2018 Annual Chancellor's Research Excellence Scholarships (CRES) Symposium

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FOURTH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM

2018 UC San Diego Chancellor’s Research Excellence Scholarships Fourth Annual Symposium Welcome to the UC San Diego Chancellor’s Research Excellence Scholarships (CRES) Fourth Annual Symposium, a celebration of next generation, multidisciplinary research at UC San Diego.

This year's Symposium features participants who have conducted faculty-mentored research in a wide variety of fields. The presentations represent the work of trainees who are undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars from UC San Diego. Many of the presentations focus on work that is in early stages. They demonstrate the program’s ability to support scholars’ entry into significant, potentially groundbreaking research. Additionally, the program’s broad themes and multidisciplinary approach mean the Symposium’s panels and poster sessions will likely feature uncommon pairings that may well spark unexpected but enlightening discussions.

We hope you will enjoy the Symposium and the scholars’ presentations. We gratefully recognize the critical contributions that our faculty moderators, and, particularly, our research mentors make to the Symposium and the research program.

We especially express our appreciation for the leadership of Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, Vice Chancellor of Research Sandra Brown, Interim Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Drew Calandrella, and Interim Graduate Division Dean Paul Yu, in establishing CRES as a vital center of research at UC San Diego.

This Symposium was made possible by generous funding from Student Affairs’ Student Retention & Success and the Office of Undergraduate Education. The UC San Diego CRES Symposium is planned and coordinated by Academic Enrichment Programs (AEP), a unit of Student Retention and Success.

Thank you to all of the AEP staff, our student workers, and the Symposium volunteers.

Additional thanks to Carrie Keck and Mark Kinsey of the Price Center and to Leticia Egea.

CRES SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE Thursday, October 25, 2018 8:00 am REGISTRATION AND BREAKFAST Price Center West Ballroom

8:20 am OPENING REMARKS Price Center West Ballroom B

Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Kimberly A. Prather Distinguished Chair and Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Director of the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment (CAICE)

9:15 am – 12:15 pm ORAL PRESENTATIONS MORNING SESSION CONVENES Price Center Conference Rooms 12:15 pm – 1:45 pm LUNCH Price Center West Ballroom B 12:45 pm – 1:45 pm POSTER SESSION A CONVENES Price Center West Ballroom A 1:45 pm – 4:45 pm ORAL PRESENTATIONS AFTERNOON SESSION CONVENES Price Center Conference Rooms 4:45 pm – 5:45 pm POSTER SESSION B CONVENES Price Center West Ballroom A

Chancellor Pradeep Khosla

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Pradeep K. Khosla, UC San Diego’s eighth Chancellor, is an internationally renowned electrical and computer engineer recognized for his seminal contributions in secure software, intelligent robot systems and design. He provides vision and strategy for the university, leading a campus with more than 35,000 students, six undergraduate colleges, five academic divisions, five graduate and professional schools, a preeminent Health System and the prestigious Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Khosla has positioned UC San Diego to define the future of the public research university by activating the institution’s first-ever Strategic Plan and launching the Campaign for UC San Diego—an ambitious and bold $2 billion endeavor—aimed at transforming the university, physically and intellectually. Khosla has expanded college access and affordability for underserved populations, initiated campus-wide interdisciplinary research initiatives to foster collaboration and solve societal challenges, and strengthened university and community relationships and partnerships to drive regional impact. Khosla previously served as Dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

Several awards have recognized his leadership in education and research: the ASEE George Westinghouse Award for Education, the W. Wallace McDowell award from IEEE Computer Society, and the ASME Computers in Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Executive Vice Chancellor Elizabeth H. Simmons r Dr. Elizabeth H. Simmons is the Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of California San Diego. In this capacity, she serves as UC San Diego’s chief academic officer and is responsible for policies and decisions relating to all academic programs and curriculum, instructional support programs, and faculty appointments and performance. She is the institution’s second-ranking executive officer and acts on behalf of the Chancellor in overseeing the University in his absence.

After completing her undergraduate degree in physics at Harvard University magna cum laude and being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Simmons earned an M.Phil. in physics at Cambridge University as a Churchill Scholar. She returned to Harvard for her doctoral degree and postdoctoral fellowship, and then spent a decade as a professor at Boston University before joining the MSU faculty in summer 2003. She is a Fellow of the AAAS, a Fellow and Outstanding Referee of the American Physical Society, a General Member of the Aspen Center for Physics, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

She won the ACE Michigan Network's Distinguished Woman in Higher Education Leadership Award in 2005 and MSU’s Robert F. Banks Award for Institutional Leadership in 2013.

Vice Chancellor Sandra A. Brown .

Sandra A. Brown, Ph.D. is Vice Chancellor for Research and a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UC San Diego. Dr. Brown is internationally recognized for her developmentally focused alcohol and drug research.Her research yielded pioneering information on adolescent addiction, relapse among youth, and long term outcomes of youth who have experienced alcohol and drug problems. She is the past President of Division 50 (Addictions) of the American Psychological Association, is on the executive board of numerous scientific organizations, and has over 35 grants and 350 publications. She is involved in addiction prevention and intervention at the regional, state, and national levels and helped lead NIAAA’s effort to establish national screening and early intervention guidelines for youth. She currently directs the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) and investigates the effectiveness of novel approaches to intervention with youth.

Interim Vice Chancellor Drew Calandrella.

Drew Calandrella was appointed Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs (IVCSA) in March 2018. In this role, Mr. Calandrella will serve as the campus’ chief student affairs officer, providing executive-level leadership and vision in the administration of a comprehensive range of initiatives, services, and policies to assure an extraordinary student experience at UC San Diego.

Key areas of oversight and/or partnership include admissions and enrollment management, student retention and success, student leadership and engagement, residential life and housing, student health services, counseling services, career services and athletics/recreation.

Mr. Calandrella brings over thirty years of experience in higher education, including serving as the chief student affairs officer on three campuses.

Previously, Mr. Calandrella served as Vice President for Student Affairs at CSU Chico from 2006 to 2017, where he was widely recognized for his deep commitment to diversity and overall student success as central to the academic enterprise. Mr. Calandrella was recognized with a campus Lifetime Accomplishment in Diversity Award for his contributions to the development and staffing of the Diversity and Inclusion Office, establishment of the Cross Cultural Leadership Center, and offices for DREAM students and Tribal Relations. In 2016, he received the highest honor of the American College Personnel Association (ACPA), the Diamond Honoree Award, which recognizes outstanding and sustained contributions to higher education and student affairs.

Interim Dean Paul K.L. Yu

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Paul Yu joined the UC San Diego faculty in 1983. He is the Interim Dean of Graduate Division and the William S.C. Chang Chaired Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He is the former Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Initiatives in the Office of Research Affairs and the Provost of Revelle College (on leave). His research emphasizes electronic and opto-electronic devices such as optical modulators and photodiodes, and advanced semiconductor materials. He served as the President of IEEE Electron Devices Society in 2012-13. He is Fellow of IEEE, AAAS, OSA and SPIE. He published more than 140 papers in the area of photonics/electronics. He received a Ph.D. from Caltech in 1983.

In his roles, he is committed to an environment of inclusiveness as a blending spirit from the living and learning community and to the outside world. Triton students represent a fascinating variety of talents and backgrounds, and he is committed to fostering such diversity in an environment of mutual respect.

Assistant Vice Chancellor Jeff Orgera

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Jeff Orgera was appointed Assistant Vice Chancellor Student Retention and Success at UC San Diego in August 2015. In this role, he leads both Student Affairs and campus-wide collaborative efforts in the development, implementation, and coordination of services and programs that increase student retention and graduation rates. Dr. Orgera's portfolio includes several units that deliver high impact educational practices to undergraduates who may be first in their families to attend college or underrepresented in higher education. AVC Orgera is responsible for the strategic direction and leadership of student success and retention initiatives and works in close partnership with colleagues in Academic Affairs. Previously, Dr. Orgera served as Senior Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management at the University of Arizona. He received his M.A. degree in Educational Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Arizona.

Senior Associate Vice Chancellor Miroslav Krstic w Miroslav Krstic holds the Alspach endowed chair and is the founding director of the Cymer Center for Control Systems and Dynamics at UC San Diego. He also serves as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at UCSD. As a graduate student, Krstic won the UC Santa Barbara best dissertation award and student best paper awards at CDC and ACC. Krstic is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, ASME, SIAM, and IET (UK), and Associate Fellow of AIAA. He has received the PECASE, NSF Career, and ONR Young Investigator awards, the Axelby and Schuck paper prizes, the Chestnut textbook prize, the ASME Nyquist Lecture Prize, and the first UCSD Research Award given to an engineer. Krstic has also been awarded the Springer Visiting Professorship at UC Berkeley, the Distinguished Visiting Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Invitation Fellowship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Honorary Professorships from the Northeastern University (Shenyang) and the Chongqing University, China. He serves as Senior Editor in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and Automatica, as editor of two Springer book series, and has served as Vice President for Technical Activities of the IEEE Control Systems Society and as chair of the IEEE CSS Fellow Committee. Krstic has coauthored eleven books on adaptive, nonlinear, and stochastic control, extremum seeking, control of PDE systems including turbulent flows, and control of delay systems.

Dean John Moore

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Dean of Undergraduate Education, Dr. Moore is responsible for providing academic leadership in the development, enhancement, and delivery of undergraduate academic programs, including new interdisciplinary programs across colleges, divisions, schools, and disciplines. The Dean also promotes curriculum innovation and reform and strengthens academic support services for undergraduate students.

Dr. Moore has a demonstrated history of commitment to undergraduate education, campus service, and contributions to diversity in teaching, research and service, which has served him well as Interim Dean. He provided strong leadership as Chair of the Council of Provosts (COP) during the past two academic years. Prior to his appointment as Provost in 2013, he served as Chair of the Academic Senate Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP), as Chair of the Department of Linguistics, and as a department diversity representative. In addition to teaching core undergraduate courses on syntax, historical linguistics, and Spanish linguistics, he has taught freshman seminars on the structure and history of flamenco. He has also been involved in the Global Seminar Program since its inception, winning a "Partner in International Education" award in 2011.

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Kimberly A. Prather r

Dr. Kimberly Prather is a Distinguished Professor and the Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego. She is also the founding Director of the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment (CAICE).

She earned both her B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. During her postdoctoral fellowship with Nobel Laureate Prof. Yuan T. Lee at UC Riverside, Dr. Prather invented and patented the aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ATOFMS), which is able to determine the size resolved chemical composition of atmospheric aerosols with single particle resolution. During her appointment as an Assistant Professor at UC Riverside she developed transportable ATOFMS, which were successfully deployed in field campaigns around the globe to provide insights into the atmospheric sources of pollution worldwide. In 2001, Prof. Prather moved to UC San Diego where her research shifted from instrument development to the use of these instruments in probing the impacts of aerosols on human health and climate. In 2009 the Prather group developed a compact aircraft-ATOFMS capable of operation aboard scientific flights and obtaining the vertical profile dependence of the chemical composition of atmospheric aerosols. In 2010, Prof.

Prather spearheaded an effort to develop a plan to perform the needed studies to bridge the gap between lab and field measurement, and in 2013 the National Science Foundation Center selected the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment to become a $20 million Center for Chemical Innovation, which Prof. Prather now directs.

List of Oral Presentation Panels

Morning Panel Discussions 1.

2.

3.

4.

