focused on non-canonical roles of DNA repair proteins in promoting treatment responsiveness at Sanford Burnham Prebys in La Jolla in 2018, was the event's keynote speaker. Haricharan recently moved to San Diego State as an associate professor of biology to continue her research. She is also a full member of the Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego.

The goal of the conference is to provide a forum for undergraduate researchers to present original data that they've generated in the fields of biology, biochemistry, biophysics and related fields, and to foster intercollegiate interactions among students and faculty who share a commitment to undergraduate research in the biological sciences.

“CSUSM, President Ellen Neufeldt, CSTEM Dean Jackie Trischman and the Office of the Provost supported this conference from the beginning, allowing the planning team to have the time to prepare for the conference,” Luna said. “This further demonstrates CSUSM’s commitment to undergraduate research and to form a supportive scientific community.” 

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim assistant director of editorial and external affairs
ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Mendoza has worked in the lab of biology professor Elinne Becket for two years, applying her independent research skills to studying taxonomic and functional profiles associated with plastic marine substrates.

In her recommendation letter for the award, Becket noted that “Marisa has already made a tremendous impact on our lab’s research productivity, leading efforts on two projects. Overall, Marisa is an incredible researcher who is effective, reliable, collaborative and highly resilient.”

Becket said Mendoza began making an impact while still a student at Palomar College before transferring to CSUSM. In furthering her education at CSUSM, Mendoza continues to give back by mentoring students in the Bridges to the Baccalaureate program, which prepares community college students who are interested in biomedical research careers to seamlessly transition to four-year universities.

“She is already an exceptional researcher at such an early stage, and her grit, integrity and adaptability will lead her to be very successful in her Ph.D. endeavors and beyond,” Becket wrote. “I believe she will make a strong impact in the microbiology field in her future career.”

The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established in 1986, and the scholarship program that honors Sen. Barry Goldwater was designed to identify, encourage and financially support outstanding undergraduates interested in pursuing research careers in the sciences, engineering and mathematics.

From a pool of more than 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, 1,350 science, engineering and mathematics students were nominated by 445 academic institutions to compete for the 2025 Goldwater scholarships.

Learn more about applying for the Goldwater Scholarship and other opportunities by visiting CSTEM's Funding Opportunities webpage.

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim assistant director of editorial and external affairs
ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

The documentary, “Good Natured” by filmmaker Ashley Stokes, takes viewers on a journey through Florida’s wild spaces, introducing individuals dedicated to conservation, innovation and “striking a balance between human progress and environmental stewardship.”

Díaz-Almeyda attended the premiere at the Tampa Theatre on Feb. 19. The documentary aired on PBS on Feb. 27 and can now be watched on its website.

Díaz-Almeyda was connected with Stokes through a former colleague in Florida, and she says she bonded with the filmmaker instantly through a shared vision of how to confront climate change. Díaz-Almeyda’s portion of the documentary focuses on her work at Triangle Ranch, which features a permanent conservation easement just north of Myakka River State Park. She collected three years of data and observed high microbial diversity.

“Microbial ecology means that I study small, invisible microbes,” Díaz-Almeyda said. “I want to know which microbes are where and what are they doing. Most microbes are beneficial and are needed for ecosystem health. My goal is to support decision-makers to document how their practices have an impact at microbial level.”

Díaz-Almeyda came to CSUSM in 2023 from New College of Florida because she wanted to be closer to family. At CSUSM, besides teaching in the biology department, she is a faculty fellow through the Innovation Hub. In that role, she created the Milpa Hub, a project that aims to promote the growth of milpas – traditional agricultural systems – to promote environmental and community resilience.

Díaz-Almeyda says the experience with the documentary motivated her to seek training in science communication. As a result, she was awarded a National Science Foundation-funded science communications fellowship for pre-tenure faculty of color through the SciComm Identities Project, a joint venture of the University of Rhode Island’s Metcalf Institute, Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and the URI Science and Story Lab.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Scientists who had the proper academic underpinning. Scientists who were passionate and driven. Scientists who weren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and work hard.

And it certainly didn’t hurt if they were, like him, scientists who had graduated from Cal State San Marcos.

“I brought on board some of my previous classmates and really kept an eye out for any fresh grads from CSUSM who were just looking for an opportunity,” Greely said. “Because I know the educational basis that they're operating with and their scientific expertise. But on top of that, one of the things that I've noticed about the CSUSM community is really the push to strive for more.”

Greely would know, since he is one of those strivers. One of two children of a single mother who was a victim of domestic abuse, the North County native embarked on a decade-long journey (interrupted multiple times at multiple schools) in higher education that ended in a single academic year at CSUSM, from which he graduated with a degree in biology in 2017.

What a year it was, however. It helped propel Greely into a job at Carlsbad’s Trinity Biotech, which he then parlayed into a position at TriLink BioTechnologies by May 2018. Almost seven years later, he’s still there, having been promoted six times, most recently in 2023 to associate director of nucleic acid products manufacturing.

TriLink has about 200 employees, and Greely estimates that up to 10% of them are CSUSM alumni. Included in that group are a couple of others who are high in the company’s hierarchy: Justin Barbosa, vice president and general manager of discovery; and Evan Myers, associate director of process development.

“CSUSM provides a high-level education that prepares us for the future,” said Myers, a 2016 graduate who tutored Greely through the STEM Success Center when they were both students and now works with him closely at TriLink. “Chris is an exceptional worker who brings huge value to the company.”

At no time was that more clear than in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the virus was beginning to rage out of control, BioNTech, the German biopharma giant and an existing client of TriLink’s, approached the company asking for its assistance in producing a vaccine that would combat COVID.

TriLink, which specializes in the synthesis of nucleic acids and mRNA capping analogs, possesses a proprietary technology called CleanCap that simplifies mRNA manufacturing by removing additional enzymatic steps, resulting in higher efficiency and better yields. BioNTech wanted as much CleanCap as it could get its hands on.

There was just one problem: TriLink had recently moved into a new building in Sorrento Valley, and its GMP (an industry term that stands for “good manufacturing practices”) lab wasn’t operational yet. So while Greely was building out his team from five people to 45 to prepare for the heightened demand from BioNTech, he also had to devise a solution that would bridge the gap from where TriLink was in its manufacturing capacity to where it was going. That involved doing some of their work in a standard chemistry lab like the ones Greely utilized back at CSUSM and the rest in a temporary GMP lab.

“It enabled us to partner with BioNTech and Pfizer and say, ‘Hey, we understand we’re not equipped right now to satisfy your needs, but we’ll make it happen,’ ” Greely said.

By the time the state-of-the-art lab facility was completed, Greely and his team were ready to hit the ground running. Starting on Valentine’s Day in 2021, they worked around the clock every day for about eight months to ensure that BioNTech had enough CleanCap to produce the vast amounts of COVID vaccine necessary to inoculate millions of people around the globe.

“It was an enormous satisfaction knowing that you were helping your community, the overall population, the whole world,” Greely said. “During the pandemic, some of my lead engineers would say things like, ‘I’m coming in at 2 a.m. because you called me, because the equipment is down, and at the end of the day, I want my daughter to be able to go back to school.’ That was huge.”

Greely was prepared for such a period of growth, both personal and professional, because of the training he received at CSUSM. He vividly remembers a biochemistry course with professor Kambiz Hamadani that was three units but seemed like twice that. At the time, Greely felt overwhelmed by the volume of work, but once he was a new employee at TriLink, he suddenly found himself grateful for the grueling experience.

“The principles that Hamadani taught and the ground that his virtual lab covered prepared me for some of the standard operating procedures I would see in the lab within my first three months of starting my job,” he said. “That was eye-opening for me, the real-world application of what’s being taught at CSUSM.”

After growing like gangbusters during the pandemic, TriLink contracted in 2023 as the demand for the COVID vaccine decreased. But the company is coming off a prosperous year fueled by the development of a new iteration of CleanCap that’s being used by industry partners for cell and gene therapy that could help cure diseases.

“Whenever I interview anyone, they always ask me, ‘What do you love about TriLink?’ ” Greely said. “And my response always stays the same: I am never bored. It’s all about pushing to that new benchmark, clearing that next hurdle, seeing how far we can take our intellectual property for the betterment of the human experience.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The committee reviewed student applications, including a short essay, to select five semifinalists. Based on their poster presentations at the CSUSM Student Poster Showcase on Dec. 3, Steppat and Serrano were selected.  

Steppat, mentored by biology professor Dennis Kolosov, showcased her research at the poster showcase on “Voltage-gated Potassium Channels Regulate Cell-Specific Ion and Fluid Transport in Malpighian Tubule Epithelium of an Important Agricultural Crop Pest, larval Trichoplusia ni.”  

The committee recognized Steppat’s ability to embrace unpredictability and problem-solving while conducting research.  

Serrano works with chemistry and biochemistry professor Kang Du to study the magnetism of iron. Serrano presented her research titled, “Developing Rigid Mixed-Valent Fe₂ Complexes to Facilitate Double-Exchange Magnetic Coupling.”

The committee was impressed by Serrano’s creativity and collaboration as well as her clear communication of research applications. 

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim assistant director of editorial and external affairs
ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

This award honors faculty and lecturers who have excelled in mentoring and guiding students in research or creative endeavors. It also recognizes those who have significantly increased the number and diversity of students involved in research. 

Kolosov has mentored 33 students, most belonging to groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Kolosov provides career-advancing opportunities to his students by offering co-authorship of publications and helping with conference presentations.  

He has two publications with student co-authors with nine more in review. Kolosov shows his dedication to mentoring students by participating in professional development opportunities.  

Majd has also put mentoring students at the forefront of her career since starting at CSUSM in 2014. She has mentored 40 students in research, 24 graduate students in their master’s theses and 14 undergraduate students. Majd’s mentored students were funded through Summer Scholars and the Learning Aligned Employment Program.  

Majd fosters diversity by mentoring first-generation, Hispanic and female students. Many of her students advance to graduate programs or secure competitive industry positions with Apple or Qualcomm. 

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim assistant director of editorial and external affairs
ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

One day, McDermid will be meeting with a company that is developing what are effectively electric helicopters designed to cover distances of less than 100 miles – basically, an Uber for the skies. The next day, she’ll sit down with a business that’s building a device that captures a semi truck’s carbon emissions directly from the tailpipe, pumps it into a tank, then either buries it underground or sells the CO2 for use in products like soda.  

Still other days might include huddles with firms that make rooftop solar panels, heat pump water heaters, even self-driving cars.   

“Each of the clients that I work with, I get a chance to embed in their team,” McDermid said. “I get to jump around. And not only is the subject matter different, but the people are different and the vibe is different. I like that diversity.” 

Those clients, in turn, value McDermid’s expertise, so much so that they’re willing to pay handsomely for it, in many cases while they’re still trying to get off the ground as a startup. The Cal State San Marcos alumna is the founding partner of Caliber Strategies, a Sacramento-based lobbying firm that helps energy and climate companies – whether sexy startups or stodgy utilities – navigate the regulatory maze that is the California policy arena.  

In doing so, McDermid draws on almost two decades of experience in state politics and policymaking, going back to when she was a clean energy adviser to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in her early 20s, only a few years after graduating from CSUSM with a degree in biology.  

“I founded this company because it’s really challenging to bring new technologies to market, especially in a place like California where the market rules are quite complex and there are all these different agencies doing different things,” McDermid said. “We focus exclusively on climate and energy, and primarily on what I refer to as disruptive technologies.” 

Founded in 2013, Caliber now totals eight employees, and one of McDermid’s fellow partners is Michael Picker, former president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the nonpartisan body charged with regulating the state’s utilities. The company has almost 50 clients, including investment management giant Blackstone, accounting firm KPMG and Sunrun, one of the nation’s biggest solar installers. 

Sometimes Caliber’s clients take the form of a legacy company that’s opening a new product line. A.O. Smith Corporation, for example, has been around for 150 years and is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of water heaters and boilers, with annual sales of almost $4 billion. But as California increasingly moves toward the full electrification of all buildings, A.O. Smith is gravitating toward heat pumps, which heat water using electricity instead of gas.  

Enter Caliber. The company worked with a team of nonprofit, industry and environmental organizations to help pass legislation to allocate about $44 million in incentives for heat pumps. Caliber then led an effort with this coalition and the CPUC to design an incentive program that would offer state residents payments of up to $7,300 for installing heat pumps.  

Another category of clients is fledgling businesses with an innovative solution to a climate-related problem. Charm Industrial is a Bay Area startup with a mission to, as its website touts, “put oil back underground,” an elegantly simple description of the complex science involved in carbon capture and sequestration. Charm approached Caliber in its infancy, seeking to get introduced to the right people, increase its name recognition and create a market from scratch.  

“It’s about streamlining the process, and even more so trying to educate regulators,” McDermid said. “We educate regulators and policymakers about what the needs of new technologies are. After the policymaker has already said, for example, we want electric cars and you have the market ready, there remain all these barriers that no one has figured out. So it’s a collaborative process to figure out how we get from where we are now to where we want to be.” 

It was at CSUSM where McDermid discovered her twin passions for environmental science and public policy. Having initially enrolled at the university on a cross country and track and field scholarship (she competed for two years before injuries forced her to stop), she decided she wanted to pursue conservation biology and save the earth one planted tree at a time.  

At some point in her college journey, however, it dawned on her that planting trees – even 10 to 20 acres worth – couldn’t compare with, say, protecting millions of acres through legislation. As a junior, McDermid spent the fall semester in Washington, D.C., as part of the Panetta Congressional Internship Program, and when she returned, she ran for and was elected president of Associated Students, Inc., for her senior year in 2004-05. She even started a progressive activist organization with some friends.  

“CSUSM was this perfect testing ground to try out all these different things,” she said. 

Using her student experience as a springboard, McDermid was accepted after graduation into the Capital Fellows Program, an initiative through Sacramento State that offers paid, full-time fellowships in each branch of California’s government. She was assigned to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office for a year, followed by a year working in the office of First Lady Maria Shriver.  

In 2008, McDermid got her big break when Susan Kennedy, still early in her tenure as Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, acted on a recommendation to tap McDermid as her top deputy. Kennedy was seeking not an executive assistant but someone who could step into her high-pressure position when necessary and not miss a beat. In McDermid, she found a kindred spirit, essentially a younger version of herself.  

“She was perfect,” Kennedy said. “She looked out at the landscape from the perspective of, if she were the chief of staff to the governor, how would you prepare for this? How would you brief him on this? What information do you need from the agencies or the departments or the senior staff? 

“It’s a very tough role to step into, and she earned everyone’s respect because she was so good at what she did. She made me twice as good at what I was doing because she was as good as me.” 

Near the end of his eight years as governor, Schwarzenegger began to feel a particular urgency to buttress his accomplishments in the climate space. He tasked Kennedy with figuring out how to secure permitting for a host of renewable energy projects being incentivized by the Obama administration, and Kennedy in turn tasked not only Picker – the former CPUC president and current Caliber partner – but also McDermid.  

“It was a failure-is-not-an-option initiative by the governor,” Kennedy said. “I gave Michael all the power, and I gave him the most powerful weapon I could think of, which was Manal. The two of them were responsible for basically unlocking gigawatts of renewable energy in California, which completely changed the landscape of the state’s climate initiatives.” 

McDermid’s efforts were so successful that, when Schwarzenegger left office in 2011 and Jerry Brown entered, she was among just a handful of staffers retained out of the nearly 100 in the governor’s office. She departed later that year to take a job in Washington as a lobbyist for NextEra Energy, an electric utility holding giant, before Kennedy lured her back to California in 2013.  

With her longtime mentor, McDermid launched not only Caliber but also Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS), a company that was born out of the shuttering of the San Onofre nuclear power station in June 2013. That closure created an immediate 20% power shortage in large portions of Los Angeles, a gap that AMS filled by building what McDermid called the “world’s largest virtual power plant” – battery storage systems at commercial sites like Kaiser Permanente, Irvine Company and Walmart. Over time, AMS shifted its focus from developing those large-scale energy storage projects to providing software that allowed others to optimize their own energy storage assets. 

When AMS was sold in 2020, McDermid rededicated herself to Caliber, which had been on the back burner for a few years. During the pandemic, she got married and moved from San Diego (where she grew up after her family escaped war-torn Lebanon when she was 3) to Santa Barbara, her husband’s hometown. Manal and Hitch, her husband, have a 3-year-old son, Malek.  

McDermid makes frequent trips to Sacramento and to San Francisco, where Caliber has a small office. Not coincidentally, the Bay Area also is the headquarters of the CPUC, one of the regulatory bodies that Caliber works closely with, along with the California Energy Commission, the Air Resources Board and the Natural Resources Agency. 

Many for-profit companies have an adversarial relationship with the regulators that establish the rules governing them, but that’s not the case with Caliber or most of its clients. They’re all in the same boat and rowing in the same direction when it comes to the state’s ambitious climate goals, which is one of myriad reasons why McDermid loves the work she does.  

“We’re very focused in California precisely because we actually want to get things done,” McDermid said. “I don’t want to spend my time convincing someone that climate change is a problem or that we should put more electric vehicles on the roads. The nice thing about California is, at the highest level, the leadership is completely bought in on what the problem is. And it’s more about figuring out: How do we solve it?” 

Manal Yamout McDermid 

Major at CSUSM: Biology 

Graduation year: 2005 

Company: Caliber Strategies 

Website: caliberstrat.com 

Founded: 2013 

Number of employees: 8 

Talking Business With Manal Yamout McDermid

What's the best advice you received about starting a business? 

Work with people you like. It's super simple, but if you pick people you like and admire and want to spend an inordinate amount of time with, you really can't go wrong. In some ways, getting the people right is more important than the idea and the path to market.  

What advice would you give budding entrepreneurs? 

Same advice as the first one: Choose your partners carefully, and choose them based on their character, their integrity and your level of trust in them. Don’t just think about breaking into a market. 

What's the greatest challenge in starting your own business? 

I think it's the uncertainty and the self-doubt that come with it, like: Should I grow? The greatest challenge is believing that as you scale up, things will work out, and getting the confidence to take that next step. 

Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently?  

No. I'm a firm believer that whatever happens was supposed to happen, and it doesn't mean that it was good. But I wouldn't have done it differently.  

What are the qualities of a good entrepreneur?  

I would say confidence, belief in yourself. The ability to really pay attention to what's happening around you, whether that's the market or the people you surround yourself with. 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

I still have the picture I drew in elementary school when I was 8 years old. It’s a self-portrait with my dream job scrawled on the paper: “scantist.” 

I came across that picture not so long ago and, while my spelling has improved greatly since then, the statistics related to the number of Black people employed in science and engineering remain stark. Just 3% are Black men, according to the National Science Foundation. The numbers are worse for Black women like me – just 2%. 

