PHYS 102 Modern Physics with CURE/PBL
Pei-Chun Ho, California State University-Fresno
A component of course-based research experience (CURE)/ Project-Based Learning is implemented in this course. Students (two per group) will have to choose and design a project based on Modern Physics to perform research-style activities. Students will work on a project over a semester to engage in solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. As a result, students can develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, creativity, and communication skills in the context of doing an authentic, meaningful project. Examples of proposed projects can be thermal radiation related, such as solar cell, dye-sensitized-solar cell, heat-load analysis, and thermal-imaging analysis. In the end of semester, each group need to make a poster to showcase the results. The outcome of CURE is to prepare students for academic, personal, and career success and readies them for the challenge of our environment on Earth and global competition.

BIOL 189T Fungal Biology
Alija Mujic, California State University-Fresno
The diversity, community structure, and functional diversity of fungi in the high Sierra is understudied and is largely unknown from the Sierra Nevada foothills. Through use of direct field sampling I will engage BIOL189T students in sampling efforts to elucidate the fungal biology of these understudied habitats. Students will sample fungal sporocarps (mushrooms) from existing field plots established by the National Environmental Observation Network (NEON) and use morphological identification techniques and DNA barcoding methods to identify the fungal diversity in these habitats. Future iterations of the course will likely focus upon selected fungal taxa identified in previous iterations of the course to investigate the phenology and ecological interactions of the fungal community in these habitats in NEON plots.

Science Education Research for Pre-Service Elementary School Teachers
Dermot Donnelly, California State University-Fresno
This CURE focuses on supporting pre-service elementary school teachers to investigate predictors of peers' intentions to teach science in their future practice.

Designing Authentic Undergraduate Experiences in Research (DAUER)
Joseph Ross, California State University-Fresno
In this research experience, students will learn about how inheritance of diverse genetic material from their parents can impact the health (fecundity) of offspring. Students will design experiments to mate pairs of populations from a diverse global collection of microscopic worms and measure and compare the fecundities of their hybrid offspring.

Applied Linear Statistical Models
Mario Banuelos, California State University-Fresno
In this CURE, students will use descriptive and inferential statistics through linear models on new data sets, either directly affecting the local or research community.

Using R to Build Powerful Predictive Models for Kaggle Competitions
Earvin Balderama, California State University-Fresno

Introduction to Mathematical Proofs - Journey into the unknown
Tamas Forgacs, California State University-Fresno
This CURE processes traditional elements of a proofs course through student research initiated by problems posed in various mathematics journals aimed at the general mathematics community. Students are tasked with solving these problems, and generalize their answers in suitable ways.

Brain Mapping of Psychiatric Disorders
Chris Miller, California State University-Fresno
This course will introduce students to the neuroscience of psychiatric disorders by guiding them through the process of conducting a meta-analysis of fMRI studies of a particular psychiatric disorder of their choice.

Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience Lab: Design, Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of New Therapeutics in Pain Management
Stevan Pecic, California State University-Fullerton
This course will introduce students to the medicinal chemistry research experience. In this project, students will focus on in silico and structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies of small molecules designed to increase the levels of anti-inflammatory and antinociceptive endocannabinoids by inhibiting the enzyme Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase (FAAH) responsible for their metabolism and degradation. Endocannabinoids, anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG), are endogenous lipids that bind to and activate cannabinoid receptors. Activation of these receptors produces anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. FAAH is a membrane enzyme that hydrolases endocannabinoids, thus inhibition of FAAH represents an attractive approach to develop new therapeutics for treating inflammation and pain.

Going from big genomics data, to useful data, to experiments in diabetes
Talitha Van der Meulen, University of California-Davis
In diabetes, blood glucose levels are too high and people with diabetes suffer from severe side-effects that include cardiovascular disease, renal failure and blindness. Our lab is interested in studying the different cell types in the pancreatic islet that together regulate blood glucose levels. Our ultimate goal is to understand how human islet cells function and change in health and diabetes and then use this knowledge to contribute to a cure for or treatment of diabetes. In this CURE, students will become familiar with using so-called "omics" data and translating the data into a testable experiment that they will perform. The experiments will be done in the context of diabetes research that is ongoing in the Huising lab at UC Davis. Currently, we have large sets of information about gene expression at the mRNA level in healthy alpha, beta, and delta cells of the mouse pancreatic islet. Students will use bioinformatics techniques to process these sets and compare expression among these cell types during the first half of the course. For the second half, they will use this comparison to select a gene whose expression they will verify at the protein level in mouse pancreatic islets using fluorescent staining of tissue slices, followed by imaging and image-quantification. This process is a first step towards our ultimate goal of studying human islet cells. Once we have tools verified in mouse tissue, we can then apply these to human tissues. Therefore, we ask students to present their validation to the Huising lab.