ALL Themes I Graduate Student and Postdoc Understanding and Protecting the Planet (UPP) Graduate Student and Postdoc Enriching Human Life and Society (EHLS) I Graduate Student and Postdoc ALL Themes II Undergraduate

Location Snake Path Room Red Shoe Room Marshall College Room Bear Room

Afternoon Panel Discussions 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Exploring the Basis of Human Knowledge, Learning, and Creativity (EBHKLC) Graduate Student and Postdoc Enriching Human Life and Society (EHLS) II Graduate Student and Postdoc Understanding Cultures and Addressing Disparities in Society (UCADS) & Exploring the Basis of Human Knowledge, Learning, and Creativity (EBHKLC) Graduate Student and Postdoc Enriching Human Life and Society (EHLS) III Graduate Student and Postdoc ALL Themes III Undergraduate

Location Snake Path Room

Red Shoe Room

Marshall College Room

Green Table Room Bear Room

ORAL PANELS

Panel #1: ALL Themes I Graduate Student and Postdoc Location: Snake Path Room Time: Morning

Samir Saidi ~ Bioengineering

Mentor(s): Dr. Matthew Shtrahman, Neurosciences Dr. Joseph Ford, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Building Novel Optical Tools for Neuronal Circuits

Alex Georges ~ Physics

Mentor(s): Professor David Meyer, Mathematics

Topological Methods for Improving Robustness in Supervised Classification

Kevan Aguilar ~ History

Mentor(s): Dr. Matthew Vitz, History Dr. Matilde Cรณrdoba Azcรกrate, Communication

Revolutionary Encounters: Mexican Communities & Spanish Exiles, 1931-1959

Kathleen Connelly ~ Philosophy

Mentor(s): Dr. Catherina Gere, History Dr. Dana Nelkin, Philosophy Dr. Daniel Navon, Sociology

Moral Responsibility and Mental Disability

Kate Flach ~ History

Mentor(s): Professor Rebecca Plant, History Professor David Serlin, Communication

Channeling Ideas: Teaching Audiences through the Politics of Television

Graeme Mack ~ History

Mentor(s): Professor Mark Hanna, History Professor David Pedersen, Anthropology Professor John Blanco, Literature

Sea Changes Upon the Land: Pacific Merchants and the Transformation of California, 1787-1848

ORAL PANELS

Panel #2: Understanding and Protecting the Planet (UPP) Graduate Student and Postdoc Location: Red Shoe Room Time: Morning

Heather Broccard-Bell ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Professor James Nieh, Biological Sciences Professor Yoav Freund, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Automatizing Waggle Dance Detection and Characterization: Developing a Long-Term Observation and Biomonitoring Tool for Honey Bee Colonies.

Haley McInnis ~ Sociology

Mentor(s): Professor Jeffrey Haydu, Sociology Dr. Daniel Cayan, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

Does it hold water?: How California Defined, Declared, and Responded to Droughts, 1976 - 2017

Kapil Amarnath ~ Physics

Mentor(s): Professor Terence Hwa, Physics Professor Farooq Azam, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

Bacterial cooperation in the breakdown of chitin in the ocean

Glenna Clifton ~ Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE)

Mentor(s): Dr. Nicholas Gravish, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Dr. David Holway, Biological Sciences

Large-scale, automated tracking of ant walking reveals kinematic mechanisms underlying speed constraints on uneven ground

Raymond de Callafon (presenting on behalf of Thomas Srivas) ~ Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE)

Mentor(s): Professor Raymond de Callafon, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE)

Data Assimilation for Wildfire Monitoring with FARSITE

ORAL PANELS

Panel #3: Enriching Human Life and Society (EHLS) I Graduate Student and Postdoc Location: Marshall College Room Time: Morning

Ali Koochakzadeh ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) & Jiawen Chen ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE), Radiology Mentor(s): Professor Piya Pal, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Professor Eric Ahrens, Radiology

Spike Localization in Zero Time of Echo (ZTE) Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Lee Swanson ~ Biomedical Sciences PhD Program Mentor(s): Dr. Pradipta Ghosh, Medicine Dr. Soumita Das, Pathology

A Boolean Network of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Reveals a Novel Barrier-Protective Therapeutic Target

Kay Yeung ~ Pharmacology

Mentor(s): Professor Jing Yang, Pharmacology

Single-cell Epigenomics and Transcriptomic Analysis of Metastatic Tumor Dormancy in Breast Cancer

Fang Chen ~ Jacobs School of Engineering

Mentor(s): Professor Jesse Jokerst, Jacobs School of Engineering Professor Kirk Peterson, Medicine

Engineering Cells with Multifunctional Nanomaterials to Improve Stem Cell Therapy Efficacy in Myocardial Infarcted Mice

Gopesh Tilvawala ~ Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Mentor(s): Dr. Alexander Khalessi, Neurosurgery Professor James Friend, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Professor Alexander Norbash, Radiology

Neurotendo: Nintendo for Neurointerventionists, technology for remote neurovascular navigation.

ORAL PANELS

Panel #4: ALL Themes II Undergraduate Location: Bear Room Time: Morning

Emily Truong ~ Education Studies, Mathematics Mentor(s): Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: EarthLab, A Space for Scientific Literacy in an Underserved Neighborhood

Lauren Collin ~ Public Health

Mentor(s): Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: EarthLab, A Space for Scientific Literacy in an Underserved Neighborhood

Stephen Reynders ~ Science Studies Program, Sociology

Mentor(s): Professor Mary Blair-Loy, Sociology Professor Pamela Cosman, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Performing Scientific Promise: On Campus Interviews of Faculty Candidate Finalists

Della Syau ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Randolph Hampton, Biological Sciences Dr. Sonya Neal, Biological Sciences Using Substrate-Induced Toxicity to Characterize dfm1Δ null Growth Stress

Andrew Wilson ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Jeffrey Esko, Cellular & Molecular Medicine Dr. Anne Phan, Cellular & Molecular Medicine

Enhancing Ear Regeneration through Heparan Sulfate Deficiency

John Messerly ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Dr. Tajana Rosing, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Hardware Optimized Pattern Computing

Cristian Sharp ~ Physics

Mentor(s): Dr. Matthew Shtrahman, Neurology Clinic Programs, Neurosciences

Clinical 2-Photon Microscope

(continued on next page)

ORAL PANELS

Daniel Maldonado ~ Public Health

Mentor(s): Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: Coauthored essay, Through the Lens of the Advocate

ORAL PANELS

Panel #5: Exploring the Basis of Human Knowledge, Learning, and Creativity (EBHKLC) Graduate Student and Postdoc Location: Snake Path Room Time: Afternoon

Mayya Azarova ~ Anthropology

Mentor(s): Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD PhD, Medicine Professor Don Norman, Cognitive Science Professor David Pedersen, Anthropology Professor Martha Lampland, Sociology and Science Studies

The Backstage of Innovation: How Multidisciplinary Teams Solve Complex Sociotechnical Problems

Sean Trott ~ Cognitive Science

Mentor(s): Dr. Benjamin Bergen, Cognitive Science Dr. James Hollan, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Why are some people better at inferring what others mean?

Alejandro Ojeda ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Professor Jyoti Mishra, Psychiatry Professor Kenneth Kreutz-Delgado, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Closed �Loop Learning to Enhance Cognition in Children with

Attention Deficit Disorder

Wenyi Lin ~ Biostatistics, Div Of, Family Medicine & Public Health

Mentor(s): Dr. Armin Schwartzman, Biostatistics, Div Of, Family Medicine & Public Health

Image Quality Evaluation of T1-Weighted Liver MRI.

Scott Cole ~ Neurosciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Bradley Voytek, Cognitive Science Dr. Vikash Gilja, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Brain oscillations and the importance of waveform shape

Jon Paden ~ California Inst for Telecomm & Info Tech (Cal-(IT)2), San Diego Supercomputer Center, Visual Arts Mentor(s): Professor Sheldon Brown, Visual Arts Dr. Darren Lipomi, Nanoengineering Dr. Jurgen Schulze, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Augmented Reality and Somatic Sensing Team : Interdisciplinary research in frontiers of of physical interfaces within virtual mixed environments.

ORAL PANELS

Panel #6: Enriching Human Life and Society (EHLS) II Graduate Student and Postdoc Location: Red Shoe Room Time: Afternoon

Alessandra Porcu ~ Psychiatry

Mentor(s): Professor Davide Dulcis, Psychiatry Professor Michael Gorman, Psychology

Mechanism of photoperiod-induced neurotransmitter plasticity affecting behavior

Anamika Agrawal ~ Physics

Mentor(s): Professor Elena Koslover, Physics Professor Gulcin Pekkurnaz, Biological Sciences

Spatial Control of Neuronal Metabolism Through Glucose-Mediated Mitochondrial Transport Regulation

Sanaz Sadegh ~ Neurosciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Anna Devor, Neurosciences Professor Yeshaiahu Fainman, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Non�degenerate 2�photon microscopy for deep brain imaging

Granton Jindal ~ Medicine

Mentor(s): Professor Emma Farley, Medicine Professor Deborah Yelon, Biological Sciences

Elucidating regulatory principles governing heart development

ORAL PANELS

Panel #7: Understanding Cultures and Addressing Disparities in Society (UCADS) & Exploring the Basis of Human Knowledge, Learning, and Creativity (EBHKLC) Graduate Student and Postdoc Location: Marshall College Room Time: Afternoon

Eliana Hurwich-Reiss ~ Psychiatry

Mentor(s): Dr. Lauren Brookman-Frazee, Psychiatry Dr. Shana Cohen, Education Studies

AIM HI EQUIPO: A Culturally Responsive Intervention Enhancement for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Mikael Fauvelle ~ Anthropology

Mentor(s): Professor Guillermo Algaze, Anthropology Professor Elizabeth Newsome, Visual Arts Professor Dominique Rissolo, California Inst for Telecomm & Info Tech (Cal-(IT)2)

Connecting the Global and the Local: Art, Archaeology, and Digital Heritage at FracciĂłn Mujular

Jorge Ramirez ~ History

Mentor(s): Dr. Natalia Molina, History Dr. Nancy Postero, Anthropology

Violence, Migration, and Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination in Southern Mexico’s Dirty War Period, 1970s-1980s

Tinghao Wang ~ Philosophy

Mentor(s): Professor Samuel Rickless, Philosophy

Beyond Killing One to Save Five: Sensitivity to Ratio and Probability in Moral Judgment

Raphael Ribeiro ~ Chemistry & Biochemistry

Mentor(s): Professor Joel Yuen-Zhou, Chemistry & Biochemistry Professor Boubacar Kante, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Ultrafast remote control of chemistry in optical cavities

Eric Morgan ~ Cognitive Science

Mentor(s): Dr. Virginia De Sa, Cognitive Science Dr. Pamela Reinagel, Biological Sciences

Preliminary Study of Contextual Interactions in Non-Stereotypical Simple Cells

ORAL PANELS

Panel #8: Enriching Human Life and Society (EHLS) III Graduate Student and Postdoc Location: Green Table Room Time: Afternoon

Mahta Mousavi ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentor(s): Professor Virginia de Sa, Cognitive Science Professor Mohan Trivedi, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Novel methods to improve reliability in brain-computer interfaces

Elizabeth Pasipanodya ~ Psychiatry

Mentor(s): Dr. David Moore, Psychiatry Dr. Kimberly Brouwer, Public Health Dr. Julian McAuley, Engineering, Jacobs School of

Exploring Concerns About Research Using Mobile Technology to Support Antiretroviral Therapy Adherence: Using Focus Groups to Inform Interventions among Minorities Living with HIV in the Context of Methamphetamine Use

Pranav Venuprasad ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Professor Pamela Cosman, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Quantifying Gaze Behavior during Real World Interactions using Automated Object, Face, and Fixation Detection

Cody Carpenter ~ Nanoengineering

Mentor(s): Professor Darren Lipomi, Nanoengineering Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, Psychology

Healable Thermoplastic for Kinesthetic Feedback in Wearable Haptic Devices

ORAL PANELS

Panel #9: ALL Themes III Undergraduate Location: Bear Room Time: Afternoon

Yingqi Chen ~ Biological Sciences Mentor(s): Dr. Mohit Jain, Medicine

Inflammatory Pathways and Human Longevity

Fabian Lim ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Emma Farley, Medicine

Rare Enhancer Grammar Conservation

Katherine Tian ~ Biological Sciences, Obstetrics/Gynecology Mentor(s): Dr. Kellie Breen Church, Obstetrics/Gynecology Dr. Richard McCosh, Obstetrics/Gynecology

Glucocorticoid Action in Immortalized Kisspeptin Cells

Chu-Hsien Tsai ~ Chemistry & Biochemistry

Mentor(s): Professor Neal Devaraj, Chemistry & Biochemistry Dr. Henrike Niederholtmeyer, Chemistry & Biochemistry Ahanjit Bhattacharya, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Targeting proteins into glycolipid droplets for higher reaction efficiency

Melissa Ledgerwood-Lee (presenting on behalf of Jenna Lee ) ~ Medicine Mentor(s): Dr. Ravinder Mittal, Medicine Dr. Robert Sah, Bioengineering

High Frequency Ultrasound Imaging to Detect and Quantify Muscle Damage to Anal Sphincter Muscles Post Traumatic Injury

Jenna Dern ~ Visual Arts & Rhiannon Koh ~ Urban Studies & Planning

Mentor(s): Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: The Cultural Corridor and the Making of Place