But I’ve never been someone to let numbers define me or statistics deter me from pursuing my dreams.  

That’s probably a good thing considering I’m also part of another group that, statistically, struggles to complete college – former foster youth. Less than 3% of former foster youth earn a bachelor’s degree, according to the Education Commission of the States. 

I’m proud that I’m part of those small groups since graduating from Cal State San Marcos in May with my bachelor’s in biological sciences. Now I want to help other students do the same and see those percentages grow. Much like me, most just need an opportunity. 

It’s a lesson I learned from my grandmother, who taught me the importance of simply showing up and taking a chance on someone. In my grandmother’s case, she took in my three sisters and me when our mother couldn’t care for us. 

I’m also grateful to CSUSM for taking a chance on me. At the university, I had the good fortune of being in U-RISE, which is the Undergraduate Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement program. Part of CSUSM’s Center for Training, Research and Educational Excellence, or CTREE for short, the U-RISE program prepares talented and motivated underrepresented students majoring in the sciences to enter and succeed in doctoral studies.  

It was in U-RISE that I met some truly special mentors who stepped up on my behalf. 

CTREE and U-RISE have eligibility requirements – and I didn’t meet all of them. It’s not that I wasn’t good at science or passionate about my studies. But my grades weren't at the level that U-RISE requires. I had always been a strong student in high school. I earned a spot on the honor roll each semester and was involved in numerous extracurricular activities. But I struggled when I started college. I wasn’t as prepared as I thought. 

Fortunately for me, CTREE’s leaders looked beyond the numbers (in this case, my grade-point average). They took into account the challenges I was working to overcome and saw my potential. They were willing to take a chance on me. And it was truly life-changing. 

Becoming part of U-RISE led me to a spot in the lab of biology professor Dennis Kolosov, who was there for me every step of the way. Whether it was answering a question, meeting one-on-one or providing professional development, Dr. Kolosov was crucial to my development and shaping my identity as a scientist. 

The support that CSUSM provides is second to none, from faculty like Dr. Kolosov and Dr. Mallory Rice, who inspire students each day, to staff like Shanelle Watkins, the Black Student Success Initiatives coordinator in the Black Student Center. 

This fall, I’m starting a Ph.D. program at UC Irvine, where I will be studying immunology. While I put in years of hard work to get here, my support system at CSUSM was critical in helping me reach this point. 

I’m looking forward to helping other students like me in the future, whether through a nonprofit organization to give back to the community in my hometown of Rialto near San Bernardino, or by helping STEM students at CSUSM navigate the path toward their degree. 

I know firsthand how important representation is for students of marginalized groups, and I know what it’s like to persevere. Each time I have fallen, I have gotten back up. I crawled, walked and ran toward my degree at CSUSM. Now, I want to serve as a positive example and role model to ensure that other students facing similar challenges aren’t left behind. 

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

The awards honor a staff and a faculty member for their contribution toward the achievement of the university's mission and demonstrated service to the campus community.

Romo, the resident director of North Commons, previously worked at campus housing during her time as a student at CSUSM. She was a resident adviser in CSUSM Housing & Residential Education in 2016, and a senior RA for the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years. During that time, Romo led conversations and programs that focused on personal development and cultural differences. In 2021, Romo returned to CSUSM as resident director of North Commons, the first-year-only on-campus housing. She works alongside the Residential Learning Communities and Residential Peer Mentors (RPM) and, through her personal approach, encourages them to become trusted mentors who help develop a stronger community. 

Romo recognized the need for intentional engagement and crafted initiatives that helped improve the RPM program and empower students to thrive academically and personally. 

Garcia, a biology professor and the director of CTREE, has brought in millions of dollars in external funding to CSUSM. In addition, she is an effective grant writer and offers formal and informal training for junior faculty on grant writing and acquisition of external funding. Garcia seeks out grants and other forms of support to ensure that students are supported through mentoring, access to resources and that they receive funding to support their research and education. Garcia supports undergraduate students by helping them with networking opportunities and by providing funding through her training grants, allowing students and their mentors to attend conferences to help advance students' professional development.

Garcia’s work and the work of CTREE was recently recognized by the National Institutes of Health where CSUSM was recognized along with nine other universities as recipients for Institutional Excellence in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim assistant director of editorial and external affairs
ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

The plankton that she has devoted her career to researching consist of just a single cell, but the things that happen in that one cell enchant her. A particular species of plankton, for example, acquires its energy both like a human (through consumption) and a plant (through photosynthesis). Another type can devour a cell that’s photosynthesizing, steal its chloroplasts (essentially the machinery for energy production) and use it to photosynthesize itself.  

Some plankton can, like a python, ingest things considerably larger in size. They do this either by inserting the single-celled equivalent of a straw into their prey and sucking out the insides, or by releasing a veil of sorts around the prey, digesting it outside the cell and then slurping it in.  

And those are just feeding habits. It’s not to mention the brilliant blue glowing that plankton generate off the coast at certain times of year – otherwise known as bioluminescence. 

“I'm just amazed at all the cool things that plankton do,” Taniguchi said. “It's fascinating to me how a single cell can do so much. And they have so many behaviors that we just are learning to appreciate now.” 

Taniguchi has been a biology professor at Cal State San Marcos since 2018, but her deep personal and professional interest in plankton dates back much farther, to when she was an undergraduate student at UC San Diego almost two decades ago. It helped fuel her through a master’s and Ph.D. program in biological oceanography at UCSD, as well as three stints as a postdoctoral researcher, two at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one at MIT. It motivated her to embark on five different ocean expeditions to conduct intensive studies for weeks at a time with no land in sight.  

It also drives her to keep advancing scientific understanding of what are easily the most abundant organisms of the sea, with an estimated population of over one billion in a single liter of seawater. Plankton serves as the base of the food web; without it, there would be no whales or dolphins or penguins.  

“They're sort of like the grass of the ocean,” Taniguchi said. “That's why studying this biology that forms the foundation for all the sea creatures that the public knows about is important because anything that happens to plankton is going to have ramifications for all the bigger things that we tend to notice as humans. That’s why I really like studying them – not only because they do such cool stuff, but they are fundamentally important to life in the ocean, which as a biologist I'm very passionate about.” 

As an undergrad at UCSD, Taniguchi actually earned bachelor’s degrees in biology and math (she graduated summa cum laude in both disciplines in 2006), and she relies heavily on this dual expertise in her plankton research. Taniguchi the biologist makes frequent treks to the coast to gather water samples, though she saves her most important collections for her sea voyages. 

Her most recent one came during the pandemic, in the summer of 2020 (she had to quarantine in a hotel for a week beforehand), on a ship based out of Scripps Oceanography in La Jolla. For more than two weeks, she collected water at varying depths using special bottles ranging from 3 to 4 feet tall and 10 liters in volume. Then Taniguchi analyzed the specimens to determine what type of plankton were found where, how quickly they were growing and how quickly they were being eaten. The twist in her experiment was looking at how the results vary during the day versus the night, which meant even more hours of work on top of the normally grueling schedule at sea, and precious little sleep.  

“If plankton are growing more during the day and then being eaten at night,” she said, “that’s going to have a really big effect on how their populations are changing just over a 24-hour period.” 

One of Taniguchi’s students, Anissa Garcia (who’s in the biology master’s program at CSUSM after graduating from the university last year), carried on the experiment through her own ocean expedition in 2021, and the pair now is collaborating with CSUSM biology professor Elinne Beckett to examine the DNA of the collected plankton.

Then there’s Taniguchi the mathematician. She taught herself computer programming through a college internship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and before being hired at CSUSM, she took a brief detour into working as a software developer for a private company. That experience now proves invaluable. She has built a mathematical model that uses computer code to simulate interactions between plankton. The objective is to examine how predator and prey communities interact in an environmental setting, with the findings having significant repercussions.  

“Dr. Taniguchi's ability with dynamic models allows us to look at complex processes in a realistic but simplified way,” said Susanne Menden-Deuer, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island and one of Taniguchi’s mentors. “We can turn things on and off and ask ‘what if’ questions: What if this predator eats only smaller prey. What if it eats only every other day? These questions are important, as the answers determine how much production of organic matter will result. Organic matter is the basis for fisheries but also how carbon cycles through the ecosystem. 

“Dr. Taniguchi’s research is addressing crucial questions about how plankton dynamics in the ocean can be incorporated into predictive, global model simulations to understand the large-scale ramifications of the biogeochemical processes that are driven ultimately by individual, microscopic cells. Her work is essential to gain a predictive understanding of how organisms might respond to a changing planet and thus is at the heart of solving critical problems involving global biogeochemical cycles, fisheries production and the ocean’s response to and role in climate change.” 

As vital as Taniguchi’s research is to oceanography, she’s more than just a scholar on a ship or in front of a computer. After studying and working at UCSD for more than a decade, she was drawn to CSUSM because of its strong commitment to teaching in addition to research. She’s dedicated to incorporating students in her studies and she’s determined to increase opportunities in science for historically and presently excluded students.  

Taniguchi’s second postdoc project at Scripps Oceanography involved helping develop and run a marine science education program for middle school students in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego – some of them had never seen the Pacific Ocean despite their proximity. She’s currently part of a project led by Scripps Oceanography and funded by the Office of Naval Research that aims to enhance participation by historically and presently excluded groups in oceanography.  

Garcia, the student who went on the ocean trek three summers ago, has worked in Taniguchi’s lab since 2019, even to the point of volunteering for the spring 2022 semester between when she graduated and began her master’s program.  

“When I first started, I was very, very intimidated,” Garcia said of Taniguchi’s research. “But she’s so accommodating and so good at explaining complex ideas. And she cares so much about her students. She’s like our lab mom.” 

The daughter of parents who both were college professors, Taniguchi grew up in the Central Valley city of Merced, which doesn’t exactly suggest a future in oceanography. But her mother was an ocean lover, and even though it was a two-hour drive, she bought an annual membership to the famed Monterey Bay Aquarium.  

Taniguchi recalls one trip when she went tide-pooling with her family after a visit to the aquarium. Her father pointed to a squishy creature about half the size of a football and asked Darcy what it was. She correctly identified it as a gumboot chiton, having retained the knowledge from her stop at the aquarium’s touch tank.  

“Clearly I did absorb a lot,” Taniguchi said. “Those experiences of going to the ocean and having hands-on interactions with organisms was definitely what led me on my path.” 

Her burgeoning zeal for the ocean attracted her to UCSD’s Scripps Oceanography, and she discovered plankton through her first course in biological oceanography. Twenty years later, Taniguchi’s childlike wonder and academic rigor toward these so-called “drifters of the sea” show no signs of abating.  

“The oceans are so big and plankton are so small, and there’s so much we don’t know about both of them,” she said. “There’s lots of room for real exploration, which I think is really neat.”  

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Mora has been visiting campus from before she could even remember. Since she was 10 months old, she has accompanied her mother, Rosa, to CSUSM. Rosa, who is a senior resources and operations analyst for Student Affairs, has worked at the university for 27 years.

“My mom encouraged me to apply to CSUSM, but also wanted me to apply to other schools,” Yesenia said. “I was like, ‘Nope, I’m going here.’ It didn't even occur to me that I might not get accepted here.” 

In the early days of Rosa’s career, she occasionally brought Yesenia to work when no one was available to watch her daughter.

“When it was summer, she didn’t want to leave me home alone so she brought me to work,” Yesenia said. “I remember other kids would come and we would play computer games together and look around campus.”  

One of Rosa’s favorite memories was taking Yesenia to the library’s Barahona Center, which holds thousands of books in Spanish for children and teens, right before Halloween in 1998.  

“She was dressed as an angel, with a white dress and white little wings,” Rosa said. “The founder of the Barahona Center, Isabel Schon, took a picture of her. A month or two later, she sent a copy of a one-page article that Dr. Schon wrote with Yesenia’s picture on it. She looked so cute, and I recall being so proud that my little girl was pictured in an article. Who would have known that 25 years later, I would be even more proud of her because of her great accomplishments?” 

That now includes the California State University’s highest recognition of student accomplishment. Mora was honored during the CSU Board of Trustees meeting on Sept. 12 as the university’s 2023 Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement recipient. 

Mora has been a biology student at CSUSM since 2017, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 2022. As an undergraduate, she developed a passion for the wing-flashing behavior of the San Clemente loggerhead shrike, a bird that was introduced to her in the lab of biology professor Diego Sustaita during her freshman year. 

Mora first crossed paths with Sustaita at a biology meet-and-greet before her first semester. They bonded over a mutual fascination with birds, and have worked together ever since. 

“Yesenia took the lead on a new research project in my lab as a freshman, which is impressive enough, let alone how far she has taken it,” Sustaita said. “Yesenia has committed a tremendous amount of time – and, more importantly, energy and enthusiasm – toward a new avenue of research focused on studying the functional significance of wing-flashing behavior in captive San Clemente loggerhead shrikes, from high-speed videos of their hunting behavior. She has been involved in every aspect of the project from the ground up.

“I could not be more impressed by Yesenia’s engagement with the topic, especially having taken on a research program so early in her college career.”

Mora has presented at over a dozen local and national conferences. She is most proud of the final installment of her undergraduate research where she had the opportunity to travel to Puerto Rico with her family. She won the competitive Nellie Johnson Baroody Award for best student oral presentation in the summer of 2022. 

Mora credits CSUSM’s Undergraduate Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (U-RISE) program and the Center for Training Research and Educational Excellence (CTREE) program for her success throughout her academic career. 

“There's so many programs on campus to help students out if they're confused about graduate school or need help income-wise,” Mora said. “The CTREE and U-RISE programs offer great advice, and they can point you in the right direction. There’s a program for everyone here, which I've definitely observed.” 

After she finishes her master’s next spring, Mora plans to continue researching animal behavior in a Ph.D. program.  

“Yesenia’s success in research is a broader impact in and of itself,” Sustaita said. “As a Latinx female scientist, she sets an example for students, particularly in the field of behavioral ecology.”

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Nature is a highly selective scientific journal, meaning only about 8% of the articles submitted are selected for publication.

Nigenda-Morales’ research focuses on two different fin whale populations from the Eastern North Pacific and Gulf of California. The article describes the severe impact of whaling and migration on fin whale populations by investigating demographic history and using genome-based analyses.

“During the 20^th century, industrial whaling significantly decreased the populations of many great whale species, with the fin whale being among the most affected,” Nigenda-Morales said.

After conducting genetic studies to analyze whole genomes, they found that the Eastern North Pacific fin whale population was severely impacted by whaling. The genomic testing indicated that the population was once much larger than previous ecological studies suggested. The article highlights the discovery of “a 99% reduction in the effective population size for the fin whale population in the Eastern North Pacific (from the coast of Alaska to California), which contradicts what was previously thought of as a reduction of around 70%.”

Nigenda-Morales and his fellow researchers also studied the Gulf of California fin whale population “that has remained small and isolated for 16,000 years, resulting in inbreeding which has led to an accumulation of harmful genetic variants that could negatively affect the long-term survival of this population.” Although this population of fin whale were not impacted by industrial whaling, their isolated migration patterns has put them at risk for extinction.

“Our study exposes the severity of whaling, emphasizes the importance of migration between populations, and demonstrates the usefulness of genome-based analyses for informing conservation strategies,” Nigenda-Morales said.

Students are selected based on academic achievements, financial need, excellence in community service and personal hardship. Awardees have all demonstrated inspirational resolve along the path to college success, and many are the first in their families to attend college. 

The CSU recognizes 23 students every year – one from each campus – with the Trustees’ Award. Mora was named a Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation Scholar, which includes a donor-funded scholarship of $7,000. 

Mora and the other awardees will recognized during a ceremony as part of the CSU Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 12.

Mora has been a biology student at CSUSM since 2017. Her passion for behavioral ecology was first sparked during an undergraduate research project in the lab of professor Diego Sustaita; the project was aimed at uncovering the functional significance of wing-flashing behaviors in San Clemente loggerhead shrikes. Mora continued her work with Sustaita throughout her undergraduate career, presenting her research at more than a dozen local and national conferences.

During her third year, she was one of 10 students accepted into CSUSM’s URISE (Undergraduate Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement) program, supported by the National Institute for General Medical Sciences to prepare talented and motivated minority undergraduate students to succeed in doctoral programs.

In addition to her research, Mora has enjoyed facilitating educational experiences for K-12 students by volunteering at events that inspire curiosity and excitement for STEM education in young children.

Now a master’s student in biological sciences at CSUSM, Mora continues to pursue her passion for scientific discovery and animal ecology by advancing her research on the wing-flashing behavior of shrikes.

More than 440 students have been honored with the Trustees' Award since the scholarship program was established in 1984 by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. In 1999, the Hearst Foundation partnered with the CSU Board of Trustees to supplement the endowment with contributions from CSU Trustees, CSU Foundation board members and private donors. Each student scholarship bears the name of a donor. 

Temple toured private facilities in the region that failed to meet his expectations in myriad ways – whether the culprit was age, accumulated dust or debris. And for the privilege of occupying such a space, the going rate was a shocking $10,000 a month, or more.

What a pleasant change it was for Temple, then, when his nascent company’s head of business development told him about a new opportunity to rent room in Cal State San Marcos’ Extended Learning building. The bright and modern lab on the fourth floor marked such a sharp contrast to what he had been seeing that he accepted on the spot.

“It’s been wonderful,” Temple said. “This lab space is incredibly nice.”

Temple is the president and CEO of Grann Pharmaceuticals, a biotech that he formed with several classmates while they were still students at Whittier College. This spring, before they even had graduated, Grann moved into the Infinity Lab, a state-of-the-art research facility in the Extended Learning building. Just last week, Grann was joined in the lab by a second client: Alcheme Bio, a small startup founded by Vanessa Small, a member of the advisory council for CSUSM’s College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

The Infinity Lab was designed as a teaching space, but partly because of the pandemic, it hasn’t been used for that purpose since the building opened four years ago. In 2020, CSUSM initiated an experiment to reimagine the lab by leasing space to cancer diagnostics company Volition, which stayed for about a year before moving on.

Now, CSUSM is doubling down on the growth of its innovation ecosystem under the direction of Scott Gross, associate vice president of industry partnerships, and Betsy Read, the founder of the university’s biotechnology program, and with the added assistance of Debora Galasso. Galasso is a 25-year veteran of the biotech industry who became a lecturer in the Master of Biotechnology: A Professional Science Master’s program in 2019 and this year was enlisted by Gross and Read to manage the expansion of the Infinity Lab.

Galasso said CSUSM is the only university in San Diego County that is dipping its toe into a venture that is typically the province of for-profit companies.

