Metal Analysis of Various Crops growing from Fresno State Plant Science Department
Ian Huh, California State University-Fresno
The purpose of this CURE project is to provide some research experiences to Chem 1B lab students who are mostly majored in Chemistry or Biology by collaborating with Fresno State Plant Science Department. Chem 1B lab students will visit the field where Plant Science department grows their crops and quantify various metals in the crop. Students will research methods to extract and quantify the metal of their choice from various crops provided by the Plant Science Department. Then students can research and compare the amount of metals in Plant Science department crops versus metals in crops produced by others and present their data at the STEM symposium. The strategy to facilitate faculty adoption is by having them attend the STEM symposium and observe how much these students have accomplished by performing their own research.

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.

Investigating local climate change impacts in a STEM first year learning community
Mara Brady, California State University-Fresno
still in progress...

Effect of Short Blood Sample on Patient Results Validity
Anna Marti-Subirana, Phoenix College
This CURE addresses how body fluid short sampling affects result interpretation and diagnostics. Short sampling can lead to false result interpretation and misdiagnosis. No data are available on the impact of short sampling and clinical diagnostics.

Effects of Antimalarial Drugs (Artemisinin class) on Prostate Cancer Cells.
Dolapo Adedeji, Elizabeth City State University
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in American men and the most non-skin cancer. It is a low-growing tumor occurring in older men and the most common type of non-skin cancer. Students will gain understanding in mammalian cell culturing, cell growth maintenance, cell seeding and be able to determine the concentration at which each drug concentration inhibit cell proliferation.

Big Data Analytics
Matin Pirouz, California State University-Fresno
The Big Data Analytics course prepares the students to practice and understand Big Data concepts, research a topic, and improve their programming skill. It also teaches the methods and algorithms to handle Big Data properly, introduces possible topics they can work on and provides possible data sources. These are achieved using active learning. Students will gain critical thinking skills and will be able to do guided research after the class.

Mixed Methods Social Science Research on Student Perseverance in STEM Education
Aaron Montoya, Adams State University; Rena Kirkland, Adams State University
This capstone research experience is designed for psychology and teacher education students to contribute to the CURE's and peer mentoring initiative based on the grant funded by the NSF. Students will develop their knowledge and skills in the research process as well as contribute to examining research questions relating to the efficacy of the CURE's and peer-mentoring program.

Fall 2020 HLTH 369 Principles of Nutrition CURE
Jennifer Brown, Elizabeth City State University
Prediabetes is a common health problem, afflicting an estimated 88 million (34.5%) of US populations (CDC, 2020). Many individuals experience disease progression, and are diagnosed with diabetes (34.2 million, 10.5% of US, CDC, 2020). In total, an estimated 45% percent of US populations is affected, making complications management, lifestyle interventions, and prevention of this disease pathway a major point of concern. Neuropathy is an associated, but often silent complication that comes in many forms, potentially affecting multiple systems in the body. Eyes, kidneys, touch perception, balance and gut metabolism are a few common, and serious issues that frequently arise simultaneously with disease onset. Because of the serious and silent nature of the onset of these disease pathways, early detection is key in order to allow the opportunity for lifestyle intervention practices. Previous research indicates higher incidence rates of prediabetes, diabetes and neuropathy in rural areas, with socioeconomic factors playing a role in the development of the disease. The purpose of this research is to determine the prevalence of prediabetes/diabetes and neurpathic symptoms in healthy weight and obese individuals, active and inactive individuals at ECSU, in Elizabeth City and in the Southeast/MidAtlantic region.

Kinetics of bioorthogonal reactions
Jen Heemstra, Emory University
Bioorthogonal reactions such as strain-promoted azide-alkyne cycloaddition (SPAAC) and inverse electron demand Diels–Alder (IEDDA) are widely used for labeling of biomolecules, which in turn enables numerous applications in basic science and biotechnology. The key characteristic of these reactions is the ability of the functional groups involved to react with each other while remaining inert to the other functional groups found in nature. Despite the wide use of these chemistries, relatively few studies have evaluated the effect of reaction conditions on the kinetics of the reaction, and it would be of value to the scientific community to know how factors such as buffer identity, pH, ionic strength, and temperature impact reaction rate. In this CURE, students synthesize reagents or biomolecules and utilize UV spectrophotometry to measure the reaction rate under varying conditions. Students communicate their results in a final report written in the format of a peer-reviewed publication, and this CURE has yielded peer-reviewed research publications to share the data with the scientific community.

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.