POSTER SESSION A

Poster Session A 12:45 pm - 1:45 pm

Price Center West Ballroom A

Poster #: 1 Jenna Lee ~ Bioengineering & Beatrice Tierra ~ Bioengineering

Mentor(s): Dr. Robert Sah, Bioengineering Micro-CT based Quantitation of Bone Regeneration in a Mouse Tibia Defect Model

Poster #: 2 Omid Ghadami ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Professor Drew Hall, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Injectable BioMote Sensors for Monitoring Drugs of Abuse

Poster #: 3 Ashley Du ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Laura Crotty-Alexander, Pulmonary/Critical Care Med Div Physiological Effects of Daily Inhalation of E-Cigarette Vapor

Poster #: 4 Maria Marquine (presenting on behalf of Beverly Yu) ~ Psychiatry Mentor(s): Dr. Maria Marquine, Psychiatry Design Competition to Improve the Quality-of-Life of Seniors: Bridging the Intergenerational Gap and Promoting Successful Aging

Poster #: 5 Patrick McGrath ~ Biological Sciences, Engineering, Jacobs School of

Mentor(s): Dr. Zhenjiang Xu, Pediatrics Dr. Austin Swafford, Jacobs School of Engineering Benchmarking of Off-the-Shelf Regression Methods Applied to Microbiome Data

Poster #: 6 Maho Niwa (presenting on behalf of Io Guane Rivera ) ~ Biological Sciences Mentor(s): Professor Maho Niwa, Biological Sciences Professor Jonathan Lin, Pathology Dissecting the Contribution of Lipotoxic Stress-Induction of the UPR

POSTER SESSION A

Poster #: 7 Jesus Valdez ~ Cognitive Science

Mentor(s): Dr. I-Wei Shu, Psychiatry Using EEG neurofeedback to decrease medial frontal theta activity in patients with PTSD

Poster #: 8 Jorge Avila ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Dr. Jacqueline Kerr, Health Sciences Dr. William Griswold, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Walking Intervention for the Digital Era (WIDE)

Poster #: 9

Andy Kao ~ Biological Sciences Mentor(s): Dr. Randy Hampton, Biological Sciences Uncovering Quality-Control Mechanisms in the Peroxisomal Matrix

Poster #: 10 Joshua Mandap ~ School of Medicine

Mentor(s): Associate Project Sciences Joseph Snider, Neurosciences Dr. Leanne Chukoskie, Institute for Neural Computation Neurogaming for the anxious brain

Poster #: 11

Adrian Garcia Badaracco ~ Chemical Engineering Mentor(s): Dr. Andrew Kummel, Chemistry & Biochemistry Dr. Daniel Chao, Shiley Eye Institute Silica Nanoparticles as Optical Coherence Tomography Contrast agents for Retinal Disease

Poster #: 12 Ching-Hsin Huang ~ Materials Science Program & James Wang ~ Chemistry & Biochemistry

Mentor(s): Dr. Daniel Chao, Ophthalmology Dr. Andrew Kummel, Chemistry & Biochemistry Silica Nanoparticles as Optical Coherence Tomography Contrast agents for Retinal Disease

POSTER SESSION A

Poster #: 13 Abinav Teja Chilukuri ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. M.Raj Rajasekaran, Gastroenterology Evaluation of Markers of Fibrosis in Human Penile tissues to prevent Age-Related Male Sexual Dysfunction

Poster #: 14 Nikhil Das ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Dr. Michael Yip, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Novel Soft-Backboned Screw-Driven Snake Robot

Poster #: 15 Dominik Stec ~ Bioengineering

Mentor(s): Dr. Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk, Ophthalmology Dr. Hannah Carter, Medicine Insights into the mechanism of glaucoma via RNA-seq analysis of mice retinas under the model of intra-ocular pressure

Poster #: 16 Dimitri Schreiber ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Professor Michael Yip, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Professor Alexander Norbash, Radiology An opensourced, 7 degree of freedom, MRI compatible robot to enable dexterous in-bore manipulation.

Poster #: 17 Jordan Kohn ~ Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of, Psychiatry

Mentor(s): Professor Suzi Hong, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of, Psychiatry Professor Geert Schmid-Schonbein, Bioengineering Metabolic syndrome and poorer adrenergic inflammation regulation are associated with cognitive impairment in older adults with hypertension.

Poster #: 18 Darren Lam ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Randy Hampton, Biological Sciences Dr. Sonya Neal, Biological Sciences An Optical Assay to Study Proteotoxic-induced Chromosome Duplication

POSTER SESSION A

Poster #: 19 Kelly Courtney ~ Psychiatry

Mentor(s): Dr. Jurgen Schulze, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE), Qualcomm Institute The Use of Virtual Reality to Induce and Assess Alcohol Craving

Poster #: 20 Shannon Butler ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Professor Ella Tour, Biological Sciences Integrating data: an essential critical thinking skill

Poster #: 21 Eva Wittenberg ~ Linguistics

Mentor(s): Dr. Eva Wittenberg, Linguistics The mess reveals the system: People use top-down cues to resolve errors in contexts with highly random noise, but not with highly structured noise

Poster #: 22 Sandra Sanchez-Roige ~ Psychiatry

Mentor(s): Professor Abraham A Palmer, Psychiatry Intersection of Impulsive Personality Traits and Drug Experimentation: A Genome-Wide Association Approach

Poster #: 23 Teryn Johnson ~ Cognitive Science

Mentor(s): Dr. Lara Rangel, Cognitive Science Dr. Pedro Cabrales, Bioengineering A Flexible Likelihood Approach for Predicting Neural Spiking Activity from Oscillatory Phase

Poster #: 24 Nhi Lang ~ Neurosciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Joseph Gleeson, Neurosciences Investigation of Mutations in a Protein Isomerase Gene and Its Role in Neurodevelopmental Disorder

POSTER SESSION A

Poster #: 25 Maria Andrea Makalinao Tiu ~ School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Geoffrey Chang, School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences Understanding marine and human transporters for global pollutants

Poster #: 26

Junwei Wang ~ Chemistry & Biochemistry Mentor(s): Professor Alina Schimpf, Chemistry & Biochemistry Polyoxemetelate Frameworks Composed of Presslyer Anions and Transition-Metal Cations

Poster #: 27 David Welkie ~ Center For Circadian Biology (CCB)

Mentor(s): Professor Susan Golden, Biological Sciences, Center For Circadian Biology (CCB) Dr. Bernhard Palsson, Bioengineering Creating a predictive metabolic model of photoautotrophic metabolism in cyanobacteria to improve bioengineering design

Poster #: 28 Jack Pan ~ Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

Mentor(s): Dr. Maria Vernet, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Dr. Andrew Barton, Biological Sciences Small Phytoplankton Dominate Community Size Structure in an Antarctic Fjord

Poster #: 29

Ashley Tamura ~ Chemistry & Biochemistry Mentor(s): Dr. Alina Schimpf, Chemistry & Biochemistry The Colloidal Synthesis of Nickel Selenide Nanocrystals

Poster #: 30 Lara Kusnezov ~ Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of

Mentor(s): Dr. Natasha Martin, Medicine Dr. Craig McIntosh, Graduate Division Projecting the Hepatitis C Virus Epidemic and Cost-Effectiveness of Prevention Scale-up among People Who Inject Drugs in Tijuana, Mexico

POSTER SESSION A

Poster #: 31 Carrie Streeter ~ History

Mentor(s): Dr. Rebecca Jo Plant, History Dr. Erik Groessl, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of Relaxation to the Rescue: Mind-Body Medicine and World War II

Poster #: 32 Yingying Cui ~ Environmental Systems & Jason Huang ~ Environmental Systems

Mentor(s): Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: Problems and Solutions on Running a Sustainable Aquaponic System

Poster #: 33 Melissa Ledgerwood-Lee (presenting on behalf of Payam Khorramshahi) ~ Medicine Mentor(s): Dr. Ravinder Mittal, Medicine Dr. Robert Sah, Bioengineering Microarchitecture of the External Anal Sphincter: Crossing Muscle Fibers

Poster #: S1 Kuan-Jung Chiang ~ Bioengineering Mentor(s): Professor Tzyy-Ping Jung, Institute for Neural Computation Professor Chung-Kuan Cheng, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Developing an Augmented Reality BCI for Patients with Mobility Impairments

Poster #: S2 Christopher Donahue ~ Computer Science & Engineering (CSE), Music

Mentor(s): Professor Julian McAuley, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Professor Miller Puckette, Music Learning the semantics of multi-instrumental music composition

POSTER SESSION B

Poster Session B 4:45 pm - 5:45 pm

Price Center West Ballroom A

Poster #: 1

Jane Lilly Lopez ~ Sociology Mentor(s): Professor Kwai Ng, Sociology Professor Natalia Molina, History (Un)Authorized Love: US Immigration Law and the Effects of Institutional (Dis)Approval on Mixed Citizenship Families

Poster #: 2 Jac Lorenzo (presenting on behalf of Killian Oukoloff) ~ Chemistry & Biochemistry, School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences

Mentor(s): Professor Carlo Ballatore, School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences Professor Jeffrey Esko, Cellular & Molecular Medicine N-aryl-2-aminothiazole derivatives as potential leads for the treatment of Hereditary Multiple Exostoses

Poster #: 3 Jesse Tai ~ Veterans' Affairs

Mentor(s): Professor Mahadevan Rajasekaran, Veterans' Affairs Identification of Fibrosis Markers in Human Urethral Scar Tissue

Poster #: 4 Jiayi Dong ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Li-Fan Lu, Biological Sciences Dr. Manuela Raffatellu, Biomedical Sciences PhD Program Regulatory T cell-mediated control of intestinal immune homeostasis upon physiological microbial exposure

Poster #: 5 Carolina Gonzalez Bravo ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Dr. Galia Debelouchina, Chemistry & Biochemistry Uncovering the Secret Life of Genes

POSTER SESSION B

Poster #: 6 Jinyoung Kang ~ Nanoengineering

Mentor(s): Professor Michael Sailor, Chemistry & Biochemistry Porous Silicon Nanoparticles for Targeted Nerve Growth Factor Delivery to the Injured Brain

Poster #: 7 Joseph Duong ~ Neurosciences, Revelle College

Mentor(s): Dr. Leanne Chukoskie, Neurosciences, Psychology Dr. Pamela Cosman, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Measuring social interactions using gaze and movement capture during a simulated career counseling session

Poster #: 8 Nicole Trappe ~ Cognitive Science, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Mentor(s): Professor Tajana Rosing, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Sensing Cognitive Decline in Elder Homes

Poster #: 9 Young Sung Moon ~ Bioengineering

Mentor(s): Professor Susan Hopkins, Medicine Dr. Rebecca Theilmann, Radiology Assessment of Pulmonary Structure in Healthy Untrained Control and Endurance Athletes Using MRI Measures of T2*

Poster #: 10 Yi Li (presenting on behalf of Yingwei Li) ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Professor Nuno Vasconcelos, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) RESOUND: Towards Action Recognition without Representation Bias

Poster #: 11 Cristina Salmeron Salvador ~ Pharmacology, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

Mentor(s): Dr. Martin Tresguerres, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Professor Susan Taylor, Pharmacology Characterization of a Golgi-specific signaling microdomain: implications for human health and marine life

POSTER SESSION B

Poster #: 12 Lindsey Spiegelman ~ Chemistry & Biochemistry

Mentor(s): Dr. Partho Ghosh, Chemistry & Biochemistry Dr. Victor Nizet, Pharmacy, School Of From structure to function of the Enterococcus faecalis virulence factor Esp

Poster #: 13 Kristoffer Svensson ~ Orthopaedic Surgery

Mentor(s): Dr. Simon Schenk, Orthopaedic Surgery Loss of pyruvate dehydrogenase E1 alpha 1 (PDHA1) in skeletal muscle impairs high-intensity exercise performance

Poster #: 14

Isabelle Velloze ~ Biological Sciences Mentor(s): Dr. David Strong, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of Matthew Stone, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of Effect of Packaging on Smoking Perceptions and Behavior: A Randomized Trial

Poster #: 15 Eric Zhao ~ Nanoengineering

Mentor(s): Professor Jesse Jokerst, Nanoengineering Shape-dependent toxicity of silicon carbide nanomaterials to human mesenchymal stem cells

Poster #: 16 Emily Paolillo ~ Psychiatry

Mentor(s): Dr. David Moore, Psychiatry Dr. Patrick Mercier, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Heavy Drinking and Antiretroviral Adherence Don’t Mix: Assessing Real-Time Relationships Using Ecological Momentary Assessment and Wearable Alcohol Biosensors

Poster #: 17 Alison Vrbanac ~ Biomedical Sciences PhD Program

Mentor(s): Dr. Victor Nizet, Pediatrics Dr. Pieter Dorrestein, School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences Interrogating the Whole Organism Impact of Antibiotics

POSTER SESSION B

Poster #: 18 Bahram Kheradmand ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Professor James Nieh, Biological Sciences Dr. Timothy Brady, Psychology Bees as a learning model: is sequence pattern learning a shared trait among humans and bees?