“Our goal is to demonstrate proof of concept,” Galasso said. “The space was sitting idle, so we wanted to see if we could create an environment that could benefit students. As education is our primary focus, we are not intending to make money, but to cover our costs while we develop an environment where students, faculty and staff can interact directly with entrepreneurs.”

The Infinity Lab is a molecular and cellular biology lab that features four benches (three are available to lease, one is reserved for CSUSM students and faculty), a tissue culture room for culturing cells and an impressive collection of the type of equipment any biotech startup would require. Space can be rented by the linear foot, with Grann taking up a whole bench (34 feet) and Alcheme only 7 feet. The lab can accommodate three to five companies at a time, and renewable leases are for six-month terms, as befits a place that considers itself a biotech incubator.

“The idea would be to not have companies in for over two years,” Galasso said. “By that time, they should have secured angel or venture capital funding, been purchased or their intellectual property been purchased. Within two years, you should be growing enough that you need to go somewhere else.”

Because of its university affiliation, a requirement of the Infinity Lab is that students benefit from any industry partnership. That can take multiple forms, from students being hired as interns, to companies hosting classes in the lab to tell their story, to biotech entrepreneurs speaking on campus in a casual, roundtable style.

Grann, for example, has brought aboard two CSUSM master’s students as interns for the upcoming school year, and the students will learn Grann’s process of re-expressing proteins using mRNA lipid nanoparticle technology.

Temple, a San Diego native who graduated from Cathedral Catholic High School, said the directive that Grann involve students in its operations is nothing but a win-win proposition. His company has added interns who might end up being future employees, while CSUSM students can not only tap into Grann’s collective brainpower, but also borrow expensive scientific instruments that not even the Infinity Lab possesses.

“Cal State San Marcos has been great,” Temple said. “This place couldn’t be any better.”

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Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Green has been singing since she was 4 years old, but her family figured it was just a phase. They soon realized her voice was impressive for her young age, and her mother put her in singing lessons when she was in the fifth grade.

Green auditioned for “America’s Got Talent” and “The Voice” on Zoom early in the pandemic, but she didn’t get the chance to move forward in the process.

But Green never gave up on her dream, and her resilience paid off last fall when she auditioned for “American Idol” in front of producers online. 

“I was driving back to San Marcos from my brother’s football game when I got the call that I would be able to audition in front of the judges,” Green said.

Green, a third-year biological sciences student at Cal State San Marcos, traveled to Las Vegas last September to sing before celebrity judges Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie for a chance to compete on “American Idol.” 

“The producers gave me great feedback and everything before I auditioned in front of the judges,” Green said. “I felt really good, but I was also super nervous because there were other contestants waiting outside and they could hear you.”

Green performed “Cry Pretty” by Carrie Underwood for the judges. While Bryan questioned the emotions of Green’s performance, Perry and Richie enthusiastically endorsed giving her the “golden ticket” that allowed her to advance to the next stage of the competition.

Although Green was sent home after her performance during Hollywood Week, she will never forget the experience as she continues to pursue her passion for singing. 

“Even though the experience didn't go my way in the end, I feel like Hollywood Week was great because I know what I need to work on and what the judges are looking for,” Green said. “I learned from the judges that I need to feel the emotion in the song and let yourself be in the moment. It's funny that the judges noticed that because my singing teacher says the same thing. It’s just something I've been trying to work on, but it's been getting better.” 

Green is implementing this feedback into her own songwriting and music. Earlier this year, Green put out her first single, “Point of View,” on Spotify. The song highlights the struggles of growing up with divorced parents. 

“It was a little hard at first because I had never written any songs before,” Green said. “I had tried to when I was younger, but it was never about how I was feeling. I am working on another song right now, and I’m hoping to write more when I have more time in the summer.” 

Green chose to attend CSUSM not to study music, but to pursue another passion. She has always been fascinated by true crime, and she decided to major in biological sciences so she can one day become a coroner. Green plans to find a crime scene cleanup job to gather more experience before she graduates next year, and she is also considering graduate school. 

“Singing will always be a big part of my life,” Green said. “I’m hopeful it will take off, even in the slightest. But I want to make sure I have financial security. I want to audition again on ‘The Voice’ or ‘America's Got Talent,’ and hopefully make it further in the competition.”

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Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

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Sebastian Aguero and Valeria Castellanos Rodriguez are the first students from CSUSM ever to be awarded a Barry Goldwater scholarship. They are among 413 students nationwide, and only six from the California State University system, to receive the award from a pool of more than 5,000 college sophomores and juniors across the country.

Both students will be given up to $7,500 for each of the next two years.

Aguero is a sophomore chemistry major and a Targeted Learning Community scholar, which is a National Science Foundation-funded program for chemistry and biochemistry students who are academically talented and financially burdened. Last summer, he participated in a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) project at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, where his research focused on analyzing biological samples from bacterial on an ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometer.

Aguero will be participating in another REU experience this summer at Scripps Research in La Jolla. When he returns to CSUSM in the fall, he will continue his course-based independent research projects in the lab of Robert Iafe, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

Rodriguez is a sophomore biology major with a concentration in molecular and cellular biology. She participated in CSUSM’s Summer Scholars program last year, with her project focused on the morphological changes of breast cancer cells, and she’s a researcher in the lab of biology professor Carlos Luna Lopez. This summer, she will continue her breast cancer research through an REU program at CSUSM.

Rodriguez also is an ambassador for The Alliance, which helps promote higher education in the sciences by giving presentations to K-12 students. 

“As a first-generation Latina student, this award represents my determination to achieve a Ph.D. degree in cancer biology or cell biology,” Rodriguez said.

Since 1989, more than 10,000 scholarships have been awarded by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. The organization is named for the five-term U.S. senator from Arizona who was the Republican Party nominee for president of the United States in 1964.

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Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
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Mothé received the award at the ​35th annual CSU Biotechnology Symposium this month.

Her service is highlighted by leadership as interim executive director of the California State University Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB), a funding organization that supports diversity and mentorship in the fields of biotechnology.

“I have always focused on serving underrepresented students and ensuring that they have opportunities for career advancement, including work and further education,” Mothé said. “I was also able to step in as interim executive director of CSUPERB during the pandemic and work with committed and incredible faculty and staff. This award is a recognition of these efforts, and I am incredibly honored to have received it this year.”

Mothé also serves as director of the COMPASS (Creating Opportunities through Mentorship and Partnership Across Stem Cell Science) program, which aims to provide a diverse group of students with hands-on training and mentorship in the field of regenerative medicine. Under her leadership, the COMPASS program last fall received a nearly $3 million, five-year grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which will fund stem cell awareness at three North County high schools; support 30 students for two years of training; and provide diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training for research mentors.

In receiving the award at a ceremony on Jan. 13, Mothé was saluted by a former student, Sergio Ita, who’s a principal investigator at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

“I came to CSUSM as a recent Marine veteran, first-generation and transfer student,” Ita said. “At that fragile time, I had taken a course in immunology with Dr. Mothé. In one of those moments of clarity, I realized not only that I wanted to pursue this fascinating intersection of infectious disease and immunology, but that I wanted to work with Dr. Mothé.

“Bianca accepted me into her lab and taught me some of the most fundamental skills in molecular biology, genetics and immunology.”

Mothé is currently serving as a visiting scientist in the lab of professor Sujan Shresta, Ph.D., at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI). For Mothé, spending time at LJI is one part of bringing the wider biotechnology community together.

“As a scientist and educator, I want to create opportunities for underrepresented students to engage in cutting-edge science,” she said. “As a scientist, this involves staying connected and fostering collaborations with other scientists. As an educator, this involves exposing students and allowing them to immerse themselves in science.”

The Andreoli Award is named for late Cal State LA chemistry professor Anthony Andreoli, an advocate for providing opportunities in higher education for underrepresented and non-traditional students.

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bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

COMPASS, which stands for Creating Opportunities through Mentorship and Partnership Across Stem Cell Science, works to prepare a diverse group of undergraduate students for careers in regenerative medicine by combining hands-on research opportunities with strategic and structured mentorship experiences. COMPASS at CSUSM is a comprehensive program that aims to recruit local high school students to the university and train them in stem cells and life sciences, culminating in summer capstone experiences on campus.  

The $2,877,200 grant will fund stem cell awareness at three North County high schools; support 30 students for two years of training; and provide diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training for research mentors. 

The program will recruit first-year CSUSM biotechnology undergraduate students as well as students from High Tech High North County, Mission Hills High School and San Marcos High School. One of the first events under the grant, Stem Cell Awareness Day, will kick off Oct. 11 as CSUSM biology professor Bianca Romina Mothé, the director of the grant program, takes undergraduate students to the partner high schools to introduce the COMPASS program to high school seniors. 

“This new program highlights our growing commitment to creating a diverse workforce, one that taps into communities that have been historically underrepresented in the biomedical sciences,” said Dr. Maria T. Millan, president and CEO of CIRM. “The COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that the benefits of scientific discovery are not always accessible to communities that most need them. CIRM is committed to tackling these challenges by creating a diverse and dedicated workforce that can meet the technical demands of taking novel treatment ideas and making them a reality.” 

In addition to Mothé, other CSUSM professors participating in the program include economics professor Ranjeeta Basu, who will serve as the diversity and outreach coordinator; biology professor Mallory Rice, who will serve as mentoring coordinator; biology professor Sujal Phadke, who will help develop and deliver DEI programming and training; and biology professor Denise Baker, who will develop formal and informal mentoring plans for trainees. 

Additionally, sophomore biotechnology majors who are selected to the program will have the option to work in several different CSUSM laboratories on campus that focus on immunology, virology, stem cells and bioengineering. These include the labs of Mothé and fellow CSUSM biology professors Julie Jameson, James Jancovich, Jane Kim and Carlos Luna Lopez. 

As part of the mentoring program, CSUSM is partnering with La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery. The institutions will present tours and instruction on the different components of each organization’s research and development pipelines. 

Sanford Burnham Prebys will be a major training site for COMPASS trainees. The institute has a long history of commitment to training students in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, particularly those from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds. The institute has a CIRM-funded training program for Ph.D., post-doctoral and clinical fellows; a CIRM-funded program for mentoring high school students; and a longstanding partnership with CSUSM’s CIRM-funded Bridges program. Sanford Burnham Prebys has a unique graduate school that is ideally suited for the COMPASS program – highly individualized, tutorial-based learning with rapid immersion into bench research.

Sanford Burnham Prebys, by virtue of the fact that it is part of the broader La Jolla Mesa Training Network, will also enable trainees to participate in “patient-facing” and “clinical correlation” events, as well as exposure to opportunities in the private industrial sector. Because of the longstanding partnership between CSUSM and Sanford Burnham Prebys, the COMPASS program will seamlessly integrate into that infrastructure. 

At LJI, Drs. Mitchell Kronenberg and Sujan Shresta will serve as mentors for COMPASS trainees. Kronenberg is focused on learning more about immune cell roles in the airways, lungs and gut. He will also share his expertise in autoimmunity with COMPASS trainees. Shresta is dedicated to shedding light on how immune cells interact with viruses such as Zika, SARS-CoV-2 and dengue. Her lab also specializes in the development of cutting-edge mouse models for immune-system research. Through her work, trainees can learn how researchers can leverage their findings to fuel new studies into vaccines, therapies and more. 

“We’re thrilled to give COMPASS trainees a firsthand look at the challenges and opportunities in immunology,” Kronenberg said. “This is a fascinating field where students can follow their curiosity to pursue many different career opportunities and contribute to life-saving work.” 

Additional quotes related to the grant: 

“Here at High Tech High North County, we strongly believe in connecting our students with meaningful projects, learning experiences and opportunities that produce curious, creative, emerging adults and citizens of the world. We are extremely excited about the opportunity to partner with Dr. Mothé and the CSUSM COMPASS program. Our students have a variety of lived experiences, and the access and opportunity this partnership offers will have significant impact, especially for our students with disadvantaged backgrounds. This program will contribute greatly to our students’ ability to successfully navigate the CSUSM application process while engaging in the exploration of biotechnology, life science and stem cell career path options. It will also connect HTHNC graduates majoring in biotechnology at CSUSM with potential opportunities to work in various CSUSM laboratories focused on immunology, virology, stem cells and bioengineering as they progress as an undergraduate. The COMPASS program will be instrumental to High Tech High North County and our ability to successfully bring the goals established in our shared vision to life as a school community." 

Joseph Davidson, director, High Tech High North County 

“We are excited to partner with CSUSM to provide our high school students with this introduction to life sciences. This work aligns perfectly with our vision to ensure all SMUSD students are ‘future ready’ by providing opportunities to explore future career fields." 

Andy Johnsen, Ed.D., superintendent, San Marcos Unified School District 

“Education and infrastructure are two funding pillars critical for creating the next generation of researchers and conducting stem-cell-based clinical trials. The importance of these programs was acknowledged in Proposition 14, and we expect that they will continue to be important components of CIRM’s programs and strategic direction in the years to come.” 

Jonathan Thomas, Ph.D., J.D., chair of the CIRM board 

Monkeypox, of course, has not spread with anything close to the speed or ferocity of COVID, but more than three months after it first appeared in the United States, there remains a good deal of confusion (and even ignorance) among the public about the disease.  

At Cal State San Marcos, there’s no better person to clear that up than James Jancovich. The biological sciences professor has almost 15 years of experience working in a lab dedicated to poxviruses, a family of double-stranded DNA viruses that includes smallpox and, yes, monkeypox.

Question: How does monkeypox compare with other viruses that people might be familiar with, such as chickenpox and smallpox? 

James Jancovich: Monkeypox is a member of the genus Orthopoxvirus, family Poxviridae, a group of poxviruses that can infect vertebrate animals. Monkeypox is closely related to smallpox, the primary pathogen of humans. But they are each a unique virus in the genus. Poxviruses, like monkeypox and smallpox, are not closely related to chickenpox viruses. Chickenpox is caused by the varicella zoster virus – an alphaherpes virus (also known as human herpesvirus 3) and not by a poxvirus. 

Q: Have there been spikes of monkeypox before, and why is it spiking now? 

JJ: Monkeypox is a zoonotic disease. That is, it is a virus that occasionally jumps from animals to humans. Contrary to the name, monkeypox infections usually jump from rodents to humans, not monkeys to humans. Typically, zoonotic diseases are difficult to transmit from human to human after jumping from animals. However, occasionally, zoonotic pathogens have the ability to cause person-to-person transmission after a jump, and the current monkeypox seems to be this type of pathogen.  

That said, previous outbreaks of monkeypox have occurred in humans, and the virus is considered to be endemic in Africa. However, most of the previous outbreaks were limited regarding the spread of the virus; the reason for this is unclear. Our current situation may be the result of infected individuals unknowingly having the disease – or maybe not knowing what it was – and transmitting the virus. If signs and symptoms were not that severe, but the virus was still present and transmissible, this would make it difficult to identify infected individuals and thus increase disease transmission. 

Q: How does monkeypox spread? What is the risk of catching it? 

JJ: The monkeypox that is currently spreading throughout the world appears to be transmitted primarily via direct contact with an infected individual.  The virus also can be spread by direct contact with fabrics such as clothing, bedding or towels, and other surfaces that have been used by an infected individual. Poxviruses are very stable outside of a host, unlike other viral pathogens like HIV, for example. This property most likely helps spread the pathogen to new hosts. 

Immunocompromised individuals are typically more susceptible to virus infections, but this monkeypox outbreak appears to infect primarily healthy individuals. That said, in this situation, sexual activities seem to drive disease transmission – reducing these activities when one is infected and/or covering a rash and cleaning items touched by an infected individual can significantly reduce the spread of the virus. The monkeypox outbreak has an extremely low fatality rate – actually, I do not think anyone has yet died because of the viral infection – so even if someone catches the disease, the probability of surviving the infection is extremely high. 

Q: Are there any precautions that people should be taking? 

JJ: This outbreak does not appear to be transmitted via aerosolization, a mode of transmission that is difficult to contain, so the best precautions to take are limiting close interactions with someone infected with the virus or exposure to items used by an infected individual. Eliminating these interactions is the best approach to reduce the spread of the virus. Again, this outbreak seems to be disseminating because of sexual activities. Limiting these activities when someone is showing signs of infection would help prevent disease spread. 

Q: How would someone know if they had monkeypox? What are the most common symptoms? 

JJ: A monkeypox virus infection typically begins with the presence of a rash that can be painful and itchy – the rash looks like small blisters or pimples on the skin. The rash/pustule/pox/blister (I see a lot of different terminology used for a “pox,” the classical term and the reason for the virus’ name) grows and becomes filled with virus particles before drying out and becoming a scab that falls off once new skin has grown underneath. Individuals are typically considered infectious once the rash is observed until after the scab has fallen off. 

Symptoms of a monkeypox infection also can include fever, chills, muscle/back aches, headache, etc. – typical signs of being infected with something (i.e. being sick) – also known as flu-like symptoms. Symptoms can start within three weeks of exposure to the virus. Sometimes infected individuals show a rash first before the flu-like symptoms. Other individuals have flu-like symptoms before the rash is present. Others experience only a rash and no other symptoms. The reason for this variation in symptoms is unknown and currently being investigated. This variation in the timing and presentation of symptoms also may explain how the virus was able to spread so quickly. 

Q: Do you think it can still be contained, and how long might that take? 

JJ: The virus can be contained, especially if the primary mode of transmission is direct person-to-person contact. Avoiding interactions with infected individuals can be the difference in eliminating the spread of the virus. My guess is it would take a month or so to contain the spread if infected individuals changed their habits. 

One unique aspect about poxvirus infections is that post-exposure vaccination has been shown to help protect individuals from the disease. There are currently two vaccines being used for monkeypox, and it will be interesting to see if post-exposure vaccination also will work in this situation. ACAM2000 is a vaccina virus vaccine originally developed/used for smallpox vaccinations. The second vaccine is based on a highly attenuated modified vaccinia virus Ankara strain called MVA (the name of vaccine is JYNNEOS). ACAM2000 is a single dose vaccine while JYNNEOS is a two-dose vaccine regime. There also is a treatment, recently approved through emergency use authorization, called TPOX that appears to help monkeypox infections. This treatment was initially developed to fight against smallpox, but since monkeypox viruses are related, it can be used to treat those infections as well. 

Poxvirus infections also have been treated with viral immunoglobulins – antibodies that help fight the infection. These are typically used in the most severe cases, and since monkeypox is not causing high mortality rates in infected individuals, this treatment may not be necessary. 

Q: How do you think the nation’s ongoing experience with COVID-19 has changed the way we’re reacting to this crisis? 

JJ: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic caused a lot of fear and anxiety in society – in some cases, family and friends turned against each other because of differences of opinion or belief about the virus and the best way to deal with it. These wounds are hard to mend, but I believe our collective experience with this pandemic has helped calm society regarding disease outbreaks while educating them about viral infections and host immunity.  

