The Biology Department was well represented at last week’s 2025 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:
- Kayla Mallari and Tahmina Petrosyan won second place in their session for a three-minute talk, “Investigating the Role of RNA Thermometers in Schizosaccharomyces pombe“
- Darlene Mendez won second place for a three-minute talk, “Visualization of Body-to-Brain Sleep Signals in C. elegans“
- Angel Cermeno won first place for a ten-minute talk, “Identifying the Positive Promoter Activators in UVRAG”
- Raul Pena won first place for the poster “In vitro modeling of congenital muscular dystrophy with patient-derived stem cells”
- Bao Ngoc Nguyen won first place for the poster “Analyzing the Sensitivity of Tools for Detecting sRNAs in Escherichia coli“
- Arvind Amanat Gharial won first place for the poster “Metabolic interactions between beneficial bacteria during fermentation of human milk oligosaccharides”
- Itzel Huerta won first place for the poster “Designing Targeted Lipid Nanoparticles for CAR T Cell Generation”
And graduate students:
- Kimberly Kagan won first place for the poster “The C. elegans UNC-103 ERG-like potassium channel is required for sleep”
- Jovaun Williams won second place for a three-minute talk, “Pesticide exposure in managed honeybee colonies”
- Lexi Atler won first place for a ten-minute talk, “Effects of plant competition on different genotypes of an invasive species”
- Nicholas Serras won first place for a ten-minute talk, “Acoustic mating signal plasticity in Gryllus field crickets”
- Sean Farmer won first place for a ten-minute talk, “High rates of whole-body water loss may restrict suitable habitat for Common Garter Snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) in Southern California”
- Angelina Piette won second place for a ten-minute talk, “Dance the Night Away: Mutual Mate Choice and the Dynamics of Courtship in a Neotropical Frog”
- Tanya Pelayo won first place for the poster “Genetic architecture and adaptive evolution of traits facilitating invasive success in Medicago polymorpha“
- Elyce Velazquez won first place for the poster “Optimization of BTK Donor for CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Therapy of X-Linked Agammaglobulinemia (XLA)”
- Abigail Barnes won first place for the poster “Degradation of the human milk oligosaccharide lacto-N-neotetraose by human associated Akkermansia“
- Max Sprute won second place for the poster ” Genomic and trait-based examination of local adaptation along an environmental gradient in the endemic Island Fence Lizard”