Poster #: 19 Qiwei Dong ~ Bioengineering

Mentor(s): Professor Tzyy-Ping Jung, Bioengineering Siddharth Siddharth, Bioengineering Investigation of EEG and PPG Data for Subjects with Visual Height Intolerance

Poster #: 20 Byeongkeun Kang ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Professor Truong Nguyen, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Analysis of mice’s movement to investigate motor cortex

Poster #: 21 Lauren Liao ~ Mathematics

Mentor(s): Dr. Bradley Voytedk, Cognitive Science, Neurosciences Differentiating Neural Noise from Structured Dynamics in Electrophysiological Recordings

Poster #: 22 Arsham Aliaskari ~ Political Science & Mohamed Al Elew ~ Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Mentor(s): Dr. Thad Kousser, Political Science The Supply and Demand of Fact v. Opinion in Presidential Tweets

Poster #: 23 Alannah Miranda ~ Biomedical Sciences PhD Program

Mentor(s): Dr. Michael McCarthy, Psychiatry Dr. John Kelsoe, Psychiatry Rare NTRK1 variant associated with mood disorders effects neural stem cell development

POSTER SESSION B

Poster #: 24 Tamara Zubatiy ~ Cognitive Science

Mentor(s): Dr. Virginia de Sa, Cognitive Science Professor Tajana Rosing, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Exploring Interventions for Encouraging Healthy Living by Comparing Event Related Potentials During Word Recall and Recognition in Elderly and Young People

Poster #: 25 Austin Gallagher ~ Cognitive Science

Mentor(s): Professor Lara Rangel, Cognitive Science A Flexible Likelihood Approach for Predicting Neural Spiking Activity from Oscillatory Phase

Poster #: 26

Andrew Washington ~ Cognitive Science Mentor(s): Dr. Brad Voytek, Cognitive Science Scott Cole, Neurosciences Bursting properties of neural oscillations: open-source software development

Poster #: 27 Brian Rush ~ Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Mentor(s): Professor Curt Schurgers, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) E4E Aerial LiDAR

Poster #: 28

Chantal Sengsourinho ~ Natural Reserve System Mentor(s): Dr. Heather Henter, Natural Reserve System Conservation Solutions Docent Program 1

Poster #: 29 Laura de Boer ~ Biological Sciences

Mentor(s): Professor Steve Briggs, Biological Sciences Professor Vineet Bafna, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Machine learning based identification of the express-able gene sets and a flooding tolerance associated transcription factor of staple food crop species

POSTER SESSION B

Poster #: 30 Elizabeth Clausing ~ Anthropology

Mentor(s): Professor Amy Non, Anthropology Professor Christina Chambers, Pediatrics Biological consequences of stress among children of Hispanic immigrants before and after the 2016 Presidential Election.

Poster #: 31

Kristin Gill ~ Environmental Systems Mentor(s): Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: Sediment Hotspots in Los Laureles Canyon

Poster #: 32

Jennifer Corona ~ Biological Sciences, Anthropology Mentor(s): Professor Amy Non, Anthropology Professor Christina Chambers, Pediatrics Methods of Study of Hair Cortisol in Healthy Children: case study in CHICOs Project

Poster #: S1 Kirsten Wong ~ Bioengineering

Mentor(s): Dr. Adam Engler, Bioengineering Non-Coding Genomic Regulation Identified by Disease-in-a-dish Modeling

Poster #: S2

Subathra Raj ~ Cognitive Science Mentor(s): Dxr. Ying Wu, San Diego Supercomputer Center Resting State and Task-related Brain Dynamics Supporting Creativity

Poster #: S3 Faith Huang ~ Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) & Gregory Loui ~ Arts & Humanities, Division Dean of Mentor(s): Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: Earthlab, Future of Encanto

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 6 Red Shoe Room Afternoon

Agrawal, Anamika, UC San Diego Department/Major: Physics Mentored by Professor Elena Koslover, Physics Professor Gulcin Pekkurnaz, Biological Sciences

Spatial Control of Neuronal Metabolism Through Glucose-Mediated Mitochondrial Transport Regulation

Eukaryotic cells modulate their metabolism by organizing metabolic components in response to varying nutrient availability and energy demands. In the axons of mammalian neurons, mitochondria have been shown to respond to glucose levels by halting active transport preferentially in high glucose regions. Here, we employ quantitative modeling to explore the physical limits on spatial organization of organelles through such regulated stopping of processive motion, as well as the consequences to cellular metabolism. We delineate the role of key parameters, including cellular glucose uptake and consumption rates, that are expected to modulate mitochondrial distribution and metabolic response in spatially varying glucose conditions. Our quantitative estimates indicate that physiological brain glucose levels fall within the limited range necessary for metabolic enhancement, making this a plausible regulatory mechanism for neuronal metabolic flexibility in the presence of spatially heterogeneous glucose. These findings highlight the role of spatial organization in the regulation of neuronal metabolism, while providing a quantitative framework for the establishment of such organization by control of organelle trafficking.

Oral Presentation Panel 1 Snake Path Room Morning

Aguilar, Kevan, UC San Diego Department/Major: History Mentored by Dr. Matthew Vitz, History Dr. Matilde Córdoba Azcárate, Communication

Revolutionary Encounters: Mexican Communities & Spanish Exiles, 1931-1959

In the immediate aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Mexico granted over 20,000 Spanish refugees political asylum. My dissertation analyzes how these exiles were perceived and received by Mexico’s laboring classes following their own decadeslong revolutionary struggle (1906-1940). By centering on popular conceptions and experiences with Spanish exiles, I assess how popular conceptions of race, class, citizenship, and revolutionary reform were formed and fostered between the two communities. Using archival sources collected in Mexico, Spain and the Netherlands, I assess how workers and peasants from both countries encountered one another with sociocultural viewpoints and ideological convictions forged through their communities’ historical struggles over land, equality, and democracy. The Mexican Revolution and Spanish Civil War were interrelated moments of social upheaval that gave rise to intense debates over decolonization and transnational solidarity for both countries’ laboring classes. My dissertation therefore examines how popular classes, rather than government policies, defined the parameters of their communities and challenged notions of social “difference” during moments of revolutionary change. I argue that

ABSTRACTS communities are not restricted to predetermined codifiers, but are fluid social constructions redefined and reconsidered, particularly during moments of intense historical transformation. This research makes major interventions in the study of comparative revolutions as well as larger debates in the humanities and social sciences regarding popular social consciousness on a transnational scale.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #22

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #22

Al Elew, Mohamed, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Mentored by Professor Thad Kousser, Political Science

The Supply and Demand of Fact v. Opinion in Presidential Tweets

Do presidential candidates, and now President Trump, use social media to lay out the factual basis for their positions, or do they primarily communicate their values and opinions? We investigate this question by using human categorizations of over 8,000 tweets to train machine learning algorithms to code all of the tweets sent by all 23 candidates during and since the 2016 presidential election campaign. We argue that politicians should supply more opinions than facts, in order to match voter demand for opinion over fact and increase audience engagement with their tweets.

In a descriptive analysis, we chart the flow of factual claims – many of which happen to be false, according to prominent fact-checking websites – versus opinion over the course of the campaign and across candidates. Donald Trump leaned heavily toward opinion during the campaign, but so did Hillary Clinton and many of the of the most successful candidates. Turning to the demand for tweets, we analyze the rate at which a candidate’s tweet is liked or retweeted, relative to her number of followers. We find that, for nearly every candidate, tweets that espouse an opinion generate significantly more engagement than factual claims. Negative opinions are especially engaging.

These findings persist in multivariate models that hold constant the tone, subject matter, and ideology of the tweet, providing strong evidence that voters are more responsive to opinion than fact on social media.

Aliaskari, Arsham, UC San Diego Muir College Department/Major: Political Science Mentored by Dr. Thad Kousser, Political Science

The Supply and Demand of Fact v. Opinion in Presidential Tweets

Do presidential candidates, and now President Trump, use social media to lay out the factual basis for their positions, or do they primarily communicate their values and opinions? We investigate this question by using human categorizations of over 8,000 tweets to train machine learning algorithms to code all of the tweets sent by all 23 candidates during and since the 2016 presidential election campaign. We argue that politicians should supply more opinions than facts, in order to match voter demand for opinion over fact and increase audience engagement with their tweets.

In a descriptive analysis, we chart the flow of factual claims – many of which happen to be false, according to prominent fact-checking websites – versus opinion over the course

ABSTRACTS of the campaign and across candidates. Donald Trump leaned heavily toward opinion during the campaign, but so did Hillary Clinton and many of the of the most successful candidates. Turning to the demand for tweets, we analyze the rate at which a candidate’s tweet is liked or retweeted, relative to her number of followers. We find that, for nearly every candidate, tweets that espouse an opinion generate significantly more engagement than factual claims. Negative opinions are especially engaging.

These findings persist in multivariate models that hold constant the tone, subject matter, and ideology of the tweet, providing strong evidence that voters are more responsive to opinion than fact on social media.

Oral Presentation Panel 2 Red Shoe Room Morning

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #8

Amarnath, Kapil, UC San Diego Department/Major: Physics Mentored by Professor Terence Hwa, Physics Professor Farooq Azam, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

Bacterial cooperation in the breakdown of chitin in the ocean

Heterotrophic bacteria dominate the metabolism of the ocean, contributing to 1/2 of the total flux of carbon in the ocean. The key scale at which bacteria influence ocean metabolism is at the level of microbial communities, which collectively colonize abundant polymers such as chitin and alginate. However, it remains unclear how, and under what conditions, the component bacteria work together effectively. I will present work that shows frequency-dependent cooperation between two natural strains of marine bacteria that colonize particles of chitin, a polymer of N-acetyl-glucosamine (GlcNAc). For every mmol of GlcNAc consumed, Vibrio splendidus excretes 1 mmol of acetate, which acidifies ocean water and stunts growth. Neptunomonas phycotrophica readily grows on this excreted acetate, which prevents the pH from dropping and enables growth of V. splendidus to a higher yield in coculture. Furthermore, this syntrophic interaction is dependent on the the initial number of each species in the coculture. We are currently working to establish a firm quantitative understanding (i.e., phase diagram) for this frequency dependent cooperation.

Avila, Jorge, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Dr. Jacqueline Kerr, Health Sciences Dr. William Griswold, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Walking Intervention for the Digital Era (WIDE)

Research has shown that older adults benefit greatly from regular physical activity. A small improvement in activity can significantly improve overall health when maintained for extended periods of time. However, there are many barriers that prevent this population from meeting even moderate goals. The current work of Dr. Takemoto uses peer leaders to deliver in-person walking interventions with much success despite some important limitations such as limited reach and sustainability. Addressing these

ABSTRACTS limitations would further improve results and allow for extending the program to a wider range of participants. Limiting factors include transportation, manual activity logging and feedback, monotony, and age-related accessibility issues. The goal of this work is to use mobile technologies to create an app that leverages the successes of Dr. Takemoto’s current work and targets current limitations by using resources provided by third-party APIs. With the help of Dr. Griswold’s software engineering, we used techniques to create a usable user interface that addresses accessibility issues.

Hybrid app technologies, Ionic and Cordova, were used to allow for more manageable cross-platform development. Firebase was used for communicating with third-party APIs, running server code, authentication, cloud messaging, file hosting, and database management. Although basic app functionality has been implemented, development and user testing are still in progress. Next steps would be to update or modify the feature set using user feedback.