Recent data suggest that some of the initial responses to COVID-19 could have been better to help reduce fear and anxiety in society. For example, natural immunity to a viral infection, the gold standard for over a century, was initially dismissed during the COVID-19 pandemic (we now know that natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is helpful to fight against infection). Again, regardless of one’s opinion, I believe society collectively has learned a lot about viral pandemics that will help if this ever happens again in the future. 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Do I belong here? Is this really for me?

That self-doubt started to dissipate as Sanders became enmeshed in the lab of biology professor Elinne Becket, doing research on the impact of antibiotic pollution of coastal microbiomes. And it was all but chased away last year when she was chosen as a peer mentor in Summer Scholars, a 10-week program that prepares students for graduate school and careers in STEM through hands-on research and networking opportunities.  

“Summer Scholars really impacted my development as a scientist,” Sanders said. “It exposed me to the collaborative nature of research, and I realized what was missing in my graduate school experience – human interaction. I’ve gained a lot of confidence since doing the program.”

So much confidence that she decided to pursue a doctorate. This fall, she will begin a Ph.D. program in molecular biology at Princeton University.

Sanders’ story of success is exceptional, and yet it’s illustrative of the impact that Summers Scholars has been having on students for more than a decade. Now, the program’s reach will be even broader and deeper.

CSUSM has received a $110,250 grant from Hologic, a Massachusetts-based global medical technology company that has a major presence in San Diego, to launch the Hologic Pathway to Success in STEM. The new program will expand Summer Scholars to serve STEM students throughout their college path, from their first year to graduation.

The pathway program is building upon Summer Scholars in three ways. First, it provides rising sophomores who are first-generation college students, low income, from underrepresented groups in STEM or academically struggling with exposure to Summer Scholars programming, lab shadowing and peer mentorship.

“Those students are our apprentices who learn from the students in our Summer Scholars program,” said Julie Jameson, who coordinates Summer Scholars with fellow biological sciences professor Betsy Read.

Second, the Hologic Pathway to Success in STEM supports six current Summer Scholars (who are anywhere between their sophomore and senior year) and five graduate-level peer mentors to do research and receive career development and professional mentoring.

Third, it’s sponsoring three high-achieving Summer Scholars to continue their research into the fall and spring semesters, turning a seasonal program into a year-round one.

“When we track our students and we look at the alumni, we see the success that they have from being in Summer Scholars,” Jameson said. “So having the ability to support this many students in this large of a wraparound program, I know what it will do for them and I know it will change their lives. And that is extremely rewarding to see happen.”

CSUSM first approached Hologic about supporting Summer Scholars two years ago, and the company heartily consented because it has a strong focus on increasing representation of underrepresented minorities in STEM (61% of STEM majors at CSUSM are from such groups). Hologic broadened its funding last year to include the peer mentoring piece that Sanders participated in.

Earlier this year, Jameson, Read and Christine Anderson (CSUSM’s director of corporate and foundation relations) shared a report from the 2021 edition of Summer Scholars with Hologic's philanthropy committee. Suitably impressed, Damon Getman, Hologic’s scientific director, presented Jameson with a thrilling hypothetical:

What would you do if money weren’t a limitation, if you could dream about doing something really special?

The CSUSM team drew up a proposal, which became the Hologic Pathway to Success in STEM.

“I’ve been with the company for 23 years, and I’ve stayed for so long because here we have the chance to dream about how we can use science and engineering to help patients in the most effective way,” Getman said. “As scientists and engineers, it’s a rare privilege and honor to have that opportunity, and we want to afford that opportunity to all students from every walk of life who aspire to do something great, something that is bigger than themselves. We recognized years ago that the faculty and staff at CSUSM shared that vision with us; we are kindred spirits in a sense. We can’t wait to see how the young scholars in the program exceed their own expectations.”

Jameson can’t wait, either.

“We've seen students who really didn't think that they belonged in the STEM field become Ph.D. candidates,” she said. “We've seen them go into industry and become leaders. Watching our students come and give back to our programs, it shows how much it means to them. The growth and development is, for me, the most rewarding aspect of this program.”

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Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

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Sustaita has won an Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. The honor is given to “early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.” 

Sustaita is believed to be only the third CSUSM professor to win a CAREER Award, though it now has happened two years in a row. The previous two recipients also were biology faculty: George Vourlitis in 2002 and Arun Sethuraman last year. Sethuraman has since been hired at San Diego State.  

The NSF grant will cover five years and is worth a total of $544,570.  

“In my field, this is a unicorn award that nobody feels like they will ever receive, let alone deserve,” Sustaita said. “I was extremely fortunate to receive it, and it means the world to me because it provides a sense of validation, that maybe my crazy ideas aren’t so crazy after all.” 

For his CAREER project, Sustaita will study the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse, endemic to the San Francisco Bay estuary, and how it is physically adapted to its wetland environment. He will investigate how individuals perform basic functions of biting, climbing and swimming as they relate to foraging and moving through their habitats.  

A new field course centered on the ecology of the Suisun Marsh in Northern California will be implemented to teach students marketable field and quantitative skills, to contribute data to the research project, and to instill an understanding and appreciation for the ecological roles of rare and endangered species. 

“For my research, I will have the means to ask and answer some burning questions about the ecology of this enigmatic little endangered rodent, as well as more fundamental questions about how organisms are built to do what they do in nature,” Sustaita said. “But what I’m most excited about is the ability to fund undergraduate and graduate students to participate in all aspects of the research.” 

Sustaita recently returned from a week-long research trip to the Grizzly Island Wildlife Area in the Suisun Marsh, the initial fieldwork as part of the NSF project. He and three CSUSM students captured, marked and measured representatives of three different species, and gathered data on their climbing, biting, grasping and swimming performance using high-speed video cameras and force transducers before releasing them back to the wild.  

He plans to return to the area with students for each of the summers covered by the grant.  

Sustaita has worked at CSUSM since 2016. 

“From the moment that I landed here, I have worked to get this project off the ground,” he said. “And with the help of my California Department of Fish and Wildlife colleagues and several amazing CSUSM students along the way, I have managed to not only get it off the ground, but thanks to this award, to also create the opportunity to see it through to completion.” 

To pass the time, Garcia’s grandmother, Antonia, introduced her to at-home science experiments they could do together. Garcia’s grandmother wasn't a scientist, but the two of them shared a genuine curiosity about biology.

Little did Garcia know that this would spark her interest in pursuing a career in science research years later.

“One of the things she bought was through an infomercial, and it was this rock tumbler,” said Garcia, who will graduate from Cal State San Marcos next month with a bachelor’s in biological sciences with a concentration in molecular and cellular biology. “It's personalized to you, and you can take any of the rocks that you find in your backyard or in a river and put it in a spinning turbine for weeks. It ends up polishing these beautiful rocks for you. It didn’t end up working. That was probably the best one I think we did, even though it didn't work.”

When the opportunity presented itself to study and run track at CSUSM, pursuing science made sense to Garcia. Not only did Garcia have the same inquisitiveness for science as her grandmother, but she had the opportunity to turn her passion into a life-long career.

But when Garcia told her parents she was admitted to CSUSM, her mom walked away from her bedroom and didn’t say much when she heard the news. 

Garcia knew her family had to make sacrifices to provide her with opportunity. She remembers the stories of her grandparents immigrating from Mexico and being pulled out of kindergarten to start working. They worked trade jobs and never had the ability to attend college because it was too expensive, so Garcia understood why her mom would be hesitant about higher education. And it was difficult for Garcia’s mom to see her daughter leave home at 18 to attend CSUSM.

“It was kind of awkward,” Garcia said. “I still decided to go, and I think the reason why I wanted to go is that I knew what was out there. I knew it would open so many doors for me. I knew that I wouldn't be as limited, and I could have the experience of meeting new people and making new connections and have that freedom to navigate my own career.”

That career likely will involve cancer research, a disease that has hit close to home for Garcia. Antonia died of lung cancer when Garcia was 11 years old and her maternal grandmother, Luisa Tejeda, died from cancer last October.

Garcia spent five months during the pandemic helping to care for her bedridden aunt, Martha Betancourt, who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. Garcia would catch up with her classes in the evening after taking care of her aunt. She maintained a 3.8 grade-point average despite those challenges.

Garcia was accepted into CSUSM’s Undergraduate Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (U-RISE) program, which is helping her pursue a career path in cancer research in honor of Antonia, Luisa and Martha.

“I think the biggest thing that has helped me is the U-RISE fellowship, because now I have a cohort of people in the STEM field who are also first gen or minoritized,” Garcia said. “And those are like my life-long friends, so it's been very helpful, especially to be a first-gen student at Cal State San Marcos.”

Garcia attended a summer research program in 2019 at George Washington University through U-RISE and explored an immunology-based lab on lymphoma. The program experience led Garcia to join biology professor Jane Kim’s lab to broaden her research background. It was a challenging time as instruction temporarily moved online because of the pandemic. But Garcia was still able to complete a project involving bioinformatic analysis using publicly available datasets during fall 2020 when on-campus research at CSUSM was limited.

“Clarissa is a model of perseverance and strength in the way that she seeks out opportunities to move toward her goal of being an independent scientist in the field of cancer research,” Kim said. “She took the initiative to audit a population genetics course to gain further knowledge and reached out to the authors of published papers to inquire about their datasets. Her efforts have been validated by awards for her conference presentations and all-academic honors as a track and cross-country athlete over multiple semesters.”

Over the past three years, Garcia has worked on a half-dozen research projects in four different labs. These were intentional decisions as Garcia wanted to broaden her research knowledge as much as possible.

Garcia will continue her work this fall in a Ph.D. program. The schools she is considering include Stanford, Sanford Burnham Prebys, Oregon Health and Science University and the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz.

It has been a remarkable journey. Despite her mother’s initial hesitancy about seeing Garcia leave home, she has seen how higher education is putting her daughter on the path to a successful career.

“My mother has now started to realize my sacrifices in leaving the house at 18,” Garcia said. “Usually Hispanic people, we stay pretty close to home for a very long time. I think she's come to realize that it was necessary for my growth, and that I am getting great opportunities and the potential to have a very stable life and career and doing something that I'm passionate about. So she is very proud of me.”

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Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

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But he had parents who instilled perseverance, gratefulness and the promise of brighter days ahead through building an academic foundation.

Theresa Mai has no teachers, doctors or scientists in her family either. Her parents emigrated to the United States during the Vietnam War, and they still only speak Vietnamese. Their path to success in their new country was forged through one way and one way only: work. And despite that work ethic, Mai grew up extremely poor without examples of advancement through academic means.

But what she did have was love and curiosity.

What Hernandez and Mai both had growing up in Southern California was a sliver of opportunity. And sometimes that’s all it takes.

The two Cal State San Marcos biological sciences graduate students – both currently working in biology professor Jane Kim’s lab – are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. While their decisions growing up often came between helping the family and doing homework, they’re both now deciding which great Ph.D. programs in the country to attend.

“To be honest, I didn't have anybody to inspire me,” said Mai, who graduated from the former Serra High School in nearby Tierrasanta. “No one told me that it was even possible for someone that looks like me and came from a background like myself to even be working in the lab going to school achieving a higher education. No one in my family told me go to college. It was something that I pursued on my own. My parents didn't really understand that we could go to college. But I had their support no matter what.”

Mai’s final decision is between Johns Hopkins, Stanford and USC. Hernandez has been admitted to eight Ph.D. programs, including Stanford, Cal, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Washington and Michigan.

Heavy hitters all of them.

“The most important thing is I just want to be happy,” said Mai, who also did her undergraduate work at CSUSM. “The one thing about getting accepted to these prestigious schools is that there is kind of that culture where things can be a little bit cutthroat. So the most important thing to me is happiness and having the same support that I received here at San Marcos.”

While Mai earned her bachelor's degree at CSUSM, Hernandez earned his at Cal State Fullerton. His love for molecular biology had its origins in his high school AP biology class. It further developed at CSUF, and upon arrival at CSUSM as a graduate student, he was introduced to Mai in Kim’s lab.

It was truly a unique experience because not only were they in the midst of the pandemic, but Kim was on maternity leave.

The original plan was for them to start working in summer 2020 and receive training from graduating students. Instead, due to tight restrictions to on-campus research throughout the year, they were only approved to work on campus for 10 hours per week beginning January 2021.

Full restrictions were only lifted last August.

“Both Luis and Theresa have overcome many challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kim said. “Both have made considerable research progress with limited research hours during the start of their M.S. programs. I was able to offer only limited guidance. Nevertheless, Luis and Theresa were able to write their own thesis proposals, initiate experiments, learn how to organize their time effectively, and ask for help as needed. I am excited for them to defend their M.S. theses and start their Ph.D. programs this fall.”

Although Hernandez admits the pandemic caused a huge setback because access to the lab was limited, taking classes online was perhaps a greater challenge. It was hard to develop a strong relationship with the fellow members of the cohort because of the lack of face-to-face interactions.

The unique circumstances helped them learn how to work without someone holding their hands through the process. It helped them mature in their scientific approach and to learn how to perform experiments on their own.

All done with the distance guidance of Kim.

“Dr. Kim has been a role model for how to approach science and teaching,” Hernandez said. “She is super organized and really demonstrates how to break down information to those that are brand new in the lab like Theresa and I were when we started. For the research aspect, she continually challenges you to push past current limitations. Without her and her support, we would never have garnered the skills to become successful in the pursuit of our future goals.”

Hernandez and Kim met in January 2020 at the CSU Biotechnology Symposium when he was presenting his undergraduate research.

In researching M.S. programs, he talked to CSUSM students who were in Kim’s lab at the time. On the last day of the conference, he sought out Kim to express interest in applying to be a graduate student in her lab.

“This display of initiative, motivation and curiosity stuck out to me as something that a senior graduate student would do in finding a postdoctoral research position,” Kim said. “I have been able to observe these same characteristics strengthen and flourish over the last two years that Luis has been a student in my lab, and I believe he will hit the ground running as a Ph.D. student.”

Mai didn’t exactly have that same initiative upon her arrival on campus as a freshman. In her words, she stumbled upon the science hall to find posters on the walls describing research projects. She was intimidated but wanted to contribute her own research, hang her own posters.

Thanks to the support and mentorship of her professors, she was quickly able to turn early struggles into a strong finish.

She has a 3.94 GPA during her master’s coursework while working up to 20 hours a week at various campus jobs. One of those jobs is in the Office of Sponsored Projects at CSUSM Corporation.

“Theresa has demonstrated a striking determination and laser-like focus on improving as a scientist and experimental biologist,” Kim said. “She is exceptionally reflective in how she thinks about her research project and continues to grow as a young scientist, a trajectory I anticipate will continue as a Ph.D. student.”

Both Mai and Hernandez have expressed interest in a career in academia. They not only want to teach and perform groundbreaking research, they simply want to mentor students like themselves who didn’t have the same advantages growing up that many others did.

“I would love to come back to academia and just be one of the mentors that have inspired myself and students like myself to do what we're doing right now,” Mai said. “I would really love to be able to inspire students like myself who come from low-income and first-generation students who don't really see themselves being successful, especially in a career in science – and show them that you can do anything that you put your mind to.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Diaz is one of four recipients of the 2022 San Diego Art Prize, an annual award that honors exceptional artistic expression in the San Diego cross-border region from Fallbrook to Ensenada, Mexico.  

Diaz won the award as part of a collaboration, called Cog•nate  Collective, with Amy Sanchez Arteaga, a lecturer of art history at San Diego State. Cog•nate Collective is based in National City, and the artists work between Tijuana and Los Angeles.  

“It's an honor to be recognized by my colleagues in the San Diego arts community and this year's curatorial selection committee alongside such a wonderful cohort of fellow artists,” Diaz said. “I am excited to participate in the SD Art Prize exhibition in September and look forward to welcoming CSUSM students and colleagues to this celebration of our San Diego/Tijuana trans-border region.” 

The San Diego Art Prize winners were selected by a panel of four curators; three represent museums in the United States (the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum in New York and the Frost Art Museum in Florida), and the fourth is an independent curator from Mexico City and Vienna.  

Diaz’s artwork will be displayed alongside that of the other winners in an exhibition at the Central Library Art Gallery in downtown San Diego from Sept. 17 until Jan. 7. 

Cog•nate Collective was recognized for its “outstanding creativity, dedication to their work and contributions to our region.” Formed in 2010, the collective creates interdisciplinary projects that often address issues of citizenship, migration, informal economies and popular culture, arguing for understanding the Southern border as a region that expands and contracts with the movement of people and objects.  

Diaz has taught at CSUSM since 2019. He earned a bachelor’s degree in art history and Latin American studies and a master’s in Latin American studies, both from UCLA, as well as an MFA in visual arts from UC San Diego.   

Service Learning director honored 

Rochelle Smarr, CSUSM’s director of Service Learning and Civic Engagement, has received the 2022 Richard E. Cone Award for Emerging Leaders in Community Engagement.  

The award has been given out since 1999 by LEAD California (formerly California Campus Compact), a statewide nonprofit membership organization supporting half a million university and college students, administrators, faculty, staff and community members.  

Smarr, who has worked at CSUSM since 2019, was recognized for “her impact on service learning and community-campus partnerships throughout the San Marcos area.” 

Biology student receives African American Scholars honor 

Biology student Amanda Frank is one of 11 recipients of a scholarship from the Aquarium of the Pacific as part of its African American Scholars program. Award winners were announced during the Long Beach-based aquarium’s annual African American Festival in late February. 

Students were honored for demonstrating a commitment to studies related to careers in the aquarium field, including ocean education, animal husbandry, water quality, building maintenance or facilities, microbiology, and business management. Each scholarship recipient receives $10,000 and will be invited to the Aquarium of the Pacific to participate in conservation projects, meetings and other activities. 

Black leaders of influence 

Two administrators from CSUSM were included by the San Diego Business Journal in its annual issue celebrating “Top 50 Black Leaders of Influence.” 

Making the list from the university were Gail Cole-Avent, associate vice president of Student Life, and Leon Wyden, vice president of Finance and Administrative Services and chief financial officer.  

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That was when the number of confirmed U.S. cases was only in the hundreds, and the number of deaths was fewer than 25. Almost two years later, of course, more than 900,000 Americans have perished from COVID-19, and the cases total is roughly a quarter of the U.S. population.

With the latest variant, Omicron, clearly on the wane and daily life returning to some version of normalcy, we decided to check in again with Mothé to talk about where the pandemic stands now and the endemic phase that could soon be our reality.

Question: What do you think about the current situation with Omicron? Case numbers are declining rapidly, though hospitalizations and deaths remain distressingly high.

