The Biology Department was well represented at last week’s 2023 CSUNposium, with undergrad researchers and Master’s students presenting their research in dozens of talks and two poster sessions. Many of those presentations won awards in their sessions, as well — the following students were recognized for their work in an award ceremony on Tuesday.
Undergraduate researchers:
- Diana Ibrahim won first place in her session for her three-minute talk “Modeling the Emergence of Neural Network Dysfunction in Rett Syndrome with Mosaic Organoids”
- Maya Zarafshan won first place for her three-minute talk “Nucleolin”
- Ithan Cano won first place for his three-minute talk “Regulation of Drosophila intestinal stem cells by the nuclear envelope protein Klaroid (Koi)”
- Nicole Bisente won first place for her ten-minute talk “A Comparative Analysis of Morphological Variation among Invasive Populations of Mediterranean House Geckos across the USA”
- Audrey Todd won first place for her ten-minute talk “Molecular Analyses of Multicellular Pancreatic Cancer Spheroids”
- Luke Tomaneng won first place for his poster “Retinoic Acid Induced 14 Drives Pancreatic Cancer Cell Proliferation and Survival”
- Rafael Estrada and Pablo Segundo won first place for their poster “Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle Compounds Increase Expression of the Multiple Antibiotic Resistance (mar) Operons in Escherichia coli“
- Amy Sariles and Nikita Opel won first place for their poster “Developing a Genetic Circuit to Detect the small RNA MicF”
And graduate students:
- Elizabeth Ortiz won second place for her three-minute talk “Morphology and Expansion of HER2-Positive Breast Cancer Patient- Derived Organoids and 3D Tumor Cell Line Cultures”
- Shanelle Wikramanayake won first place for her ten-minute talk “Investigating the neurological basis of speciation in a polymorphic neotropical treefrog, Agalychnis callidryas“
- Vivian Vy Le won first place for her ten-minute talk “The molecular genetics of gustatory preferences in Pristionchus pacificus“
- Amanda Di Maso won second place for her ten-minute talk “Identifying AcrZ-dependent endogenous substrates of the AcrAB-TolC efflux pump in Escherichia coli“
- Cynthia Petrossian won first place for her ten-minute talk “Cross-regulatory interactions among downstream targets of the master regulator genes Escargot and Stat92E in Drosophila melanogaster intestinal stem cells”
- Jack Dirck won first place for his ten-minute talk “Can Human-mediated Dispersal Promote Invasion Success? Using Population Genomics to Test the Paradox of Invasion for a Widely Introduced Reptile”
- Aaron Stibelman won first place for his poster “Exploring the regulatory plasticity of the MicF sRNA through the characterization of computationally predicted mRNA targets”
- Riley Jones won first place for her poster “Evaluating the impacts of noise pollution on a marine fish, the Garibaldi (Hypsypops rubicundus)”
- Marisa Mackie won first place for her poster “Investigation of Real-Time Sensory Neuron Responses to Odors in the Nematode Pristionchus pacificus“