Oral Presentation Panel 5 Snake Path Room Afternoon

Azarova, Mayya, UC San Diego Department/Major: Anthropology Mentored by Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, MD PhD, Medicine Professor Don Norman, Cognitive Science Professor David Pedersen, Anthropology

The Backstage of Innovation: How Multidisciplinary Teams Solve Complex Sociotechnical Problems

Multidisciplinary teams evolve as society has to address complex sociotechnical problems of the 21st century such as health disparities, urban mobility, and climate change. What is distinctive about multidisciplinary teams today from 25-50 years ago, and why it is still hard to make people work together? Our study seeks to answer these questions by integrating perspectives from anthropology, engineering, medicine and design. We will examine the mechanisms by which knowledge is created within a multidisciplinary team developing new biometric technology to identify newborns and infants in the developing world. This work will provide insight in “the backstage of innovation,” the processes taking place before discoveries are made. We hypothesize the fundamental challenge for successful teamwork is to integrate the different ways domain-experts perceive and communicate knowledge due to discipline-specific definitions, theories, and methods. We suggest social scientists can play a transformative role in team coordination by helping to develop shared mental models for ideas and action in multidisciplinary collaborations. Our objective is to understand the actual social and intellectual dynamics of teams with the intent of making them more efficient. This project will contribute to the advancement of multidisciplinary team design and help facilitate strategic partnerships in the future.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 2 Red Shoe Room Morning

Broccard-Bell, Heather, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Professor James Nieh, Biological Sciences Professor Yoav Freund, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Automatizing Waggle Dance Detection and Characterization: Developing a Long-Term Observation and Biomonitoring Tool for Honey Bee Colonies.

Long-term monitoring of honey bee colonies is desirable to assess sub-lethal effects of xenobiotics like pesticides, and as a tool to inform agricultural land-use practices that maximally facilitate pollination. Currently, such monitoring is not feasible, as it requires manual observation and decoding of honey bee behavior that is both inexact and prohibitively labor-intensive. In this project, we used high-quality video data from observation colonies to develop and test a computer-based automated detection system for the honey bee waggle dance using techniques from computer vision, video tracking, and machine learning. This tool has the potential to be invaluable for researchers, farmers, and policy-makers, and opens up the possibility of filling in some crucial gaps in the literature concerning xenobiotic effects on honey bees.

Poster Session A

Butler, Shannon, UC San Diego

PC West Ballroom A

Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Professor Ella Tour, Biological Sciences , Biological Sciences

Poster Board #20

Integrating data: an essential critical thinking skill

Critical thinking is an essential skill all science disciplines, and is necessary for persuasion, constructing arguments, and making sense of information. Despite its importance, the implementation of these skills at the college level is lagging.

Professional scientists are considered to be expert-level critical thinkers. Previous research has highlighted that these experts are able to pick up on hidden patterns, organize and recall information flexibly in many contexts, and are able to integrate multiple pieces of data and form novel conclusions. Although we want students in our courses to develop these skills, we have little knowledge of specifically what they are struggling with and how to help them achieve a higher level of critical thinking. In our study, we are characterizing the differences in how novices and experts construct scientific argument from data. Though the project is in the early stages, thus far we have found that experts tend to use all of the relevant data to construct arguments, while novices tend to use only some of the data, resulting in incomplete arguments.

Additionally, when given a research question to answer, novices tend to focus on using the question to guide their interpretation of the data, while experts tend to let their interpretation of the data guide their answer to the question. Finally, experts, but not students, engage in critical evaluation of the experimental set-up and the quality of the data, often also proposing additional experiments. Our findings can be used to improve the way we teach students to analyze scientific data. The next steps in our study include using eye-tracking technology to examine how novices and experts differ in the way that they attend to scientific data.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 8 Green Table Room Afternoon

Oral Presentation Panel 3 Marshall College Room Morning

Carpenter, Cody, UC San Diego Department/Major: Nanoengineering Mentored by Professor Darren Lipomi, Nanoengineering Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, Psychology

Healable Thermoplastic for Kinesthetic Feedback in Wearable Haptic Devices

The word “haptics” refers to technologies designed to stimulate the tactile and kinesthetic senses. Kinesthesia—the sense of motion—is triggered by imposing forces upon the joints, tendons, and muscles to recreate the geometry and stiffness of objects, as may be useful in physical therapy or virtual reality. Here, we introduce a form of kinesthetic feedback by manipulating the mechanical properties of spandex impregnated with a thermoplastic polymer. Heating or cooling this textile-thermoplastic composite just above or below its glass transition temperature (Tg) dramatically changes its mechanical properties. In the form of a glove, the composite can also be healed after inadvertent overextension in its stiffened state by heating it above its Tg. When fitted with thermoelectric devices for active heating and cooling, the flexible or stiffened state of a glove can be perceived by human subjects. As an example of a human-machine interface, the glove is used to control a robotic finger. When the robotic finger makes contact with a wall, a signal is sent to thermoelectric devices in the glove to cool (stiffen the finger) and thus provide kinesthetic feedback to the user.

Chen, Jiawen, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE), Radiology Mentored by Professor Piya Pal, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Professor Eric Ahrens, Radiology

Spike localization in Zero Time of Echo (ZTE) magnetic resonance imaging

This paper considers Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of objects which are assumed to be composed of only a finite number of spikes. These spikes could be the population of cells labeled with perfluorocarbon nanoemulsion tracer agents for ${}^{19}F$ MRI detection, used for cell tracking applications. It is further assumed that samples in the kspace are acquired through a 3D radial sampling scheme. This scenario can happen when one is using a Zero Time of Echo (ZTE) sampling technique, in which the data acquisition is started immediately after radiofrequency (RF) excitation pulse. Due to the structure of 3D radial sampling, one may not be able to use conventional 3D Fourier transform in order to reconstruct the image, as the samples are not located on Cartesian grid. We directly write the Fourier transform in the spherical domain, and by computing Spherical Harmonic Transforms (SHT) along concentric spheres, we cast this problem as decomposition of spherical Bessel functions. By using an approximation of spherical Bessel function, we rewrite this problem as a variant of atomic norm minimization framework, which could be written as a convex semidefinite program (SDP), and can be solved by off-the-shelf solvers. Our approach shows a promising numerical performance.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 3 Marshall College Room Morning

Oral Presentation Panel 9 Bear Room Afternoon

Chen, Fang, UC San Diego Department/Major: Jacobs School of Engineering Mentored by Professor Jesse Jokerst, Jacobs School of Engineering Professor Kirk Peterson, Medicine

Engineering Cells with Multifunctional Nanomaterials to Improve Stem Cell Therapy Efficacy in Myocardial Infarcted Mice

Stem cells have great potential in regenerative medicine but have had relatively low clinical efficacy due to mis-injections, low cell retention, and poor cell viability after transplantation. Here, we prepared a silica-iron oxide nanoparticle (SIO) to overcome these limitations: SIO served as a slow release reservoir for pro-survival agent insulinlike growth factor-I (IGF-I). It also produced ultrasound and MRI signal for cell monitoring and could help immobilize cells in affected area via an external magnet. The viability of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) incubated with 1 mg/ml SIO was 99%, and a proliferation assay showed that the doubling time for labeled and unlabeled hMSCs were 2.31 and 2.27 days. The loading capacity of SIO for IGF-I was around 1.89 Âľg IGF/mg SIO. While IGF-loaded SIO (IGF@SIO) has a burst release in the first 12 hours, there was sustained release for up to one week. IGF@SIO increased the hMSCs survival for one week compared to free IGF. Also, SIO-labeled hMSCs had increased ultrasound and MRI signals. Moreover, an external magnet could direct SIO-labeled cell growth, and an ICP-OES experiment showed that the external magnet significantly increased retention of SIO in mice heart by approximately 77%. In vivo studies with a mouse model of myocardial infarction showed that IGF@SIO-labeled hMSCs significantly increased the left ventricle ejection fraction and global longitudinal strain compared to hMSCs only. Future work will study the mechanisms for heart function improvement by IGF@SIO-labeled hMSCs.

Chen, Yingqi, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Mohit Jain, Medicine

Inflammatory Pathways and Human Longevity

Chronic inflammation is a characteristic feature of biological aging. While many circulating downstream markers of systemic inflammation have been associated with aging and age-related disease states and longevity, it is likely that upstream mediators play the causal role in disease pathogenesis. Eicosanoids are small molecule lipid species that govern upstream initiation of inflammation and recent research suggests certain eicosanoids and enzymes involved in their biosynthesis are related to cardiovascular disease risk and longevity. However, deeper understanding of eicosanoids in the context of disease phenotypes is required to fully harness their therapeutic potential. In this project, we will utilize state of the art high-throughput mass spectrometry to assay distinct eicosanoids and examine their relation to cardiovascular aging and longevity in a well-phenotyped cohort of aging women. Importantly, women continue to outlive and

ABSTRACTS bear greater burden of chronic disease in later life than men for unclear reasons. This project will seek to provide definitive evidence for the relationship between upstream inflammatory pathways and healthy cardiovascular aging and longevity in women.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #S1

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #13

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #30

Chiang, Kuan-Jung, UC San Diego Department/Major: Bioengineering Mentored by Professor Tzyy-Ping Jung, Institute for Neural Computation Professor Chung-Kuan Cheng, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Developing an Augmented Reality BCI for Patients with Mobility Impairments [Abstract redacted owing to proprietary information.]

Chilukuri, Abinav Teja, UC San Diego Sixth College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. M.Raj Rajasekaran, Gastroenterology

Evaluation of Markers of Fibrosis in Human Penile tissues to prevent Age ‐ Related Male Sexual Dysfunction

Erectile dysfunction (ED; major sexual dysfunction) affects over 10% of men and its incidence increases with age. It is an illness that adversely affects quality of life of the patient and their partner. Penile and pelvic floor muscles play important roles in penile hemodynamic mechanisms. Age-related degenerative changes in these muscles are recognized as the most common cause for ED. We hypothesize that increased fibrosis/ muscle atrophy during advanced aging is mediated by a novel fibrogenic cascade. To evaluate molecular pathways of fibrosis and to elucidate Wnt/GIV pathway, we performed immunostaining analysis using specific primary antibody (active β-catenin, GIV) in young and old tissues. Results show an increased expression of both markers in the ICM from old tissues. Western blot (for GIV, collagen-I, STAT3, β-catenin, TGFβ, CTGF) was also performed to quantify protein levels of fibrosis markers which confirmed staining pattern. Our findings will help further development of novel treatment strategies to prevent age-related fibrosis that can lead to ED in men.

Clausing, Elizabeth, UC San Diego Department/Major: Anthropology Mentored by Professor Amy Non, Anthropology Professor Christina Chambers, Pediatrics Professor Happy Araneta, Epidemiology Unit, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of

Biological consequences of stress among children of Hispanic immigrants before and after the 2016 Presidential Election.

ABSTRACTS This study is an investigation of how immigration-related stress may impact the biology and health of Mexican immigrants, considering recent divisive policy debates surrounding Hispanic immigrants in the US. This project involves new primary data collection of biological samples and interviews for comparison with previously collected data on the same families prior to the recent presidential election. In the baseline study, the aim was to investigate stress experiences of Mexican-born mothers and their USborn children living in Nashville, TN, and how these stressors may become biologically embedded through epigenetic and hormonal pathways to predispose children to a higher risk of cardiometabolic disease later in life. Structured interviews were conducted with 82 immigrant mothers and their children (aged 5-13) between 2015-2016. Biological samples and data were collected (saliva, BMI, hair, and blood pressure) from children and mothers for genetic, epigenetic, and hormonal analyses to determine the biological consequences of exposure to immigrant-related stress. We conducted follow-up interviews and collected new biological samples from these families. Our goal is to determine if there are changes in the mental health and stress physiology of children or their mothers since the recent presidential election.

Oral Presentation Panel 2 Red Shoe Room Morning

Clifton, Glenna, UC San Diego Department/Major: Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Mentored by Dr. Nicholas Gravish, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Dr. David Holway, Biological Sciences

Large-scale, automated tracking of ant walking reveals kinematic mechanisms underlying speed constraints on uneven ground

Ants walk long distances to find food and defend territories. Yet, the substrates they experience are typically rugged and uneven, potentially challenging locomotion performance. Because ant walking speed and energetics have significant ecological and evolutionary implications, ants are a useful system to study kinematic modulation on rough ground. Here we combine laboratory studies of walking kinematics with ecologically-relevant field preference experiments to understand how walking patterns and preferences vary with substrate. A custom automated camera system recorded over 8000 high-speed videos of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) walking on 3D-printed substrates with a checkerboard pattern of varying step width (1, 3 and 5 mm, 1 mm step height). Although ants on rough substrates could occasionally reach the faster speeds observed on flat ground, they demonstrated a strong speed constraint while walking on rough substrates, particularly those with checkerboard widths smaller than their 3-4 mm body length (median speed decreased by 21%, 20%, and 12% on 1, 3, and 5 mm respectively compared to flat ground). An automated, deep-learning method tracked limb kinematics during >210,000 strides, revealing that rough substrates both increased variability in foot placement (by 60, 70, and 44% respectively compared to flat ground) and shifted the proportion of disrupted strides (from 5% on flat ground to 24%, 18%, and 12% on 1, 3, and 5 mm substrates). This study represents a highly-detailed investigation of ant locomotion and limb kinematics on uneven ground. Our findings have the potential to explain observed ecological patterns, inform conservation guidelines, and inspire new robotic control strategies.