Bianca Mothé: The overall numbers will continue to decrease. But I think there's a cautionary tale in that there are still lot of unvaccinated individuals. In the U.S., we have about 35% of the population who are still unvaccinated, but that doesn't represent what's happening internationally. In African countries, there still are places where only one in 10 people have been vaccinated. Those are places where a variant like Omicron can really take hold. Unvaccinated adults have a 15 times higher risk of dying from COVID than those who are vaccinated. We have all the tools, but we haven't distributed them equally. So while we may take comfort that, in San Diego, we've definitely hit the peak and are coming out on the other side, there's still potential for this particular variant to take hold in other places, and lead to much more death, because there's greater unvaccinated rates in some of these countries.

Q: And that can also go for parts of the U.S. where the vaccination rate remains low?

BM: Correct. I think we're pretty lucky here in California with the vaccination rates that we have, close to 70%. That definitely doesn't represent the entire country. We're probably going to continue to see, even with Omicron, these outbreaks that are regionally-serving just based on vaccination rates, or lack thereof.

Q: You mentioned countries where only one of 10 people is vaccinated. What is the specific threat to the U.S. of vaccines still not achieving a global spread?

BM: I think Omicron is a cautionary tale of that. It emerged in Botswana, but it was really detected in South Africa, where it was first reported. Then it progressed super quickly in terms of being able to spread to other countries. So I think what you're creating in these countries that have low vaccination rates is an opportunity for this particular virus to continue to create variants that might have an even more rapid rate of transmission. We can't take comfort in the U.S., even though we may have higher rates of vaccination. We might be threatened by a new variant that is emerging from somewhere that has a low rate of vaccination.

Q: When you first heard about Omicron late last year, could you have imagined that it would turn into the beast that it has?

BM: It was interesting because, at that point, we were all really concerned about Delta. Delta is much more dangerous in its ability to cause disease. When Omicron first emerged, we didn't know a whole lot. Scientists were sequencing it and identifying which mutations it had. The Omicron variant has over 60 mutations compared to some of the original strains, and it was surprising at that time to realize there was a specific variant that could carry as many mutations as it had and still be fit. When I say fit, I mean it's a virus that can still infect effectively and transmit, because ultimately that's what the virus wants. The virus wants to be able to go through a replication cycle in a new host. Omicron is unique in that it multiplies 70 times faster than what we were worried about, Delta, and especially in the upper airways. The way it does this is it has specific mutations at a cleavage site that allows for this particular SARS-CoV-2 variant to get swallowed up by the cell instead of having to fuse in a step-by-step manner. This variant can effectively infect cells in the upper airways. We had seen other variants with other mutations, but in the spike protein, which is what it uses to attach and get into the cell. That was new. Omicron also has additional mutations that allow it to escape immunity created by previous infection and/or vaccination.  So that's what was surprising about Omicron, that you could have a variant with as many mutations that gave it an ability to become more fit.

Q: What new information do you think scientists have learned about COVID and its many variations from the encounter with Omicron that will help us going forward?

BM: I think Omicron was a great tale of international collaborations. South Africa was very forthcoming in saying they had identified a new variant. And while they didn't know all the details, they were able to share with the international community information about the virus and give it to people who would be able to model and see, based on these mutations, that this was what we would predict would happen. I think that's a real evolution, countries deciding that collaboration is going to be one of the best ways to deal with this. Now there's heightened surveillance in most countries so that as a new variant emerges, it's rapidly detected and the international scientific community can tackle it and determine the situation with those specific mutations. Is it leading to something that's more infectious or can transmit better? We're probably going to continue to see new variants coming from some of these countries that don't have the vaccination rates of others. But we have gotten better at surveying those and distributing that information internationally.

Q: What is your perspective on the variants out there right now? How would you sum it up?

BM: When we talk about Omicron, everybody is thinking about the original Omicron sequence, which is called BA.1 and has been studied pretty intensely at this point. There are two more variations of Omicron. One of them is called BA.2, and then there's another new one that's emerging that's BA.3. BA.2 is less prolific, but in some countries, it has overtaken BA.1. The specific countries that we can point to are Denmark, Nepal and the Philippines, and it has a minor presence in India. If you look at India, for example, with its lower vaccination rates, that is a place where BA.2 could continue to mutate into a new strand. The third one, BA.3, has yet to take off; there are only a few hundred cases where it's been detected. But that's something where people are beginning to monitor and look at the sequence to see how different it is from BA.1 and BA.2 and whether it’s giving the virus any additional advantage based on mutations.

Q: BA.2 has been discovered in California, right?

BM: Yes, we already have BA.2 here. But it hasn't taken over BA.1, which is the original Omicron.

Q: Is it too early to say how BA.2 might affect the population here?

BM: There's a lot of investigation right now to determine the extent that people can get reinfected. Can someone who has had the original Omicron get reinfected with the original Omicron or BA.2? If someone has been infected with BA.1, the original Omicron, can they even catch BA.2 or BA.3? There's some indication that reinfection can occur, but we don't know what these additional variants will represent in terms of reinfection. I think that's one of the big questions right now: Can you keep getting it over and over and over again, because the immune response that you'd get from infection maybe isn't that strong or that durable.

Q: What about the question of whether vaccines and boosters are as protective against BA.2 and BA.3 as BA.1?

BM: That's still to be determined. We're still working on getting more booster shots into people. You don't want to have a false sense of security just because you've had two shots. That booster shot really does help your immunity, even in the context of something like Omicron that isn't as severe. We have a tool out there in vaccination, and that will protect you from severe disease.

Q: We’ve been discussing two new variants in the Omicron family. Could something still come along that's entirely different?

BM: Yes. Omicron has taken over in terms of numbers, but Delta is still out there. There's still a possibility of going back to some of those original sequences, like Alpha or Delta, and something mutating from that. Given the ability that Omicron has to infect new people, most of the infections are coming from Omicron, but that doesn't mean you still couldn't get mutations from Delta.

Q: There was a time not too ago when the general public didn't think about the word “pandemic” and maybe didn't even know what it means. Now, of course, it's fundamental to daily discourse. These days, we’re beginning to hear the word “endemic” more and more often, and some people might not have a clear grasp of it. How do you define it, and how does it differ from pandemic?

BM: Pandemic is the introduction of something new, a new pathogen into the population and the ability that it has to spike and get a lot of infections. Once something becomes endemic, it is really in our population. A good analogy is that influenza is endemic, but in a seasonal way, meaning that we can all anticipate that there's going to be a flu season and roughly how many individuals are going to get infected and how the flu is spreading throughout regions based on the time of year. I think what we’ll get with COVID-19 is that it's going to be around and we have the tools now to control it more effectively. We've got vaccines, we know that masks are protective. We're going to have to learn how to deal with it, and hopefully we’ll see in the next couple of months that some of the indoor mask mandates might go away. But we're introducing new public health tools like sewer water testing that will determine regional locations where there might be increases in numbers of infection. And then some of the usual public health tools can be reintroduced. So when we think of it being endemic, it's going to be around. It's not going to go away tomorrow or next month or even in six months or a year. But now we have the tools to better control it and even predict what's going to happen next.

Q: Will it go away in our lifetimes?

BM: Well, coronaviruses have been around. Some of them are responsible for common colds. So I don't think so. This has really taken hold, and I don't see it going away. I think the way that we're going to be able to interact with it, we probably won't go back to our previous normal. We'll just be using public health tools more effectively to be able to monitor it.

Q: Regarding the comparison to influenza, do you think COVID will turn into a seasonal thing?

BM: The goal originally was that it would be seasonal. In the winter, people are indoors, and that would lead to increased transmission rates. That didn't happen in our first two seasons with COVID, though there were some peaks. I think it’s still to be determined whether there will be increases and decreases in infection based on season. I haven't seen any data that will clarify that for us at this point.

Q: What do you think about the increasingly expressed idea of learning to live with COVID and how our society might deal with that?

BM: In thinking of how to live with COVID, there's a flu vaccine that is available to everyone every year, and it's pretty successful at preventing severe flu outbreaks. That's a tool we now have with COVID, and we've had to implement booster shots, so it could turn into something where you're just going to have to get a vaccine periodically. I think that's one way we're going to live with it, by boosting our immune system with a periodic COVID vaccine. And if we can, as a society, increase those vaccination rates, hopefully we would hit herd immunity and protect those individuals who can't be vaccinated. That would ultimately be the goal. Are we headed in that direction? Well, we're seeing a moderate increase in vaccination rates. If we can continue with that philosophy, these vaccines are what we’re going to need to continue to live with COVID.

Q: Reflecting on when we first talked in March 2020 to where we are now, what has surprised you most about the arc of COVID?

BM: This virus has thrown out all the models that anybody would have had for a new virus being introduced into the human population. But as several of my colleagues have said, this has really tested scientists. And ultimately, it's probably going to go down in history as one of the greatest accomplishments of science and medicine in being able to introduce a vaccine in nine or 10 months after the discovery of a new pathogen. So while it has really tested us in terms of not being able to predict what was going to happen next, it did provide an opportunity for a new vaccine generation. And now taking those tools that have come through in terms of COVID and applying them to other pathogens that we’ve been dealing with for a long time, like HIV, that's exciting.

I think this is also an opportunity for us to realize that, as scientists, we have to do much better in terms of communicating with the public and utilizing platforms that are much more accessible. For me, it's exciting to have a whole science Twitter section that I can go to where there are multiple papers every day in peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed literature that are really moving science forward. Even for scientists, you can't keep up with all the new information that's coming through.

What surprised me most is that there was a pathogen that was introduced into the human population that no one could have predicted would have taken hold and replicated so effectively, and from an optimistic perspective, scientists were able to respond to it in a way that has never happened before. I think if this was 10 or 15 years ago, we still wouldn't have a vaccine for it; we wouldn't have had the platforms that we have now to generate new vaccines. And that's really exciting to see. The virus evolved, and our tools to deal with it had to evolve even faster.

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“This is critical in getting our students prepared to join the workforce and understand what research really involves and what their career path could be if they go into research,” said Jackie Trischman, interim dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. “The presentation skills that they gain from something like this can be very helpful in every stage of their career from this point forward.” 

The showcase was created more than a decade ago by the Committee for Undergraduate Research (CUGR) to share students’ passion for research while encouraging them to take the next steps in their future careers. This year’s event was presented by CUGR and the Office of Graduate Studies and Research.

“We are a campus that is deeply committed to undergraduate research for multiple reasons,” said Chuck De Leone, interim dean of Graduate Studies and Research. “We know that it's wonderful for our students and we know that it helps our faculty in accomplishing the research goals that they have.” 

There were 19 research posters at the showcase, covering an array of topics. 

Ciara Sanders, a master’s student in biological sciences, used the showcase as an opportunity to spread awareness around climate change. Sanders wanted to explore the effect of extreme weather conditions on horizontal gene transfer among coastal microbiomes. 

“It gives us a really good idea of how it's going to impact antibiotic resistance genes on the coast, which can be been really detrimental to human health because the of the antibiotic resistance crisis that's currently happening,” Sanders said. 

Sanders curated her experiment in the lab of biology professor Elinne Becket, who recently received an award from a state organization recognizing up-and-coming professionals in the life science industry.  

Sanders is hoping to publish her research before she begins a Ph.D. research program next fall. 

Devanshi Upadhyaya, Rosalva Romero and Kasandra Barajas studied the differences of wise reasoning in first-generation and continuing-generation college students under the direction of psychology professor Alex Huynh. Last summer, they were able to collect data from over 200 participants. 

“We're all psych majors,” Upadhyaya said. “We have a realm of amazing professors who have their own labs here. Professor Huynh was our mentor and he guided us through the study.” 

As a first-generation student, Romero was curious to explore the differences.

“I think for me personally, you oftentimes hear a lot of conversations between the experiences and differences between first gen and continuing gen,” Romero said. “I can resonate with a lot that we did with my background. This is just a great way to bring more awareness of these differences between first gen and continuing gen. It's very important.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Becket is one of 10 winners of the sixth annual Life Science Catalyst Awards from Biocom California, the association representing the California life science industry. The awards “celebrate the accomplished and up-and-coming academics, entrepreneurs, investors, corporate leaders and business advisers who are making their mark on the California life science industry before reaching their 40th birthday.” 

Becket was chosen from a pool of nominees representing all facets of the life science industry, including pharma, diagnostics, venture funding, industrial biotech and digital health. The nominees were vetted by a statewide committee that considered factors including innovation, leadership and vision.  

The award winners will be highlighted on the cover of Biocom California’s online magazine LifeLines and celebrated at Biocom California’s annual Celebration of Life gala in San Diego on Nov. 18. 

Becket is in her fourth year as an assistant professor at CSUSM. Her research work focuses on microbial genomics, specifically how urban waste affects coastal ecosystems and exacerbates the effects of climate change.  

She returned to academia in 2018 after four years in the biotechnology industry because she missed working with students. Through her lab, she has mentored 25 research students, who have given 35 research presentations at regional and international conferences. 

“Winning the Catalyst Award is such an honor, but mostly it validates the importance of training a diverse next generation of achievers in the life science industry,” Becket said. 

Last spring, Becket was awarded a three-year, $447,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study antibiotic resistant bacteria in urban water runoff along the Pacific coast. This month, she was among 78 California State University faculty who received COVID-19 Research Recovery Microgrant Program awards from the CSU Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB). 

Becket organized a workshop in February 2020 to assemble the genomes of spacecraft-associated microbes at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Through this initiative, seven CSUSM undergraduate students wrote a publication with collaborators from JPL, NASA Ames Research Center and undergrads from other institutions.  

She also co-organized two international microbial genomics conferences, which bring together people from around the world at all career stages. She’s a founding member of the Climate Change Faculty Working Group at CSUSM and the university’s faculty director of innovation, which includes developing, coordinating and promoting activities within the CSUSM Innovation Hub that serves students, faculty and industry. 

Becket earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and a doctorate in molecular biology, both from UCLA. She was a postdoctoral scholar at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.  

“Dr. Elinne Becket is an activist in our life sciences community, leveraging her talent as an instructor, a researcher and a leader to convince her many industry contacts that underrepresented and/or first-generation college students are worth the investment it takes to truly welcome them to the thriving Southern California life sciences industry,” said Jackie Trischman, interim dean of CSUSM’s College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. 

CSUPERB announced the awards on Oct. 7 as part of an “ongoing initiative to assist tenured/tenure track faculty researchers and their students across the California State University system as they restart, reinitiate and reengage in existing and established research activities after campus laboratory closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The CSUSM recipients are:

• Elinne Becket: $1,500 for the proposal titled “Acquisition of DNA extraction and next-generation sequencing reagents to re-analyze samples due to expired materials.”
• Julie Jameson: $1,500 for the proposal titled “Recovery of lost cell lines due to COVID-19 shut down.”
• Carlos Luna-Lopez: $1,403 for the proposal titled “Cancer-associated adipocytes: Investigating the crosstalk between MD-MBA-231 and adipose.”
• Bianca Mothé: $1,500 for the proposal titled “MHC Expression in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPSCs).”
• Arun Sethuraman: $1,500 for the proposal titled “Deciphering the Evolutionary History of Dinocampus coccinellae (Hymenoptera:Braconidae).”
• George Vourlitis: $1,500 for the proposal titled “Interactions between carbon type and nitrogen pollution on soil microbial activity and abundance.”

NAU honors communication professor

Communication professor Antonio De La Garza was named the Dr. Cliff Harkins Distinguished Citizen of the Year, presented by the Northern Arizona University Alumni Association to recognize distinguished service to nonprofit organizations; governmental assignments at the municipal, county, state or federal level; or other outstanding citizen service.

De La Garza received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northern Arizona before attending the University of Utah for his Ph.D.

Rankings

• CSUSM is ranked 42^nd for total bachelor’s degrees awarded in Hispanic Outlook on Education Magazine’s annual list of “Top 100 Colleges and Universities for Hispanics.” The university was also 78^th for total enrollment among four-year schools and third in “Top 10 Schools by Major” in the category of “Family and Consumer Sciences/Human Sciences Degrees.”
• The nursing program is seventh out of 36 schools in Nursing Schools Almanac’s 2021 rankings of prelicensure Bachelor of Science in Nursing programs in California.

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Whether it’s a straight path or the road less traveled, every Cougar has their own set of challenges in getting to campus.

And then there’s Ivan Gonzalez.

As a child, he walked miles every day from Mexicali across the border into Calexico to attend school in the United States. Barely understanding English, he faced challenges that were equally daunting once he arrived at class.

His goal was making it to class every day on time. Nary was there a thought of eventually pursuing higher education.

In fact, what he witnessed in high school (his family had moved to Calexico by then) was that whatever small thoughts the seniors had about college were washed away because the community environment was much more focused on work.

“Many of the students who graduated from high school back home would often get a full-time job to begin paying for their own expenses and help their parents out financially,” said Gonzalez, who graduated from Calexico High School in 2017. “Thus, I then began to follow those footsteps of basically applying to full-time jobs right after finishing high school. I didn’t believe I was higher education material since my level of English was too far behind.”

But something stirred inside him. He knew there was more for him, particularly after he had spent so much of his high school years working extra hours to keep his college aspirations alive.

He set out to prove that a first-generation Mexican-American student like him could not only complete the journey to earning a high school degree, but could go much farther.

Mission accomplished.

Now a biological sciences senior at CSUSM, Gonzalez recently was honored as the university’s 2021 Trustees’ Award recipient.

“This scholarship award made me feel super special,” Gonzalez said. “It just served as proof that I was meant for higher education. This award is a recognition and validation that all of my hard work is finally paying off. Although I am still not where I want to be, the funds allocated through this award will go toward applying to graduate school (physician assistant) programs and will help me achieve my long-term goal of becoming a PA.”

Gonzalez is an active member of the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) and the Pre-Health Society, for which he serves as secretary. He also is a medical intern and interpreter at Palomar Medical Center, assisting medical providers and patients.

This year, he is working in biology professor Dennis Kolosov’s lab, where he is researching epithelial cell separation of the Malpighian tubules of the cabbage looper caterpillar.

He happened to be in Kolosov’s lab when he found out about the Trustees’ Award.

“I remember I was cleaning and feeding the caterpillars when my friend Ashlyn DM'd me on Instagram with a huge congratulations,” said Gonzalez, who is minoring in Spanish. “At first I was in shock. I had no idea what was happening. I instantly placed the caterpillar down and checked my phone. As soon as I opened my Instagram, I saw the @cstem_csusm Instagram post, and that was the best thing ever. I remember shouting, and my lab mates Emilie and Alexis stared at me, confused. I told them what had happened, and they instantly gave me a huge hug. It was the best day ever.”

Last year he worked in biology professor John Eme’s lab, which focuses on comparative integrative and evolutionary vertebrate physiology. He assisted with a project on the growth of young alligators, and he assisted a graduate student with her project on the thermal biology of fish.

“Ivan's work in two separate labs is one small example of his excellent performance as an undergraduate academic,” Eme said. “Ivan is a wonderful person, engaged in his coursework, thoughtful when it comes to interacting with his fellow students. He is a joy to have in the classroom.”

In addition to Eme and Kolosov, Gonzalez pointed out several other members of the CSUSM community who have been crucial to his successful journey.

“A big shout-out to Dr. Jacqueline Trischman, Shauna Mendez, Gina Lopez, Ricardo Pliego, Julia Garcia and so many more,” said Gonzalez, referring to the dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics; three members of the library services team; and the CSTEM Success Center coordinator. “There are a ton of more people who have influenced me here at CSUSM, too many to name. I want to thank everyone who has been a part of my CSUSM journey. I couldn’t have done it without their help and support.”

Gonzalez plans to attend graduate school to pursue a career as a PA. He wants to work in underserved and underrepresented communities, giving back while also helping to transform the health care system into one that promotes a healthier lifestyle for all.

To do that, he’ll rely on the support of those around him. From staff and professors on campus to those cheering him on from home, his success will come with several big assists.

“My family has been the best support system I have ever received,” said Gonzalez, who was recognized by the Alpha Lambda Delta National Honor Society for first-year students as a prime student and scholar in its honor roll list. “Their upbringings of constant hope and positivity give me the strength to keep moving forward. From calling my parents at 2 a.m. when I need moral support to celebrating with them when I do good in my exams, presentations, projects, etc. My sister and brothers all check up on me to see how I am doing mentally more than anything else. They treat me with Starbucks drinks often so that the caffeine keeps my brain rushing, which helps me stay up late to study for upcoming exams and finishing up assignments.

“In all honesty, they are my everything, and without them I do not think I would have been here where I am today.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

“College Access and Success for Undocumented Students” is a special edition of the Journal of College Access, which was launched at Western Michigan University in 2014. Set to be published on Sept. 22, it’s the second special issue, and the largest issue, that JCA has produced in its history.

Clark-Ibáñez edited the issue with Diana Camilo, a professor at Cal State San Bernardino whom she has worked with in the San Diego region regarding undocumented students.

The special edition includes 12 articles and features the work of nearly 30 researchers, scholars and practitioners. It focuses on research studies that increase awareness and deepen understanding about sustainable frameworks that support the success of undocumented students.

Clark-Ibáñez described the process of identifying and editing the manuscripts, which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a “labor of love.”

“It's thrilling to see an entire journal issue dedicated to this topic because our students need this support and they need institutional agents (counselors, teachers, professors, teachers, admissions staff) to see them and work with them,” said Clark-Ibáñez, who’s also the chair of the sociology department at CSUSM. “Also, it was very important that we acknowledge research about undocumented parents and family members, and we have an article included by Stephanie Cuevas, who just published a book about this topic as well. I also am very proud that this journal is open access because they maintained rigorous review standards but make it accessible to all.” 

The Journal of College Access examines the current trends, research, practices and development of all types of programs, policies and activities related to the access of and success in postsecondary education. Since the first issue in January 2015, nearly 18,000 downloads of articles have been made in 148 countries.

“This special issue is our most robust research effort to date,” said Christopher W. Tremblay, co-editor and co-founder of JCA. “Camilo and Clark-Ibáñez are bringing to us cutting-edge research and raising the voices of undocumented students throughout the U.S. We need to take note of what this new and original research tells us and how it informs our policies and practices going forward.”

Mothé new director of CSU Student Success Network

Biology professor Bianca Mothé has been named the director of the CSU Student Success Network. A CSUSM faculty member since 2003, Mothé has also served as associate dean for undergraduate studies from 2016-18 and faculty director for service learning from 2013-16.

The CSU Student Success Network is an independent network that was developed by CSU faculty, staff and administrators and “creates spaces and provides resources for people in all levels of the CSU system in support of increasing graduation rates, equity-based inquiry and action, and closing critical opportunity and outcomes gaps.”

Rankings

• CSUSM is tied for ninth out of 122 schools on U.S. News and World Report’s list of “Top Performers on Social Mobility,” tied for 19^th in “Best Undergraduate Teaching Programs” and tied for 41^st among 126 schools on its list of “Best Regional Universities West.”
• The university is ranked 182^nd overall in Forbes magazine’s “America’s Top Colleges,” 46^th in the West and 86^th among public universities. There are 600 colleges and universities included in the rankings.
• CSUSM is 27^th out of 215 schools on Washington Monthly’s “2021 Best Bang for the Buck Rankings: West” list and 36^th out of 616 schools in its “2021 Master’s University Rankings.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Students are selected for demonstrating superior academic performance, personal accomplishments, community service and financial need. Awardees have all demonstrated inspirational resolve along the path to college success, and many are the first in their families to attend college. 

The CSU recognizes 23 students every year – one from each campus – with the Trustees’ Award, which includes a donor-funded scholarship ranging from $6,000 to $15,000. Gonzalez was named a Chancellor Emeritus Timothy P. White Scholar. 

Gonzalez and the other awardees will be recognized during a ceremony as part of the CSU Board of Trustees virtual meeting on Sept. 14. 

Gonzalez is a first-generation Mexican American senior majoring in biological sciences with a minor in Spanish. He has taken active roles in the Educational Opportunity Program, College Assistance Migrant Program and the Pre-Health Society.  

Gonzalez has engaged in research as a biophysiologist focusing on comparative, integrative and evolutionary vertebrate physiology, and is currently studying lepidopterans (an order of insects that includes butterflies and moths) and their electro-physiology. He also serves as a medical intern and interpreter at Palomar Medical Center, where he assists medical providers and patients. 

Upon completion of his bachelor's degree, Gonzalez plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career as a physician assistant. 

“These 23 scholars wonderfully exemplify the ideals of the California State University," CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro said. “Every year, and especially this year, our Trustees' Award honorees demonstrate resilience, tenacity and resolve — together with a keen intellect — while making an indelible, positive impact on their families and their communities. They are truly an inspiration." 

More than 400 students have been honored with the Trustees' Award since the scholarship program was established in 1984 by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. In 1999, the Hearst Foundation partnered with the CSU Board of Trustees to supplement the endowment with contributions from CSU Trustees, CSU Foundation board members and private donors. Each student scholarship bears the name of a donor. 

It’s not unusual to see Sethuraman smiling while teaching, sitting in on a meeting or simply walking around the campus of Cal State San Marcos.

But forgive the biological sciences professor if his smile has been extra wide these days.

Earlier this month, Sethuraman was granted early tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor starting with the upcoming fall semester.

That announcement came on the heels of his National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award being recommended for funding. It’s a prestigious award that puts Sethuraman in rare company as he’s believed to be one of just two CSUSM professors to ever win it. The other was biology professor George Vourlitis in 2002.

Sethuraman’s grant will cover a period of five years and is worth a total of $608,360.

“It's a career-building opportunity,” Sethuraman said. “It’s set up to both engage our student population in science and to make sure that we communicate it. We want to be able to communicate our science to the general public with all sorts of engagement activities and programs.”

The NSF CAREER Award is for early career researchers. The award aims to provide financial support and assistance to those who have just started out on their careers and are trying to establish a program for themselves. Only assistant professors and tenure-track assistant professors can apply for it. The award needs a scientific or public community engagement component for it to work.

That won’t be a problem for Sethuraman, who with an NSF grant earlier in his career as a postdoc student at Temple University established a summer workshop program for high school teachers in the Philadelphia area.

That program trained teachers basic programming skills to take to their high school biology or chemistry classroom after a week of learning different types of exercises.

As soon as next summer, Sethuraman plans on implementing a similar program for San Diego County high school teachers, one in which potentially 25-30 lesson plans can be given to each teacher.

“That’s one part of (the grant),” said Sethuraman, who earned his bachelor’s in computer science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India, and his Ph.D. from Iowa State. “The other part is, I write for a popular science blog called ‘The Molecular Ecologist,’ and my goal as part of this career was to incorporate my own graduate students and teach them how to do science communication to the general public. They will work on tutorials and articles, which we’ll then publish as part of the science blog accessible to the general public. So there's a number of other sort of synergistic outreach and community engagement activities that are also part of the brand.”

Sethuraman isn’t waiting until next summer to make his latest impact.

The second annual Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program that he and biology professor Betsy Read co-run began on campus last week and runs for 10 weeks.

There were more than 250 applicants from all over the country for this year’s program. Ten students will do research projects in different labs and receive training in genomics and bioinformatics. The program will end with a poster presentation on Aug. 13.

Whether it’s earning tenure, receiving a prestigious award or being the driving force for an important summer program, Sethuraman has big goals for his career beyond just the classroom and lab.

“I've already started to think about sabbatical years and things that I want to do in those years,” he said. “My immediate goal would be to teach a lot of genetics classes here. I've noticed over the years that genetics textbooks and resources are not very inclusive, and actually that's also written into my NSF CAREER grant.”

Last spring, Sethuraman co-taught a one-unit seminar course with kinesiology professor Richard Armenta that is open to the entire campus called the genetics of minorities. In that course, he discussed the genetic basis behind ethnic and racial minorities, sexual orientation, weight and people with pre-existing conditions, and how there are different types of minorities and disabilities that are also affected by sociological perspectives.

“It’s also actually written into my CAREER proposal that the goal is to offer that class as a three-unit course on campus to explore the sorts of things that are not in the textbooks and not talked about or not studied enough just by virtue of the fact there's no resources in parts of the world that are highly underrepresented or for sections of the society that are highly underrepresented,” Sethuraman said. “So my goal, whenever I'm eligible for sabbatical, would be to eventually write about genetics of minorities in a much more inclusive genetics book.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

But there was something missing in Gonzalez’s life. Maybe it was getting bored mowing lawns. Perhaps it was becoming a father at the age of 21 and again a couple of years later. Or it could have been his desire to explore learning and creating rather than working outside.

And since his parents settled on the land that is now Cal State San Marcos upon emigrating from Mexico, what better place to start his path to a career in science academia than CSUSM?

The journey was long – from earning his high school credit, to bouncing around a couple of community colleges, to graduating from CSUSM – but Gonzalez is now an assistant professor of biomedical sciences at UCSD and one of the most respected scientists in the pharmacology field.

“When my parents came from Mexico the first place they landed was right here,” Gonzalez said. “The story of my beginnings is here. This is where my family started.”

And that child born during the start of his journey? He’s set to follow in his father’s footsteps this month as he graduates from CSUSM with a biological sciences degree.

David Gonzalez III will be heading to UC Riverside in July for its renowned biomedical sciences Ph.D. program.

The other son, Isaiah, graduated with honors from UC San Diego in 2019 and is narrowing his choices for medical school.

Gonzalez II’s journey to a better life for him and his family began literally the day after Gonzalez III’s birth.

One of the homes that Gonzalez II and his father serviced at the time was next to MiraCosta College. Gonzalez II would consistently push a lawnmower while he watched people his age carry backpacks. Watching his peers pursue knowledge gave him an uneasy feeling. The five years he spent working with his dad, although gratifying in many ways, made him want more for his sons.

“Something changed in me,” Gonzalez II said. “I don't know what it was. When David was born, I said, ‘You know what? I'm going to go to school. I want to break this chain.’ ”

So the next day he enrolled in five classes at MiraCosta with pretty much an eighth-grade education on his résumé. His grades that first semester weren’t great, including a C in Spanish for the man fluent in that language.

While the expected community college timeline is two years, maybe three, Gonzalez II spent five years there. He was 25 when he finished at MiraCosta, a much older transfer to CSUSM than most of his classmates.

But those five years taught him perseverance, patience and how to be a student.

“I hadn’t learned that yet,” he said.

On his first day at CSUSM, Gonzalez II showed up at 6 a.m. for a 10 a.m. class. Not knowing where to go, he stumbled his way to a biochemistry class taught by Jose Mendoza.

If having a child motivated Gonzalez II to begin his college journey, being in Mendoza’s class rocketed his motivation to heights he never knew were possible.

Up until this point in his life, Gonzalez II never thought about how much influence someone who looked and spoke like him and his parents could have. He was always taught to put your head down, work hard, don’t worry about things you can’t control and things will just happen.

“That day something happened – I call it an epiphany – when I saw Dr. Mendoza,” Gonzalez II said. “And I don't know if it’s different now, but 20 years ago his accent was pretty heavy. But what I saw when I saw him speak, and he was a professor of biochemistry, it was like someone hit me with something. I'm like, ‘That's what I want. I'm going to do that. That's my future.’ So that everything from that point, boom, it just was like a laser beam. Now that was focused energy. I'm going to do this right. I'm going to be a professor.”

After earning his bachelor’s degree at CSUSM, Gonzalez II entered the highly ranked biochemistry Ph.D. program at UCSD while Gonzalez III and Isaiah were beginning to excel in youth sports. The boys would eventually become varsity baseball and wrestling stars, respectively.

Gonzalez II worked tirelessly in his Ph.D. program, finishing first in his class, while his wife carried the weight financially. The sacrifices for their family were large, particularly financially, while dad was working on getting published and deciding on postdoc work projects.

Gonzalez II earned a faculty position at UCSD right out of the program, and then a funny thing happened. Much like a coach’s kid who is always around the gym or field and picks up the nuances of a sport basically through osmosis, Gonzalez III and Isaiah started hanging out in a few different labs at UCSD.

Without even realizing it, the kids were learning about basic science experiments, about the tools, equipment and safety standards of a lab. The kids were just being kids, but the foundation was being laid for potential careers in science and medicine.

While Isaiah was excelling in wrestling in high school, Gonzalez III was touching 92 mph on the radar gun as a baseball pitcher. Neither boy had aspirations to follow in their father’s footsteps, but they were also becoming exceptional at math and the nuances of science.

It helped to have a biomedical science professor as a father.

“I would literally make both of them sit there, either without talking or anything moving, and do like 1,000 math problems,” Gonzalez II said. “It was almost like second nature. Like the art of science was basically being branded. I wouldn't read ‘Pinocchio’ or ‘Dumbo’ to them. I would read organic chemistry books. So it was almost like, even though they didn't think that they had to, it was always there.”

Desirae Mellor was able to relate to his journey. The former biochemistry major at CSUSM began at community college and started a family at a young age, overcoming complex barriers to eventually earn a graduate degree at UCSD, too.

She worked in Gonzalez II’s lab upon graduating from CSUSM. As her mentor, he showed her how to find a balance between research and family that she has managed to maintain over the past three years as a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry and biochemistry in the lab of Michael Burkart at UCSD.

“He was empathetic and supportive beyond measure,” said Mellor, who studies protein-protein interactions in the fatty acid biosynthesis pathway of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. “David's early mentorship and support has been invaluable to my success as a growing scientist and as a mother. He told me how he worked his butt off to be as efficient as possible so that he could still prioritize time with his family. As a mother to young children, this deeply resonated with me. David told me how he made sure he never missed his son's baseball games.

“He may have had to come in early during the week, but he made sure that he was always still available to be there for his family. Although I didn't stay in David's lab, he has continued to check on me and be a mentor for me.”

Although Gonzalez III spent a lot of his time in high school excelling on the baseball field, he was also taking AP science courses and doing lab rotations at UCSD in the summer.

Although he had options to play baseball at the collegiate level, he chose a path close to home, one quite familiar to the Gonzalez family.

“When I was getting close to graduation I just sat down with my dad and weighed out my options,” Gonzalez III said. “Science is something that I've always been intrigued by, even though I never really fully immersed myself in it. I didn't think I was going to go into it initially, but I guess the work I was doing was indirectly preparing me for that decision.”

Although it’s now full speed ahead on pursuing a Ph.D., the path wasn’t any clearer for Gonzalez III in his first year at CSUSM than it was for his dad when the senior Gonzalez arrived to class four hours early.

But Gonzalez III took some steps beyond his coursework. He eventually earned a spot in the Office for Training, Research and Education in the Sciences (OTRES) program on campus.

He also attended the UCSD Summer Training Academy For Research Success (STARS) program, which renewed his interest in research. The STARS program offers students a challenging research opportunity with UCSD faculty as well as graduate school preparation workshops.

“I came in a little naive my freshman year,” Gonzalez III said. “But now that I'm a senior I just felt like it was apparent to me that everything in my life was preparing me for this: this transition in this moment.”

While an undergrad at CSUSM, Gonzalez III became a father. Much like his dad did two decades previous, Gonzalez III chose to view this occurrence as a sign.

Having a child gave him a renewed focus. Baby Alaina and then-girlfriend Mariah inspired Gonzalez III to dive head-first into his career preparation.

“They are my biggest motivators,” said Gonzalez of his now-wife and now 3-year-old daughter. “(Alaina) is slowly understanding the types of things I do. She even understands things like what bacteria is. She’s picking up those small details of what her dad does.”

Could Alaina be a third-generation Gonzalez scientist?

“I can definitely see that happening,” he said. “But I also I don't want to keep her goals so narrow. I try to tell her that there's many other things you can do.”

Said her proud grandfather: “When she was small, I used to do some kind of techniques where you would just tap and count. And now she's 3 years old. She's doing division and multiplication. And she hasn't even gone to school. So that's awesome.”

Gonzalez II’s lab at UCSD is full of CSUSM grads. Three current members of his lab are CSUSM grads Consuelo Sauceda, Dominic McGrosso and Carlos Gonzalez.

A 2014 biological sciences graduate, Carlos Gonzalez (no relation) is currently doing his postdoctoral training jointly with Gonzalez II and Rob Knight, another UCSD professor.

“Some of the highlights of working in David’s lab are the great deal of freedom we get to explore scientific topics that interest us, with the ability to leverage his vast network of collaborators to assist with techniques and technology we don’t have direct access to in the lab,” Carlos Gonzalez said. “I have spent a good deal of my time mining large data sets and using machine learning to predict disease severity from just a little piece of poop as opposed to invasive biopsies.”

Gonzalez III obviously received a plethora of inspiration from his father. His career path could easily lead to a professorship or a life-changing spot in the biotech industry. His opportunities are many.

Gonzalez II has turned his path from a high school dropout to a college professor. The list of people he has positively influenced is long.

Just like in life, higher education is littered with people who alter paths, change fortunes and inspire the impressionable. Quite literally, change lives.