ABSTRACTS

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 5 Snake Path Room Afternoon

Oral Presentation Panel 4 Bear Room Morning

Cole, Scott, UC San Diego Department/Major: Neurosciences Mentored by Dr. Bradley Voytek, Cognitive Science Dr. Vikash Gilja, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Brain oscillations and the importance of waveform shape

Neural oscillations are hypothesized to play critical roles in cognition, pathology, and behavior. Studies often measure amplitudes, frequencies, and phase dynamics of these oscillations, but rarely quantify waveform shape or symmetry. While the amplitude and frequency of oscillations relate to the magnitude and frequency of underlying neural activity, the potential information in oscillatory waveform shape is less obvious.

Diverse stereotyped waveforms have been observed in neural recordings, such as the sawtooth-shaped hippocampal theta rhythm and the sharp sensorimotor “mu� rhythm.

We hypothesize that these macroscale time-domain waveforms reflect microscale properties of the underlying oscillatory generators. Therefore, analysis of nonsinusoidal features may help link macroscale EEG to microscale physiology. For example, we correlated oscillatory waveform shape to local spiking patterns in the rat hippocampus.

Collin, Lauren, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College Department/Major: Public Health Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: EarthLab, A Space for Scientific Literacy in an Underserved Neighborhood

In Summer 2018, I conducted research at the UCSD EarthLab Community Station in Encanto. In this presentation, I will discuss my project which centered around EarthLab as a valuable space for the promotion of science literacy in an underserved neighborhood. For the project, I co-authored a journal article based on information from my own experience working there as a teacher's assistant, interviews with the EarthLab teachers and students and online research. The journal article discusses the structure of EarthLab academies, the significance of having an outdoor learning space and the main takeaways for other locations trying to implement a similar program.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 1 Snake Path Room Morning

Connelly, Kathleen, UC San Diego Department/Major: Philosophy Mentored by Dr. Catherina Gere, History Dr. Dana Nelkin, Philosophy Dr. Daniel Navon, Sociology

Moral Responsibility and Mental Disability

This project aims to elucidate challenges philosophers face in answering questions of when and how mentally disabled people, neuroatypical people, and people with mental illnesses are morally responsible for their actions. Societally, the more we’ve learned about mental disability, mental illness, and neuroatypicality, and the less we’ve stigmatized these conditions, the more it becomes clear that people we might once have blamed (or who might have blamed themselves) for their harmful behavior are in fact not at fault at all. But it’s clear there’s risk of injustice here as well. Holding people morally responsible for their actions is an important element of treating them as having agency, which is an important element of respecting them as fellow human beings. To this end, this project will explore how philosophers can approach questions of mental disability and moral responsibility in a thoughtful, critical way. This must be informed by empirical science but also—more importantly—by disability theory, and by a historical and sociological understanding of how this science has been abused to limit people’s autonomy in the past and, indeed, is still so abused in the present.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #32

Corona, Jennifer, Department/Major: Biological Sciences, Anthropology Mentored by Professor Amy Non, Anthropology Professor Christina Chambers, Pediatrics

Methods of Study of Hair Cortisol in Healthy Children: case study in CHICOs Project

The embodiment of stressors into the biology of children deserves more attention.

Through analyzing what cortisol levels tell us about chronic stress and the implications for human development at its early stages, it is possible to engineer study designs that will reveal associations reliable enough on which to build further understanding. Due to the assumptions about segment effect in hair, a 3-6 cm length of hair collected form the posterior vertex should be used in every question that that the period is relevant for in chronic stress. The standardization of protocols for cortisol extraction is possible because many methods are interchangeable or similar but repeated in different amounts.

Choice of assay may be more conditional on the question and collection quality. By collecting more demographic information on healthy subjects and reporting it widely together with raw HCC, these values can be used to predict levels of stress and the subsequent negative effects this may bear on healthy children. Moreover, creating a database where HCC is reported in its raw form may help elucidate the best statistical methods that give accurate interpretations and moderate the low power and skewed sample composition seen in many of the studies reviewed here.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #19

Courtney, Kelly, UC San Diego Department/Major: Psychiatry Mentored by Dr. Jurgen Schulze, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE), Qualcomm Institute

The Use of Virtual Reality to Induce and Assess Alcohol Craving

The study of craving for alcohol and drugs is increasingly thought to be essential for understanding the pathogenesis and maintenance of addiction. Craving has been found to predict substance use in laboratory studies, and the amelioration of craving is a common treatment target. Thus, craving is a clinically relevant intermediate phenotype of addiction with great potential for intervention. Craving is often studied in the laboratory through exposure to substance-related cues. Virtual reality (VR) paradigms are successful in eliciting cue-induced subjective alcohol craving and may even elicit stronger craving than traditional picture-cue methods. However, few studies have leveraged the advances of this technology to improve the assessment of craving.

Subjective assessments of craving are inherently biased and based on the false assumption that craving is always a conscious process. Identification of reliable objective correlates of craving would benefit the investigation of the psychobiologic foundations and clinical consequences of craving. Technological advances in VR implementation afford the ability to assess potentially important psychophysiological correlates of craving such as attentional bias, or the ability of drug cues to grab the attention of the user, and spontaneous eye-blink rate (EBR), a marker of striatal dopamine release. Attentional bias and EBR can be assessed in real-time during the VR paradigm via eye-tracking capabilities of the VR hardware which would allow for precise measurement of these constructs during cue-exposure.

This project seeks to develop a novel, translatable VR paradigm to both induce alcohol craving, via presentation of realistic alcohol cues, and assess alcohol craving and its correlates, via measurement of attentional bias, EBR, as well as subjective reports.

Development of the paradigm will be conducted in a systematic manner with the goal of paradigm optimization. Once fully developed and tested in a sample of young adult alcohol users (N=50), this paradigm will have tremendous applications within basic science research on alcohol craving and the development of new interventions that aim to reduce craving.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #32

Cui, Yingying, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Environmental Systems Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: Problems and Solutions on Running a Sustainable Aquaponic System

EarthLab is an outside teaching area located in Encanto, San Diego. Every summer, interns from the University of California, San Diego, teach science lessons in EarthLab. Inside EarthLab, there is an aquaponic system. We will introduce this aquaponics in this paper, as well as the problems and solutions while running this aquaponic system. As a comparison, we also studied on UCSD Aquaponics which was built by UCSD alumni.

Both UCSD and EarthLab Aquaponics encountered challenges. In this research, we focused on major problems on EarthLab Aquaponics and sought solutions from different people including UCSD Aquaponics.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #14

Das, Nikhil, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Dr. Michael Yip, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Novel Soft-Backboned Screw-Driven Snake Robot

Although colorectal cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer-related death in the world, Stage I detection has a 5-year survival rate of over 90%. Modern endoscopes still require high levels of skill and precision to operate, often resulting in complications.

Our novel screw-propelled endoscope design, using multiple propulsion modules to increase mobility, enables accurate localization and tracking, and increases overall safety.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #29

de Boer, Laura, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Professor Steve Briggs, Biological Sciences Professor Vineet Bafna, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Machine learning based identification of the express-able gene sets and a flooding tolerance associated transcription factor of staple food crop species

Determining which predicted gene models are capable of producing functional products is a fundamental problem in genome-wide biology. A random-forest based approach utilizing gene DNA methylation levels as model features was used to identify the express-able gene sets of two staple food crops. Express-able gene sets were defined at both the RNA and protein level, for sorghum and two diverse inbred lines of maize.

Gene regulatory network analysis using a random forest machine learning algorithm identified a maize transcription factor, GRAS3, with a predicted role in regulating stress tolerance associated genes. Two independent transposon insertional mutant lines were obtained for GRAS3. Primary roots from both gras3 mutant lines compared to wildtype were subjected to proteomic analysis, identifying differentially expressed proteins associated with reactive oxygen species production and detoxification. Mutant gras3 plants show a decrease in cell death and an increase in tolerance-associated root formation following flooding stress.

Oral Presentation Panel 2 Red Shoe Room Morning

de Callafon, Raymond, UC San Diego Department/Major: Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Mentored by Professor Raymond de Callafon, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE)

Data Assimilation for Wildfire Monitoring with FARSITE

This presentation shows how FARSITE (a software used for wildfire modeling and simulation) is extended to incorporate data assimilation techniques based on noisy and limited spatial resolution observations of the fire perimeter to improve the accuracy of wildfire spread predictions. To include data assimilation in FARSITE, uncertainty on both the simulated wildfire perimeter and the measured wildfire perimeter is used to formulate optimal updates for the prediction of the spread of the wildfire. For data assimilation, Wildfire perimeter measurements with limited spatial resolution and a known uncertainty are used to to formulate an optimal adjustment in the fire perimeter prediction. The adjustment is calculated from the Kalman filter gain in an Ensemble Kalman filter that exploits the uncertainty information on both the simulated wildfire perimeter and the measured wildfire perimeter. The approach is illustrated on a wildfires monitored within the WiFIRE project in collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 9 Bear Room Afternoon

Dern, Jenna, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Visual Arts Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: The Cultural Corridor and the Making of Place

In Summer 2018, we conducted research at the UCSD Community Station at Casa Familiar in San Ysidro. In this presentation, we will share a brief overview of San Ysidro’s history and how activism translates into the transformation of public space.

San Ysidro faces a large deficit of affordable housing and is physically isolated by highways that boxes it in and alienates it from the rest of San Diego. By working alongside Casa Familiar leaders like Lisa Cuestas and Tiernan Seaver, we proposed possible solutions for the Cultural Corridor, an alleyway that connects the Beyer Trolley Station to downtown San Ysidro. Over eight weeks, we collaborated with three community youth—former Docents from the Front Art Gallery—to create a video that explores the qualities of San Ysidro. To supplement this, we selected six residents—an elder, a child, a parent, a Casa Familiar affiliate, and two students— to participate in our photo novella project where we gave residents disposable cameras and asked them to take pictures of meaningful space in the community. These efforts helped us in shaping a tool for Casa Familiar to advocate for the development of the Cultural Corridor.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #S2

Donahue, Christopher, UC San Diego Department/Major: Computer Science & Engineering (CSE), Music Mentored by Professor Julian McAuley, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Professor Miller Puckette, Music

Learning the semantics of multi-instrumental music composition

Music is an immeasurably complex cultural phenomenon, and its composition is held in high regard. For decades, researchers have attempted to model the semantics of music using statistical methods. While substantial progress has been made in modeling simple melodies and piano music, there has been less success on modeling multi-instrumental music. One barrier to success for applying modern machine learning methods to this problem is the lack of data. By extracting music from early video games, we have assembled a large corpus of multi-instrumental music. An added benefit of this corpus is that it contains expressive performance characteristics for each song, allowing us to also study the nuance of musical *performance* rather than composition alone. We present details about the corpus as well as our proposed framework for examining music generation factorized into compositional and performative elements.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #4

Dong, Jiayi, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Li-Fan Lu, Biological Sciences Dr. Manuela Raffatellu, Biomedical Sciences PhD Program

Regulatory T cell-mediated control of intestinal immune homeostasis upon physiological microbial exposure

Regulatory T (Treg) cells, a specialized immune population, are known for their role in maintaining immunological tolerance. In the gut, results obtained from animal studies have shown that Treg cells maintain intestinal homeostasis by preventing inappropriate immune responses to the commensal flora and dietary proteins. However, a recent report revealed that the immune system in laboratory mice behaves very differently compared to humans since these mice are bred and housed in the abnormally hygienic environment without the diverse microbial exposure a regular human would experience.

It is thus critical to examine the impact of physiological microbial exposure on intestinal Treg cells to address the concerns about the translational value of the findings from the animal studies through better modeling the immunological events occurring in humans.