“I wish I could tell you about all of the people who influenced me, but the reality is it's not that I was just always steered away from bad things,” said Gonzalez II of his encounter with Mendoza on his first day at CSUSM some 20 years ago. “Some feeling came over me that wasn't from this earth. It was like the planets aligned. The stars aligned. It was just from a man that didn't even know me, didn't even know me and I didn't know him. But he completely changed my life. That's crazy.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

A first-generation college student, Cope participated in Bridges to the Future, TRIO McNair Scholars, a National Science Foundation-Research Experience for Undergraduates program at San Jose State, and he worked in the lab of biology professor Elinne Becket.

Becket lauded Cope’s drive. As one example, Becket had him look into utilizing pulsed-field gel electrophoresis as a way to analyze large mobile genetic elements in microbial communities. Becket noted that these machines are expensive, and they would need to look into the feasibility of this method from a research and cost-effective perspective.

Within a week, Becket said, Cope downloaded AutoCAD and designed the entire apparatus to be 3D-printed, connected with faculty from the electrical engineering department to design the wiring setup, and coordinated with other biology faculty to utilize 3D printers on campus. Cope plans to upload these designs online for any lab to emulate, increasing research tool accessibility.

“Matt has a diverse range of interests and experiences that converge into a clear passion with important broader impacts,” Becket said. “He has demonstrated a collaborative, collegial and transdisciplinary nature in such an early stage of his research career. Between this, his creative drive and his sensitivity to improve the lives of those around him, I have the utmost confidence that he will be successful in his graduate studies and will be a valuable and impactful member of the scientific community. Through his contributions over the last two years at CSUSM, he has proven himself not only to be an incredible scholar, but also a valuable and selfless member of our campus community.”

Cope will attend UC Davis in the fall to pursue research involving plant-microbe interactions.

Nursing lecturer receives fellowship

Tara Marko, a lecturer in the School of Nursing, has been awarded a predoctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Health.

Marko, who’s enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Washington State University, will receive an award of $50,000 over two years through the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which conducts research into the effects of the environment on human disease. It’s one of the 27 institutes and centers of the NIH.

Marko will study the effects on neonatal outcomes after exposure to wildfire smoke in utero.

“Conducting this research will build on my experience as a neonatal intensive care nurse and support a strong foundation in my career as a nurse scientist with a focus on environmental exposure in the maternal child population,” Marko said.

Honors for USU marketing team

The University Student Union marketing team was recently recognized in two categories of the ACUI Steal this Idea competition.

The USU end-of-the-year celebration work placed second in the professional digital campaign category. The women’s empowerment month content placed third in the professional video category.

The digital campaign included contributions from Anthony Ferrer, USU digital media specialist, and Jamie Acevedo, USU assistant director. The video campaign included contributions from Hunter Chanove, USU marketing and media coordinator; Ferrer; and students Mason Broadway, Julissa Briseno, Mikayla Meneses and Daisy Camacho.

ACUI is a nonprofit educational organization that brings together college union and student activities professionals.

Student receives CSUPERB award

Gilda Castellanos was selected to receive a 2021 CSUPERB Presidents’ Commission Scholar Award in the amount of $8,000 to fund a project titled, “Modeling the metastasis of bioprinted breast cancer tumors using the chorioallantoic membrane of the chick embryo.”

Castellanos, whose faculty mentor is biology professor Carlos Luna Lopez, is one of six CSU students whose research projects are being funded this year.

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Khyati Kansagra hailed from Gujarat, a state on the western coast of India. Bayan Sairafi was from the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Placed in the same icebreaker activity, they immediately hit it off, and their bond only grew through subsequent international coffee hours and cultural fests.

This fall, more than two years after they graduated from CSUSM, Kansagra and Sairafi will be reunited at one of the premier academic institutions in the United States. Kansagra actually has already enrolled at Johns Hopkins University and is living in Maryland, having started in January a two-year master’s program in biotechnology with a specialization in regulatory affairs.

She will be joined in a few months by Sairafi, who plans to return from her home country to begin pursuing a Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in health communication and health education.

“For us, it was definitely a coincidence,” Kansagra said. “But it feels really good to see that someone who I know from undergrad is also coming to Johns Hopkins. And Bayan clearly deserves it. It’s a great university, so I’m so glad we’ll be there together.”

Sairafi was in the process of applying to Johns Hopkins last winter when she noticed that Kansagra had been one of the subjects of the international alumni spotlight on CSUSM’s Global Programs and Services webpage and that the feature mentioned her impending studies at the Baltimore school famous for being America’s first research university. Sairafi decided to reach out to Kansagra to seek advice on the statement of purpose for her application.

“It was like a motivation for me,” Sairafi said. “When I saw that Khyati got accepted, my desire to get accepted went up because we come from the same school with the same kind of experience. And I am so proud of her because I know how hard she has worked.”

The news that two international alumna of CSUSM will soon be brought together again at Johns Hopkins was greeted enthusiastically by Danielle McMartin, director of the Office of Global Education, who became close with both of the women during their time on campus.

“They were both fiercely focused on their education and long-term goals,” McMartin said. “However, they both also realized the value of getting everything they possibly could out of their time here at CSUSM and in the U.S. They were both engaged with their faculty, with student organizations, with volunteering when opportunities were presented.

“Lucky for CSUSM, Bayan and Khyati graciously also shared their culture with our community. Neither student wanted to ‘set their culture aside’ to participate in ours. They both seemed to understand the balance maintaining their cultural norms while learning and interacting with ours.”

Kansagra moved to the United States on a student visa in 2014, the year before she started at CSUSM. She chose the university because of the opportunities for growth as a person and student and because of the proximity to Orange County, where relatives of her family lived. She was only 18, and it was her first time traveling to another county and leaving her parents, who still live in India.

“It had been a dream since I was a kid,” Kansagra said. “I always wanted to be independent and on my own, just able to support myself and grow up. The culture I come from isn’t like that; Indians are really sheltered and pampered. The other driving factor is that I was really interested in biotech, and India doesn’t have many options to pursue that.” 

At CSUSM, Kansagra majored in biological sciences with a minor in chemistry. Besides her involvement with the Office of Global Education, she worked as a biology research assistant and as a tutor for the STEM Center. After graduating in December 2018 (she participated in commencement the following spring), she found a job as a lab technician for Kyowa Kirin, a pharmaceutical research company in La Jolla.  

Upon completing her master’s program at Johns Hopkins, Kansagra plans to return to working in the pharmaceutical industry, where she’d like to help shepherd to market a treatment for pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease that occurs when lung tissue becomes damaged and scarred. Her mother was diagnosed with the disease when Kansagra was a young girl.  

“I’ve seen her struggling through it for all these years,” she said. “There’s no cure, and she has been on medication for 21 years. That has always been a big factor for me to do research in that particular field.” 

Like Kansagra, Sairafi grew up wanting to journey to the U.S. for her higher education. Sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government to attend college, she had to choose a school from an approved list, and CSUSM happened to have been added to the list around the time that she was filling out her applications. Many students from her country matriculate to CSU campuses such as Long Beach and Bakersfield, but Sairafi decided to leave her comfort zone and head to San Marcos. 

She studied human development and sociology at CSUSM, and served as an intern for both the Cross-Cultural Center and the American Red Cross of San Diego and Imperial Counties. She left her mark such that by the time she graduated in May 2019, she was invited to be the first-ever international student to speak at commencement.  

“When I remember it, it seems like yesterday,” Sairafi said. “I really enjoyed every moment, from writing my speech to rehearsing to the actual commencement. It was truly a life-changing experience.” 

In contrast to Kansagra, Sairafi elected to go back to her home nation following graduation. For the last year, she has worked as a document control specialist for the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia. In that role, she manages policies, clinical guidelines and other types of documents while also learning to prepare hospitals for visits from accrediting bodies.  

Her time at Johns Hopkins, though impactful, could be a brief hiatus as Sairafi plans to pursue a career in public health in Saudi Arabia.  

“With the knowledge I’ll be getting from Hopkins, we will do magnificent work here,” she said. “I want to give people awareness about the things they can do that promote health and give them better lives and a better environment. That’s what I’m really passionate about.” 

But first, Sairafi will get reacquainted with an old friend in Baltimore, and she can hardly wait. 

“It’s a new city and a big city and a new school,” she said. “And it’s good to have a friend there so we can support each other and talk to each other when loneliness sets in.” 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

So it was only natural that Wulf immediately called her grandmother a few months ago to share the news that she had landed a dream job as a conservation genetics research associate with San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which operates the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

“She was so excited about it,” said Wulf, who received her bachelor’s in biological sciences with a concentration in ecology from CSUSM last spring. “She was over the moon.”

Walking into the Beckman Center for Conservation Research at Safari Park for the first time as an employee in January was a surreal experience for Wulf, who walked the same halls more than once while on school field trips as a teenager.

“To actually go in the research labs and go in the offices was pretty incredible,” she said.

Wulf said one of the keys to landing the job was her experience with biostatistics. She credits biology professor Bill Kristan for inspiring her to pursue the subject as a minor.

Biology professors Arun Sethuraman and Diego Sustaita also were instrumental in her success at CSUSM and preparing her for a career, Wulf said. Sustaita introduced Wulf to the university’s Summer Scholars program, a 10-week experience that actively engages undergraduates in STEM research. She worked in the labs of Sustaita and Sethuraman on a project to understand the genetic diversity, differentiation and evolutionary history of loggerhead shrikes in Southern California.

“Over the summer, she not only successfully completed all the genotyping and data analyses from shrikes, but also worked with my other lab students on a meta-study, looking at 200-plus population genetics publications and their consistency in use of statistical methods,” Sethuraman said. “Gwen went on to present her work with shrikes at the Society for Integrated and Comparative Biology meeting in Florida in January 2019, and we successfully published our meta-study in the high-impact journal Molecular Ecology Resources.”

Sethuraman said their study was listed among the top 10% of most downloaded articles among all Molecular Ecology Resources publications from 2019.

“We have since continued to collaborate on completing the shrike work for a publication in the coming months,” Sethuraman said. “Gwen has also outshined all her peers in numerous undergraduate and graduate level courses – including bioinformatics, a seminar in evolution, and Molecular Methods in Ecology and Evolution. No wonder her continued excellence has landed her a dream job of working in conservation genetics at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I am confident that she will continue to make CSUSM and the Sethuraman-Sustaita labs proud with her achievements.”

Wulf’s work at Safari Park focuses on northern white rhinos. There are only two northern white rhinos left in the world, and both are too old to carry offspring. Wulf is part of a team working to take cells that have been frozen and develop them into gametes, which are reproductive cells. The goal is to eventually use them for in vitro fertilization using a southern white rhino as a surrogate to give birth to a northern white rhino.

Wulf was aware of the project even before being hired because she closely follows news from San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and has such a passion for conservation.

“It’s incredible to be able to work on that same project that I thought was so cool beforehand,” she said.

“Cal State pretty much did everything to prepare me for this job, which was the greatest feeling because it just reassured me that I made the right choice in the university that I chose. Everything that I learned from them and all the experience I gained in the lab, and also with all of that data analysis, really was essentially what got me here today.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

CSUSM received an award of $104,000 over three years as part of the 2021 class of the Beckman Scholars Program, a 15-month mentored research experience for exceptional undergraduate students in chemistry, biological sciences and interdisciplinary combinations thereof. The program is supported by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, located in Irvine. 

CSUSM was selected after a rigorous application process that included a two-part review led by a panel of scientific experts. Only two other institutions in California were chosen in 2021: Chapman University and the University of Southern California. 

Tracey K. Brown, a professor of biological sciences at CSUSM, led the team of professors who applied for the award.  

“We are quite honored to be able to bring this incredible opportunity for our students to CSUSM,” Brown said. “Most modern biology and chemistry researchers have benefited from the inventions and technology of the late Dr. Beckman, and now our students will be supported by his legacy as they begin their own research careers.” 

At CSUSM, four biology, biotechnology, biochemistry or chemistry undergraduate students will become Beckman Scholars and be supported and mentored in an independent research project over two summers and the intervening academic year. Each Beckman Scholar will: 

• receive $18,200 in stipend support and $2,800 for research supplies and travel over a 15-month period. Also, $5,000 in support will go to their research mentor for help with developing a mentor and research plan, and to purchase supplies. 

• receive one-on-one research and career mentoring from their faculty research mentor. 

• participate in the CSUSM Summer Scholars Program and the Puentes Program. 

• be provided travel and lodging to the annual Beckman research symposium and other conference opportunities. 

• be connected with Beckman Scholars alumni who now hold research and professional positions worldwide. 

There will be one scholar award starting in each of Year 1 (2021-2022), Year 2 (2022-2023) and Year 3 (2023-2024), with one additional award in one of those three time periods. 

The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation supports researchers and nonprofit research institutions in making the next generation of breakthroughs in chemistry and the life sciences. It was founded in 1978 by Mabel Beckman and Arnold O. Beckman, a scientific instrumentation pioneer and longtime former professor at the California Institute of Technology. Arnold Beckman died in La Jolla in 2004.  

For more about the Beckman Scholars Program at CSUSM and to apply for the award, go to csusm.edu/beckmanscholars. 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

“I want to be one of the largest biotech companies in San Diego,” Vallejo said. “I want to bring a lot of talent from Cal State San Marcos. I know it has a good biotech program, and I want to bring students like me out in the light and make sure they have an opportunity to shine.”

It’s easy to understand why Vallejo sees himself in so many of CSUSM’s students. Like many of them, he was a nontraditional college student. His path to a degree began at CSUSM in 2001 and took nearly two decades, culminating in his 2018 graduation. In between was a six-year stint in the Marines, a readjustment to civilian life, a move to Orange County and, finally, a return to the place where his higher education journey began.

Vallejo was 6 years old when his parents moved from Peru to the United States. Although his family lived comfortably in Peru, the country’s economic uncertainty and political turmoil at the time prompted a move to ensure that Vallejo and his sister would have an opportunity to thrive.

“My parents came here to give me and my sister a dream, to give their kids a chance,” said Vallejo, 38.

Vallejo joined the Marines as a reserve after graduating from high school. While he was at boot camp, a friend who was attending CSUSM kept sending him applications and encouraging him to apply. Vallejo eventually filled out one of those applications and was accepted through the Educational Opportunity Program’s Summer Bridge.

Vallejo excelled in the Summer Bridge program, which carried over into his first year at CSUSM. But he was called to active duty after 9/11 and sent to Yuma, Ariz., to train in preparation for deployment to the Middle East. Vallejo spent 18 months in Yuma before it was decided that his platoon wouldn’t be deployed. It allowed him to return to CSUSM, but being back in school after so much time away proved daunting.

“When I started, I was an A and B student and I was doing well,” he said. “But when I came back from military service, my grades weren't as good. An adjustment had to happen.”

Vallejo took some time off and even moved to Orange County. He always intended to return, but he needed several years before he felt completely readjusted to civilian life.

When Vallejo decided it was time to return to school, he initially applied to universities near his Orange County home. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that it would be best to finish where he started. He moved back to San Marcos and into an apartment a stone’s throw from campus, which he said helped him focus on his studies.

Vallejo had worked as a pharmacy technician for Kaiser Permanente for more than a decade when he graduated from CSUSM with a degree in biological sciences, but he found it challenging to land a suitable job in his field.

“I was turned down for a lot of things in my life,” he said. “But my biggest thing is my perseverance. I kept pushing.”

The job-hunting struggles inspired Vallejo to begin thinking about launching his own company. When he raised enough funds to get one started, he wasted little time.

Proper Cell Biotechnologies opened in Sorrento Valley in June with a mission “to provide quality laboratory services in a timely, accurate, and efficient manner and to provide profound research.”

Vallejo has hired a small team – including CSUSM biology professor Daun Everforest as the company’s lead scientist – and anticipates continued staff growth in the coming months. Proper Cell received a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business certification from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in September, and Vallejo has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise additional money that will be used for researching cures and vaccines related to COVID-19.

“My parents pretty much rolled the dice moving here, for me to be something,” Vallejo said. “Now that I have this business, they see the fruits of what they gambled.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Gonzalez, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s at CSUSM before attending Harvard for her Ph.D. in biology, is now the assistant director of diversity and minority affairs for the Division of Medical Sciences and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard.

Cell Mentor, which compiled the list in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, selected recipients based on scholarly achievements, mentoring excellence, and commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Cell Mentor is an educational resource that aims to make it easier for biology students and researchers to navigate their careers, get published and strengthen their laboratory skills.

HEED Award

CSUSM received the 2020 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education, for the seventh straight year.

Rankings

• CSUSM made U.S. News and World Report’s list of top Western universities for Top Performers on Social Mobility (tied 13^th), Best Undergraduate Teaching Programs (tied 22nd) and Best Regional Universities West Rankings (tied 60^th).
• The nursing program has been ranked eighth in the state by Nursing Process, a website that simplifies access to nursing education and career information.
• The university was ranked ninth on a list of 2020 Most Affordable Online Colleges for Fire Science Degrees by the website EduRef.net, which provides college planning resources and reviews publicly available data to produce independent ranking assessments of various educational programs.

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

So he decided to execute that concept on a larger scale, specifically on 306 acres.

Zanesco will graduate this spring from Cal State San Marcos, and in doing so, has left the 306-acre campus significantly better than when he arrived from the desert five years ago.

Zanesco recently received the 2020 Community Engaged Scholar award from the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (CSTEM).

“If I can improve everything that I come in contact with, just by a little, then I can change the world around me for the better,” Zanesco said. “I continued to live by my father’s guiding words as I entered Cal State San Marcos. I knew I wanted to have an impact on the school, but I didn’t know how to go about accomplishing my goal.”

A biology major, Zanesco has served on campus as a learning assistant, supplemental instruction leader and STEM tutor. He has also spent time as Course Embedded Learning Support (CELS) in biological sciences and is part of the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program as he plans to become a high school biology teacher.

In January 2019, Zanesco joined Elinne Becket’s lab. There, he helped the assistant professor in bacterial genomics develop the first Coastal Microbial Community Standard. This standard helps with the analysis of bacteria and antibiotic resistant genes that bacteria can acquire due to antibiotics in coastal waters. It not only will aid the Becket research lab and CSUSM, but it also will be shared with other schools in the CSU system to advance the microbiology research community and improve the health of our local coastal waters.

“Not only did Dennis research and execute these methods independently, he trained a team of undergraduates in microbial ecology fieldwork/sampling, sample processing, next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics analyses,” Becket said. “The spectrum of skills he independently and effectively developed is unlike any student I’ve seen. Dennis is by far the most independent, driven and impressive research student I have come across. His excellence in research combined with his dedication and service to the lab and his fellow students is inspiring.”

In addition to Becket’s tutelage, Zanesco gives a lot of credit for his college success to his experience under Paul Jasien. But it wasn’t always easy.

Zanesco refers to the professor of chemistry and biochemistry as one of his mentors, but it wasn’t smooth sailing at the beginning. He earned a C-minus the first time he took Jasien’s course, and that brought his grade-point average to 2.4 after his first two years.

That proved to be a turning point in his academic career. He retook the course, received an A, and went on to notch a 3.7 GPA in his final three years, 3.93 in his upper-division courses.

“Geez, where do I start?” Zanesco said when reflecting on the impact Jasien and Beckett had on his development at CSUSM. “They were really like mother and father figures for me. Dr. Jasien was rather stern with me, making sure I was doing well in all my classes, and Dr. Becket was there for support when I needed it. They showed me the possibilities that I could accomplish, and they believed in me. Once I realized this, all I wanted to do was make them proud, so I set off to make the most of my time at Cal State San Marcos.”

Zanesco will begin CSUSM’s teacher credential program in the fall. As part of the Noyce program, he will commit to teaching at least six years at a Title I (underprivileged) school district. He isn’t sure if he’ll begin his teaching career near home in La Quinta or in his newfound home of San Marcos.

Wherever he decides, he’ll be well-equipped to handle the rigors of the profession.

“Dennis will be an incredibly empathetic and passionate teacher, and already is in the teaching endeavors he's currently involved in,” Becket said. “He has such excitement for everything he and others do, and I think students will feel very comfortable approaching him. Dennis doesn't command leadership. He doesn't have to. He just throws himself into everything he does with excitement, and is always available to help. Dennis always puts in extra hours in the lab, whether it be to work or just hang out and study. And unbeknownst to me, he will show new students the techniques he's working on, and let them test out their lab hands and develop skills and confidence in the lab.

“Also, he has been responsible for collecting samples out in the field, and he will invite other new students along, to train them and for team-building. This is followed by me receiving heartwarming photos of my students out in the field collecting samples, enjoying the beach while doing microbiology field work. There will be an empty hole in the lab when he graduates this spring.”

Helping others isn’t for show. Zanesco doesn’t do it for the recognition or scholarship. His glass-half-full approach to life was developed at a young age, and his desire to work with children fits perfectly with his global outlook on life.

“Well, my parents are probably my biggest inspiration for this,” said Zanesco, whose mom had breast cancer. “I want to find a way to have the most significant impact on the world that I possibly can. Initially, I figured I could do this by getting into cancer research and find the cure for cancer or work for a groundbreaking company in next-generation sequencing. But I found out how much of an influence I had on the students around me while I was tutoring. I figure I can have a greater impact on the world if I can inspire all the students I teach every year to try to do good in the world. Then I can build a network of people that have done great in this world.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

“That has to show just how much she means to me,” Jimenez said.

Jimenez has more than a decade of experience as a head coach, so she is accustomed to players moving on once they’ve exhausted their eligibility. But seeing Eackles and fellow seniors Stephanie Custodio and Jon’Nae Vermillion finish their playing careers last month was more difficult than usual.

Not because CSUSM lost a game on the court, but because the COVID-19 pandemic led to a premature end to the season.

“I feel terrible for all of the players because of how hard they worked and what an incredible season they had, but especially sad for our seniors,” Jimenez said. “All the rest of us get to come back and try again, but the seniors are just done. I hope we get the opportunity to celebrate their success and all they have meant to our program.”

Eackles is back home in Sunnyvale, near San Jose, sheltering in place with her family while continuing her studies through virtual instruction. A biological sciences major, Eackles will graduate in the fall and plans to pursue a career as a veterinarian.

Eackles is keeping in touch with her teammates during this challenging time, and the abrupt end to the season remains a topic of discussion.

The Cougars were enjoying the best season in program history when the postseason was canceled. Their long list of accomplishments included the most wins in program history (25), longest winning streak (11 games) and first California Collegiate Athletic Association conference title. Their efforts led to another program first – a spot in the NCAA Division II Tournament.

The Cougars flew to Hawaii on March 11 to prepare for their tournament debut. As they exited the plane, their phones started blowing up with social media updates, texts and news alerts. Rudy Gobert, a player for the NBA’s Utah Jazz, had tested positive for coronavirus. Then came news that the NBA was suspending play across the league.

“Coach talked to us and she said, ‘As of right now, only family members can come to the games, but we're still going to be playing,’ ” Eackles said. “So we kind of felt relief. She told us that right when we landed, so we thought, ‘OK, hopefully we can just get to Friday and we'll be able to play because we're already here.’ ”

By the next morning, everything had changed. Eackles and her teammates received a text from Jimenez alerting them to an unplanned team meeting. It was there that players learned that the tournament was being canceled and they had to return home.

“You could tell she was upset and our assistant coaches were upset,” Eackles said. “It was just really sad.”

It was a disheartening finish to a historic run.

Eackles recalled Jimenez’s words from the beginning of the season, when she told them they were good enough to win the conference. It didn’t take long for the players to buy in. During the season’s first month, on Nov. 21, the Cougars stunned UC San Diego, then ranked No. 6 in Division II. The victory was both their first against UCSD and their first against a ranked opponent as an NCAA member.

But the most memorable moment of Eackles’ basketball career came three months later in the regular-season finale, when CSUSM beat UCSD again, this time on the Cougars’ Senior Day, to clinch a share of the CCAA regular-season title and the No. 1 seed in the CCAA Tournament.

“Chloe has had an incredible career here at CSUSM,” Jimenez said. “She came to us before we had won a single Division II game, and now she is part of a nationally competitive program. It hasn't always been easy during this building process for Chloe, but she has stayed the course, trusted the process and has always had a smile on her face. No matter the position or role she has been asked to play, she has always put the team before herself, and that is what her coaches and teammates will remember most about her.

“I hope our younger players have learned a lot from her and will play as hard as Chloe does and always remember to put the team first. She is leaving one special legacy.”

While the Cougars didn’t get to fully reap the rewards of winning the conference and earning a spot in the NCAA Tournament, Eackles is excited for what their success means for the future of the program.

“It's going to set the bar and it's going to make people want to come play here,” she said. “And it's going to be a really good program from here on out.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

As of Monday, more than 110,000 cases had been confirmed in more than 100 countries and territories around the world, with major outbreaks in China, South Korea, Italy and Iran. More than 3,800 people have died.  

Coronavirus reached the United States in late January, and the number of confirmed cases has surpassed 500. Twenty-two people have died, including one in California. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency, saying it will “help the state further prepare our communities and our health care system in the event it spreads more broadly.” 

Based on current trends, that seems inevitable. To learn more about coronavirus, and to try to separate fact from fiction, we turned to a pair of experts from the Cal State San Marcos faculty: biology professors Bianca Mothé, an immunologist, and James Jancovich, a virologist.  

Question: How concerned do you think people should be? 

James Jancovich: My opinion is it's going to continue to spread. I don't think there's too much you can do about it at this point. It has been disseminating; we just don't know how far it's disseminated. The labs that are testing are expanding, so I think we're going to have a better idea about what its dissemination rate is, but I don't think panicking is going to help anything. Even if the dissemination rate continues to go up, the mortality rate is still pretty low.  

Bianca Mothé: There are a lot of pathogens out there. When you think about it in the context of infectious diseases, you have TB and in specific areas of the world, you have things like Ebola that just circulate and people get sick. For something like Ebola, there’s a really high mortality rate, and we've had outbreaks of Ebola that have transmitted to the U.S., which is much more alarming. In terms of the average person who doesn't have any additional underlying health conditions, you could get something and not even know whether you have COVID-19 (the name of the disease caused by coronavirus) or a cold or a flu. For the normal person, I don't think there’s a reason to be completely panicked, like this rush to buy hand sanitizer and masks running out.  

Q: There's been a lot of discussion in the media about historical antecedents for this virus, from SARS to the Spanish flu of 1918. As experts, what do you think is the most direct comparison? 

JJ: I guess it's closest to SARS. But it's different than SARS in that SARS was transmitted when people started showing signs of disease. And with coronavirus, I don't think we know the complete parameters of when this is being transmitted. But between SARS and flu, I think those two are probably pretty close in terms of models that we could follow.  

BM: In terms of transmission from an animal source, SARS is probably the closest. I think there's been more human-to-human transmission with this infection, which would probably make it more comparable to something like flu, and flu has many more numbers and infects many more people. SARS had a greater mortality rate but didn't infect as many people, whereas here you're probably getting many more infections, probably most of them untested at this point, but a lower mortality rate. 

Q: What has surprised you most about the coronavirus so far? 

BM: We've seen SARS and MERS, which were other coronaviral infections, but they didn't have the ability to spread like this particular coronavirus. 

JJ: That it hasn’t happened before. With world travel these days, you can go around the world in less than 24 hours. Diseases pop up constantly, especially zoonotic diseases. Typically, zoonotic diseases jump from animals to humans, and it's a dead-end pathway. You rarely see human-to-human transmission at that point. If this is what happened here, and it now has jumped and allowed more human-to human-transmission, I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened before. I would have expected this to be more periodic and cyclical in some ways. 

Q: Because this is a virus that's spreading so fast in our social media age, there's a lot of misinformation out there. What are some of the most prevalent myths you’ve heard, and what is the truth? 

BM: I've seen some bad information. Hand sanitizer is probably protective. But the first time people were reporting on hand sanitizer, they were mislabeling this as like a bacterial infection, along the lines of, “Hand sanitizer kills 99.5% of all bacterial pathogens, including coronavirus,” and I was like, “Oh, no, don't forget this is a virus, it’s not about bacteria.” I think that was a mislabeling, which probably led to this over-panicking, like, “If I have hand sanitizer, I'll be OK.” There’s also this discussion of going into big crowds and we’re beginning to see some large functions getting canceled, and I'm not sure we're at that point yet. There's no evidence that says you can't go into big public places because if you do, you will catch this. For people who have vulnerabilities, it's something to consider, but I don't think it warrants canceling large functions or concerts.

The mask discussion is also interesting. If someone is sick, then maybe they should have a mask. But if you're on the other end, if you don't want to catch it, a regular mask isn't going to help you unless you have an N95 mask (a special surgical mask). If you do have coronavirus, a regular mask will keep your droplets from going out. But once those droplets are out there, they can go through a regular mask. I've been to a doctor for a couple different things recently, and you cannot find a mask in a regular doctor's office. They're all gone.

JJ: Don't touch your face all the time. That's the other thing. It's the concept of contact. If someone is sick, they will sneeze, that virus will last on surfaces for a while, someone else will touch it and then scratch their face, rub their nose.

Q: For people who might tend to brush this off as no big deal, why do you think it's important to keep the conversation going? 

BM: There's an opportunity to educate. It is an outbreak. There's a lot that we don't know about it. It's not to be alarmist that this is going to be the next 1918 Spanish flu. But vulnerable populations, like people with preexisting health conditions or the elderly, are more susceptible to infection. We should be cognizant of that, have a continual discussion and monitor what's happening in the news cycles, but there doesn't need to be a panic that if you catch this, everybody will die in your local community.

JJ: Diseases like this happen a lot and usually just kind of fizzle out and stop. So it’s about understanding that this could happen at even a bigger scale, and making sure that we're prepared for it in whatever way that may be in terms of education, medical care.

Q: From your understanding of viruses, is there anything that makes this one especially dangerous or problematic? 

JJ: Nothing that I've read sticks out. RNA viruses mutate much faster, so this is one where I would expect some change over time. It's just a matter of how long it will take.

BM: I was at an NIH Study Section last week called “Vaccines Against Microbial Diseases,” with a lot of colleagues who think about this all the time. As they’re beginning to prepare vaccine candidates, they're using traditional approaches. This is not a unique pathogen that has a different composition from other viruses. If anything, I think my colleagues dusted off a lot of approaches that they were using for SARS, so animal models that were developed at the time and different vaccine compositions. If the resources are available, this will allow for a vaccine to be designed and tested. You should be able to make a vaccine for this.

Q: Have you changed any of your behaviors or advised others to do so? 

BM: I work with the CSU Student Success Network, and we put together professional development for 80-plus faculty, staff and students. We have a session coming up in early April. I haven't changed anything I'm doing, but I'm about to send out a communication to all of those participants to say that we're monitoring the situation and these are some of the criteria that we will take in consideration if we were to change the delivery of that session, like via video conference instead of in person. I haven't changed classes, but I’m making some alternative plans if there’s a public health threat issued by officials and we can't get large gatherings of people together.

JJ: I have supplies to last for a while – at least a month or two of food and water. But I've always kind of had a supply of things. I tell people always to be prepared because in Southern California, you never know when there might be an earthquake or wildfire. There are so many people in such a small little area, and in case of an emergency, there's nowhere to go, you can't drive anywhere. So always be prepared – that goes back to my Boy Scout days.

Q: I’m going to ask you to put on your prognosticators’ hats. What’s your best guess about what the next year will look like, in terms of best-case, worst-case or most likely scenario? 

JJ: If trends continue, the infection rate will continue to go up. If the mortality rate stays about the same and the coronavirus affects a million people, obviously you're going to have a lot more people succumbing to the disease. But at some point, it's hopefully just going to complete its cycle. The worst-case scenario, I think, is that it gets some sort of mutation that makes it a little bit worse and increases the mortality rate, which is possible, especially with RNA viruses. But now that they've kind of opened up the testing, I think we're going to see the number of cases increase, which will make the mortality rate go down. The biggest issue is if it mutates more and becomes much more pathogenic or increases the mortality rate, but I think it'll fizzle out before then.

BM: We're beyond the initial containment. It's not like we can shut down borders for every country. We have it circulating so we're going to get higher numbers, and the question is: How high will they get? There's lots of unknowns, and I think that's probably one of the biggest unknowns. But most of the cases are probably transmission from people who are feelings some symptoms. So if you can practice good public health and keep those people from being out in public, hopefully you can contain and not get those crazy numbers.

For information about CSUSM's preparations for the coronavirus, visit our Incident Response website. 

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Rare is the faculty member who’s such an expert in his field that he has something named after him. 

And rarest of all is the person who combines both into one extraordinary career, with a generous dose of kindness and collegiality added to the mix for good measure. 

Several dozen friends and colleagues packed into the Faculty Center at Kellogg Library on Thursday to celebrate the life and work of Robert Sheath, a retired Cal State San Marcos provost and biology professor who died late last year after a brief illness. Also in attendance were Sheath’s widow, Mary, her sister and a close friend and former student who flew in from Connecticut.  

At the declaration of President Ellen Neufeldt, the CSUSM flag in Craven Circle flew at half-staff on Thursday in Sheath's memory. 

“I want to offer my sincerest condolences on behalf of the university not only to his family but to all of us as we celebrate him today and the legacy that he leaves here,” Neufeldt said during the ceremony. “One of the things I’ve heard over and over again is what special people have been a part of this university and the building blocks that we stand on. And he was one of those giants.” 

Sheath worked at CSUSM for 18 years, arriving at the university as a provost in 2001 and retiring as a biology professor after the spring 2018 semester. During his five-year tenure as provost, he played a significant role in shaping the vision for Academic Affairs. He oversaw the addition of three majors – biochemistry, criminology and justice studies, and kinesiology – and laid the groundwork for four additional majors that were added shortly after he stepped down as provost, as well as the founding of what has become the College of Education, Health and Human Services.  

“His main mandate when he was hired was to build academic programs and do academic master planning, and he did a masterful job of it,” said Bud Morris, a retired communication professor who was chair of the Academic Senate when Sheath was hired. “He spearheaded all sorts of initiatives that were devoted to figuring out what we should grow, when we should grow it and in what order we should grow things.  

“I’m going to miss Bob, but every time I look around campus, I see the work that he did, and it’s really reassuring.” 

More than his work as an administrator, Sheath built his professional reputation as an internationally renowned phycologist, the name for a scientist who specializes in the study of algae. He co-authored four textbooks, and 153 of his manuscripts were published in peer-reviewed journals, proceedings and books. 

One speaker at the ceremony observed that Sheath could have continued to climb the academic ladder and become a university president after his stint as provost ended in 2006. Instead, he returned to his true passion as a scientist and a teacher of future scientists.  

“There’s no guarantee that a retreating administrator is going to contribute something new and needed in a department,” said Bill Kristan, chair of the biology department. “We were very lucky that when Bob retreated to biology, he brought with him an expertise in biogeography and aquatic ecology that we didn’t already have.”

Kristan said Sheath received research grants totaling almost $8 million during his career, and one of the most notable established the California Primary Algae Laboratory, the only lab in the state to collect and catalog freshwater algae samples. Sheath and his colleague, Rosalina Hristova, a senior lab scientist, pioneered the use of algae as bioindicators of water quality in California.

In 2014, the Sheathia, a newly identified genus of algae, was named after him, recognizing his extensive research of many of the species in the genus and other freshwater red algae.

“Bob knew so much about these inconspicuous, easily overlooked organisms, he was able to find new species in places that people have occupied for centuries or millennia,” said Kristan, adding that the algae lab has found and described at least seven new species of algae in the most populous state in America.

Biology professor Betsy Read told a story about being a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology at Ohio State University in the early 1990s and a book called “Biology of the Red Algae” being her bible. The book was co-edited by Robert G. Sheath. It wasn’t until many years later, Read said, while sitting in Sheath’s lab, that she realized her dear CSUSM colleague was the same person who had helped produce that influential tome.

“Bob knew thousands of freshwater algae, and he knew them intimately from the inside out,” Read said. “His burning curiosity, his enthusiasm, and uncompromising desire to describe algae as a part of the natural world serve as a constant reminder of what originally drew so many of us to the field of science. I’ve known a lot of scientists, but few who took as much pleasure in their work as Bob.”

During the ceremony, a large TV screen displayed a slideshow of photos of Sheath from his life and career. On a table in front of the TV was arranged a collection of memorabilia and archival material, including his lab coat, plaques, textbooks, journals, hockey paraphernalia (a native of Canada, he received his bachelor’s degree and doctorate from the University of Toronto) and a flyer from his 2002 Arts & Lectures discussion “The Scum of the Earth: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Algae.” A Canadian flag was draped over the lectern from which people spoke.

Speakers emphasized that Sheath was much more than the sum of his work. Read wondered whether he was more proud of his algae database or the 90,000 pieces of music he collected on a hard drive. Math professor David Barsky recalled frequent games of “name that tune” in Sheath’s car en route to their lunch meetings at Restaurant Row in San Marcos. Sheath was also a diehard fan of the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien and the popular movies based on them; referring to the Tolkien wizard, Read called Sheath “Gandalf-like” in his wise mentoring of his CSUSM colleagues.

“Bob ended every email with ‘cheers,’ ” Barsky said. “And the related words ‘cheer’ and ‘cheery’ are perhaps the best words to describe the atmosphere that Bob created for us. He was an optimist who cheered us on and helped us to build more than we ever thought possible.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306