In this study, we will systematically explore the molecular mechanisms by which Treg cells control mucosal immune responses in mice that have been made "dirty" through co-housing with mice conventionally raised outside the laboratory setting. In addition, the microbes that shape the host immune system, particularly in Treg cell-mediated immune regulation, will be determined. Together, our study will undoubtedly extend our fundamental knowledge of this functionally specialized Treg cell subset in regulating human health and disease.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #19

Dong, Qiwei, UC San Diego Sixth College Department/Major: Bioengineering Mentored by Professor Tzyy-Ping Jung, Bioengineering Siddharth Siddharth, Bioengineering

Investigation of EEG and PPG Data for Subjects with Visual Height Intolerance

This study explores the neural and physiological correlates of acrophobia. We are mainly considering the heart rate and heart-rate variability extracting from the noninvasive PPG signals. Before the experiment, subjects fill up a questionnaire that evaluates their degree of height intolerance. During the experiment, we use the HTC Vive VR headset to present a VR stimulus to subjects and use Cognionics Dry EEG headset to acquire electroencephalogram (EEG) and a BioVotion armband to collect PPG recordings from the subjects. In the past few months, we have designed and developed the VR contents for this study. We have also developed methods to collect and synchronize the multi-modal data streams from the EEG headset and the BioVotion armband. We plan to collect and analyze the multi-modal data across 10 subjects within the VR environment in the next three months.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #3

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #7

Du, Ashley, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Laura Crotty-Alexander, Pulmonary/Critical Care Med Div

Physiological Effects of Daily Inhalation of E-Cigarette Vapor

As e-cigarette use continues to rise in popularity, many have questioned how e-cigarette vapor inhalation actually affects mammalian systems. Because >99% of commercially available e-cigarettes contain nicotine, and nicotine has been found to have effects on cardiac physiology, we hypothesized that daily inhalation of e-cigarette vapor (EV) would lead to alterations in both heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP). This hypothesis is supported by recent human data showing increases in HR and BP after inhaling EV once (acute exposure). HR variability has been highlighted as a sign of cardiac dysfunction, with increased risk of adverse cardiac outcomes. These experiments were designed to evaluate HR, HR variability and BP of mice exposed to nicotine containing e-cigarette vapor daily for 3 months, compared to controls.

Duong, Joseph, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Neurosciences, Revelle College Mentored by Dr. Leanne Chukoskie, Neurosciences, Psychology Dr. Pamela Cosman, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Measuring social interactions using gaze and movement capture during a simulated career counseling session

People make decisions for their best benefit based on their experiences, beliefs, values, and preferences. However, while some decisions are trival, others are important in terms of consequences for one's future. Career decisions fall into this second category of decisions. The potential stress that surrounds this type of decision can make social interactions around career planning and decision-making dysfunctional, limiting good information exchange. Our lab is interested in using technology to measure social interactions. For this project, we seek to capture gaze behavior, speech and gesture patterns in a simulated career counseling scenario. The resulting system can be used to provide feedback to counseling participants to help them get the most out of these interactions toward the goal of making better career decisions.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 7 Marshall College Room Afternoon

Fauvelle, Mikael, UC San Diego Department/Major: Anthropology Mentored by Professor Guillermo Algaze, Anthropology Professor Elizabeth Newsome, Visual Arts Professor Dominique Rissolo, California Inst for Telecomm & Info Tech (Cal-(IT)2))

Connecting the Global and the Local: Art, Archaeology, and Digital Heritage at Fracción Mujular

Scholars from a variety of traditions across the sciences and humanities are realizing that in order to understand how global inequalities shape our modern world, we need to explore their origins and antecedents in the past. The proposed project represents a collaborative effort to study the expansion of ancient states in Mesoamerica. Our research focuses on the site of Fracción Mujular in coastal Chiapas, where art historians have long argued that glyphs and stylistic elements found on ancient stone sculptures indicate political ties to Central Mexico. Originally thought to be associated with the city of Teotihuacan, our work has shown that Fracción Mujular was occupied for over 1000 years, surviving the rise and fall of at least two central Mexican empires. Evidence of these political shifts can be found in the artistic styles of numerous stone monuments found at the site. Unfortunately, many of these sculptures are poorly preserved and are rapidly eroding. This project will use cutting-edge 3D imaging to produce digital models of sculptures that will be analyzed in collaboration with art historians here at UCSD. Our work will help preserve the endangered heritage of Fracción Mujular while expanding our knowledge of ancient Mexico.

Oral Presentation Panel 1 Snake Path Room Morning

Flach, Kate, UC San Diego Department/Major: History Mentored by Professor Rebecca Plant, History Professor David Serlin, Communication

Channeling Ideas: Teaching Audiences through the Politics of Television

This project examines the historical origins of how and when broadcast producers came to consider television a tool that audiences could learn from. This study begins in the 1960s when producers thought television had the capability of “performing the greatest educational service” by breaking down traditional prejudices against blacks and women.

Pairing an analysis of television’s production with viewer responses shifts our traditional way of thinking about entertainment television as apolitical, and viewers’ political interpretations as purely subjective, and proposes a new way of thinking about sitcoms and dramas as intentionally trying to teach audiences.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #25

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #11

Gallagher, Austin, UC San Diego Muir College Department/Major: Cognitive Science Mentored by Professor Lara Rangel, Cognitive Science

A Flexible Likelihood Approach for Predicting Neural Spiking Activity from Oscillatory Phase

The synchronous ionic currents that give rise to neural oscillations have complex influences on neuronal spiking activity that are challenging to characterize. Here we present a method to estimate probabilistic relationships between neural spiking activity and the phase of field oscillations using a generalized linear model (GLM) with an overcomplete basis of circular functions. We first use an L1-regularized maximum likelihood procedure to select an active set of regressors from the overcomplete set and perform model fitting using standard maximum likelihood estimation. An information theoretic model selection procedure is then used to identify an optimal subset of regressors and associated coefficients that minimize overfitting. To assess goodness of fit, we apply the time-rescaling theorem and compare model predictions to original data using quantile-quantile plots. Spike-phase relationships in synthetic data were robustly characterized. When applied to in vivo hippocampal data from an awake behaving rat, our method captured a multimodal relationship between the spiking activity of a CA1 interneuron, a theta (5-10 Hz) rhythm, and a nested high gamma (65-135 Hz) rhythm.

Previous methods for characterizing spike-phase relationships are often only suitable for unimodal relationships, impose specific relationship shapes, or have limited ability to assess the accuracy or fit of their characterizations. This method advances the way spike-phase relationships are visualized and quantified, and captures multimodal spikephase relationships, including relationships with multiple nested rhythms. Overall, our method is a powerful a tool for revealing a wide range of neural circuit interactions.

Garcia Badaracco, Adrian, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Chemical Engineering Mentored by Dr. Andrew Kummel, Chemistry & Biochemistry Dr. Daniel Chao, Shiley Eye Institute

Silica Nanoparticles as Optical Coherence Tomography Contrast agents for Retinal Disease

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a modern imaging method widely used to visualize the vitreoretinal interface, retinal thickness, and retinal nerve fiber layer thickness in various macular diseases. OCT uses coherent light to create contrast between tissue structures of dissimilar refractive index and allows a high-resolution cross section of sensitive tissues such as the retina to be captured in real time. The existing contrast agents are based on near infra-red dyes or other small molecules, solid scattering particles such as gold nano-rods or liquid phase liposomes. In general, OCT signal-to-noise is improved by using contrast agents of larger size or higher refractive index. Herein, hollow silica nano-shells of 100 nm, 500 nm and 2000 nm in diameter, filled with inert perfluorocarbon gas have been developed as a potential OCT contrast agent due to the significantly increased difference in reflectivity between gas phase

ABSTRACTS perfluorocarbon and semisolid ocular tissue. The silica shell surface can be easily modified with tissue specific receptors using well-established bioconjugation methods.

Additionally, our group has previously demonstrated that silica shells have low in-vivo toxicity. The ability for ease of surface functionalization combined with strong OCT contrast offers the ability to target multiple types of pathophysiology with a single contrast agent.

Oral Presentation Panel 1 Snake Path Room Morning

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #2

Georges, Alex, UC San Diego Department/Major: Physics Mentored by Professor David Meyer, Mathematics

Topological Methods for Improving Robustness in Supervised Classification

Topological methods of analyzing data can uncover global properties of data not easily discovered by traditional data analysis methods. We use the global properties of topological objects, called "mappers," to produce a supervised learning algorithm. The data we use consists of handwritten data from the MNIST dataset.

Ghadami, Omid, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Drew Hall, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Injectable BioMote Sensors for Monitoring Drugs of Abuse

We present a remotely powered, fully-integrated, miniature sized sensor node, named BioMote, which can be injected through a 16-gauge syringe for continuous, long-term ethanol concentration monitoring inside the human body. It features a wireless microelectrode biochemical sensor interface and is able to measure ethanol concentration / pH variation at the same time differentially, so as to be able to cancel out both chemical and electrical nonidealities later on the host side. Its low-power multi-technique potentiostat supports both amperometric and potentiometric measurements, exhibiting 2.5 nA sensitivity with 30.1 dB dynamic range and 0.5 mV sensitivity with 43 dB dynamic range, respectively. The measurements are transmitted to a wearable device through backscatter using a selfoscillating current-to-frequency (I2F) converter. The system is wirelessly powered via the coupling between an on-chip 4-turn coil and a wearable device at 985 MHz. The self-contained 0.85Ă—1.5 mm2 chip is implemented in 65 nm CMOS and consumes 970 nw.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #31

Gill, Kristin, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Environmental Systems Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: Sediment Hotspots in Los Laureles Canyon

In Summer 2018, I conducted research at the UCSD Community Station at La Divina Providencia in Los Laureles Canyon. In this presentation, I will discuss our interviews at the sediment hotspots in the canyon, the canyon and estuary system, and the social ecological impacts of erosion.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #5

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #12

Gonzalez Bravo, Carolina, Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Galia Debelouchina, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Uncovering the Secret Life of Genes

[Abstract redacted owing to proprietary information.]

Huang, Ching-Hsin, UC San Diego Department/Major: Materials Science Program Mentored by Professor Andrew Kummel, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Silica nanoparticles as optical coherence tomography contrast agents for retinal disease

Many blinding ophthalmic diseases such as glaucoma and macular degeneration result in cell death in the retina. A critical need in diagnosis and treatment of diseases is the ability to visualize cell death on a cellular level in the retina, as current methods for assessing disease revolve around indirect measures of cell death such as visual fields, or visual acuity.

In this project, we assess whether silica nanoparticles can be used as OCT contrast agents to detect cell death.

We present preliminary data on the ability silica nanoparticles to be detected in OCT phantoms in vitro and detail our future plans to conjugate silica nanoparticles to markers of cell death.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #32

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #S3

Huang, Jason, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College Department/Major: Environmental Systems Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

Problems and Solutions on Running a Sustainable Aquaponic System

EarthLab is an outside teaching area located in Encanto, San Diego. Every summer, interns from University of California, San Diego, teach science lessons in EarthLab. Inside EarthLab, there is an aquaponic system. We will introduce this aquaponics in this paper, as well as the problems and solutions while running this aquaponic system. As a comparison, we also studied on UCSD Aquaponics which was built by UCSD alumni.

Both UCSD and EarthLab Aquaponics encountered challenges. In this research, we focused on major problems on EarthLab Aquaponics and sought solutions from different people including UCSD Aquaponics.

Huang, Faith, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College Department/Major: Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: Earthlab, Future of Encanto

In Summer 2018, I conducted research at the UCSD EarthLab Community Station in Encanto. In this presentation, I will discuss my project on the impact that EarthLab has on the surrounding community. Our project focuses on the ways that EarthLab works as a complementary force to help underprivileged youth in South-East San Diego.

ABSTRACTS Oral Presentation Panel 7 Marshall College Room Afternoon

Oral Presentation Panel 6 Red Shoe Room Afternoon

Hurwich-Reiss, Eliana, UC San Diego Department/Major: Psychiatry Mentored by Dr. Lauren Brookman-Frazee, Psychiatry Dr. Shana Cohen, Education Studies

AIM HI EQUIPO: A Culturally Responsive Intervention Enhancement for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

There are documented disparities in services for Latinx children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The AIM HI EQUIPO toolkit is designed to address disparities by enhancing AIM HI, a behavioral intervention for children with ASD. EQUIPO, a training and intervention enhancement, is designed to 1) increase parent/therapist understanding of ASD, 2) increase therapist competence delivering AIM HI to culturally diverse parents, 3) strengthen the parent-therapist relationship. EQUIPO was developed in collaboration with community stakeholders based on data collected during a randomized effectiveness trial, which included many families with limited English. Phase 1 of EQUIPO involved the development and refinement of materials informed by parent and provider workgroups. This presentation will provide an overview of the use of collaborative community workgroups to develop relevant materials for the end user, discuss themes identified through qualitative data collection, and explore the process of developing therapist cultural humility training. Materials developed in phase 1 will be examined within the framework of a NIMH-funded implementation trial. CRES supported the development of post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Hurwich-Reiss, through mentorship by Dr. Brookman-Frazee (Study PI, Department of Psychiatry) and co-mentor Dr. Shana Cohen (Department of Educational Studies).

Jindal, Granton, UC San Diego Department/Major: Medicine Mentored by Professor Emma Farley, Medicine Professor Deborah Yelon, Biological Sciences

Elucidating regulatory principles governing heart development

Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defect and although most have not yet been attributed to genetic causes, some may be caused by mutations in enhancers.

The human genome contains about a million of these enhancers, which are genomic elements that act as switches to control when and where genes are expressed. However, we do not understand which changes in enhancer sequence impact development.

Enhancer sequences provide a DNA scaffold containing specific signatures that transcription factors bind to. The physical constraints that govern how these transcription factors interact with enhancer DNA could lead to a set of grammatical rules, which could then be used to decipher the relationship between enhancer sequence and function. We aim to identify the functional grammars that govern heart enhancers regulated by the ETS and Mesp transcription factors known to be necessary for heart development, using novel high-throughput functional assays in developing Ciona embryos. We will then use the regulatory and grammatical principles we identify to then predict and validate novel heart enhancers within human and Ciona genomes. We will use the principles we identify to pinpoint mutations that violate these rules, impact heart gene expression, and cause heart defects.

ABSTRACTS Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #23

Johnson, Teryn, UC San Diego Department/Major: Cognitive Science Mentored by Dr. Lara Rangel, Cognitive Science Dr. Pedro Cabrales, Bioengineering Dr. Todd Coleman, Bioengineering

A Flexible Likelihood Approach for Predicting Neural Spiking Activity from Oscillatory Phase

The synchronous ionic currents that give rise to neural oscillations have complex influences on neuronal spiking activity that are challenging to characterize. Here we present a method to estimate probabilistic relationships between neural spiking activity and the phase of field oscillations using a generalized linear model (GLM) with an overcomplete basis of circular functions. We first use an L1-regularized maximum likelihood procedure to select an active set of regressors from the overcomplete set and perform model fitting using standard maximum likelihood estimation. An information theoretic model selection procedure is then used to identify an optimal subset of regressors and associated coefficients that minimize overfitting. To assess goodness of fit, we apply the time-rescaling theorem and compare model predictions to original data using quantile-quantile plots. Spike-phase relationships in synthetic data were robustly characterized. When applied to in vivo hippocampal data from an awake behaving rat, our method captured a multimodal relationship between the spiking activity of a CA1 interneuron, a theta (5-10 Hz) rhythm, and a nested high gamma (65-135 Hz) rhythm.

Previous methods for characterizing spike-phase relationships are often only suitable for unimodal relationships, impose specific relationship shapes, or have limited ability to assess the accuracy or fit of their characterizations. This method advances the way spike-phase relationships are visualized and quantified, and captures multimodal spikephase relationships, including relationships with multiple nested rhythms. Overall, our method is a powerful a tool for revealing a wide range of neural circuit interactions.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #20

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #6

Kang, Byeongkeun, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Truong Nguyen, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Analysis of mice’s movement to investigate motor cortex

The goal of this project is investigating the motor cortex in mice’s brain by analyzing mice’s movements using recorded videos.

Kang, Jinyoung, UC San Diego Department/Major: Nanoengineering Mentored by Professor Michael Sailor, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Porous Silicon Nanoparticles for Targeted Nerve Growth Factor Delivery to the Injured Brain [Abstract redacted owing to proprietary information.]

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #9

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #18

Kao, Andy, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Randy Hampton, Biological Sciences

Uncovering Quality-Control Mechanisms in the Peroxisomal Matrix

Cells regularly face the burden of misfolded proteins as the inevitable result of mechanical errors and environmental damage. These aberrant proteins can inhibit normal cellular function by failing to perform their functions or by forming aggregates which inhibit the function of other molecular systems. To avoid these outcomes, anomalous proteins are either refolded or degraded by protein quality control. The Ubiquitin-Proteasome System (UPS) is a major arm of protein quality control, responsible for selectively recognizing and tagging aberrant proteins for proteasomal degradation. The UPS is known to be active in most cellular compartments, including the cytosol and endoplasmic reticulum. However UPS involvement in the peroxisome is poorly understood. Protein quality control likely holds a critical role in maintaining peroxisomal function due to the presence of reactive oxygen species, substances known to cause protein damage.

Therefore to investigate peroxisomal quality control pathways, we are utilizing point mutants of LYS1, a peroxisomal matrix protein. In a LYS1-GFP fusion, these mutants are relocalized to the cytosol and undergo UPSmediated degradation. We will now localize these mutants to the peroxisome and investigate which quality control pathways they engage.

Kheradmand, Bahram, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Professor James Nieh, Biological Sciences Dr. Timothy Brady, Psychology

Bees as a learning model: is sequence pattern learning a shared trait among humans and bees?

Humans and other primates can learn correlations between objects presented in a series if some sequences are repeated frequently. This is regarded as a hallmark of high cognition, limited to complex animals with large brains. On the other side of the spectrum stands the honey bee, an insect with a miniature brain, yet capable of learning colors, shapes, movements, numbers and contexts. This provides an excellent system to study visual sequence learning to test if this cognitive ability could be performed in simple nervous systems. We will test if sequences of abstract stimuli (colors) can be learned by honeybees in order to predict the location of food. We will also test if the long-hypothesized cognitive map of bees can rival the cognitive maps that humans make of their environment. If our results show that bees are capable of learning sequences and connecting them to locations, this might suggest that the ability to learn sequences is a fundamental property of all central nervous systems.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 9 Bear Room Afternoon

Koh, Rhiannon, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College Department/Major: Urban Studies & Planning Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: The Cultural Corridor and the Making of Place

In Summer 2018, we conducted research at the UCSD Community Station at Casa Familiar in San Ysidro. In this presentation, we will share a brief overview of San Ysidro’s history and how activism translates into the transformation of public space.

San Ysidro faces a large deficit of affordable housing and is physically isolated by highways that boxes it in and alienates it from the rest of San Diego. By working alongside Casa Familiar leaders like Lisa Cuestas and Tiernan Seaver, we proposed possible solutions for the Cultural Corridor, an alleyway that connects the Beyer Trolley Station to downtown San Ysidro. Over eight weeks, we collaborated with three community youth—former Docents from the Front Art Gallery—to create a video that explores the qualities of San Ysidro. To supplement this, we selected six residents—an elder, a child, a parent, a Casa Familiar affiliate, and two students— to participate in our photo novella project where we gave residents disposable cameras and asked them to take pictures of meaningful space in the community. These efforts helped us in shaping a tool for Casa Familiar to advocate for the development of the Cultural Corridor.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #17

Kohn, Jordan, UC San Diego Department/Major: Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of, Psychiatry Mentored by Professor Suzi Hong, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of, Psychiatry Professor Geert Schmid-Schonbein, Bioengineering Professor Lisa Delano-Wood, Psychiatry

Metabolic syndrome and poorer adrenergic inflammation regulation are associated with cognitive impairment in older adults with hypertension.

Hypertension (HTN) and metabolic syndrome (MetS) are prevalent cerebrovascular disease risk factors for cognitive impairment (CI). Inflammation is an overlapping pathophysiology underlying HTN, MetS, and CI. Our aim was to determine the role of MetS and cellular inflammation regulation on cognitive function among older adults with elevated BP. Older adults (60-90 years, N=119) with elevated BP (SBP≥130 mmHg), composed of 40 CI and 79 normocognitive individuals based on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), were assessed. Cellular inflammation regulation was assessed by quantifying β-agonist-induced suppression of TNF-α production by endotoxin-stimulated monocytes. Controlling for age, race, sex, language, and medication use, odds ratio (95% confidence interval) of having CI was 1.99 (1.18-5.50) in those with MetS. Individuals with 1 SD SBP or DBP above the mean (SBP: 133 vs. 150 mmHg; DBP: 69 vs. 78 mmHg) had 89% and 78% increased odds of CI, respectively.

Across all participants, lower MoCA scores were independently associated with poorer cellular inflammation regulation (β=-1.07 [-1.87−-0.21]) and MetS (β=-0.87 [-1.64−0.12]). These findings indicate that MetS and impaired adrenergic function in

ABSTRACTS regulating inflammation are associated with worse cognitive function among older adults with elevated BP. Oral Presentation Panel 3 Marshall College Room

Koochakzadeh, Ali, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Piya Pal, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Professor Eric Ahrens, Radiology

Spike Localization in Zero Time of Echo (ZTE) Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Morning

This paper considers Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of objects which are assumed to be composed of only a finite number of spikes. These spikes could be the population of cells labeled with perfluorocarbon nanoemulsion tracer agents for ${}^{19}F$ MRI detection, used for cell tracking applications. It is further assumed that samples in the kspace are acquired through a 3D radial sampling scheme. This scenario can happen when one is using a Zero Time of Echo (ZTE) sampling technique, in which the data acquisition is started immediately after radiofrequency (RF) excitation pulse. Due to the structure of 3D radial sampling, one may not be able to use conventional 3D Fourier transform in order to reconstruct the image, as the samples are not located on Cartesian grid. We directly write the Fourier transform in the spherical domain, and by computing Spherical Harmonic Transforms (SHT) along concentric spheres, we cast this problem as decomposition of spherical Bessel functions. By using an approximation of spherical Bessel function, we rewrite this problem as a variant of atomic norm minimization framework, which could be written as a convex semidefinite program (SDP), and can be solved by off-the-shelf solvers. Our approach shows a promising numerical performance.

Poster Session A

Kusnezov, Lara, UC San Diego

PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #30

Department/Major: Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of Mentored by Dr. Natasha Martin, Medicine Dr. Craig McIntosh, Graduate Division

Projecting the Hepatitis C Virus Epidemic and Cost-Effectiveness of Prevention Scale-up among People Who Inject Drugs in Tijuana, Mexico

Tijuana, Mexico is located along a major drug trafficking route and is home to a large population of people who inject drugs (PWID). Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) impacts an estimated 95% of PWID in Tijuana. This is not only a critical public health issue for Tijuana, but concerns PWID in San Diego, USA. Little access to harm reduction in Tijuana, inaccessibility, and unaffordability of antiviral treatment for HCV for PWID further complicate this. We developed a dynamic, deterministic model of HCV transmission and disease progression among PWID, stratified by injecting status, HCV status, and harm reduction status. We project the impact of various levels of scaled-up harm reduction and HCV treatment on HCV incidence among PWID and evaluate costeffectiveness of various prevention interventions to determine favorable long-term approaches to reducing HCV burden in this population. Scale-up of harm reduction alone up to 60% coverage among PWID cannot reach WHO targets. Combination harm reduction scale-up (to 60%) and HCV treatment can achieve both WHO incidence and

ABSTRACTS mortality targets. Combination prevention strategy is cost-effective under a willingness to pay threshold of one-time Mexico’s per capita gross domestic product ($8,201 in 2018).

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #18

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #24

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #33

Lam, Darren, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Randy Hampton, Biological Sciences Dr. Sonya Neal, Biological Sciences

An Optical Assay to Study Proteotoxic-induced Chromosome Duplication

The Hampton lab has recently shown that the ER-resident rhomboid derlin Dfm1 is required for the removal of misfolded proteins from the ER membrane. In cells lacking Dfm1, misfolded proteins accumulate and cause proteotoxic stress. In response to this stress, cells undergo a fascinating alternative clearance mechanism for misfolded proteins through the aneuploidy-induced duplication of chromosome XV. To establish a readout of chromosome XV duplication, we have integrated the green fluorescent protein (GFP) optical reporter onto chromosome XV. Cells with an extra copy of chromosome XV are expected to have double the fluorescence of those with a single copy. Accordingly, we will use this as tool to study how yeast use chromosome duplication, as indicated by colony fluorescence, to overcome cellular stress caused by misfolded proteins. Through this assay, we aim to further explore the cellular pathways and biochemical mechanisms of protein quality control in the ER membrane.

Lang, Nhi, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College Department/Major: Neurosciences Mentored by Dr. Joseph Gleeson, Neurosciences

Investigation of Mutations in a Protein Isomerase Gene and Its Role in Neurodevelopmental Disorder [Abstract redacted owing to proprietary information.]

Ledgerwood-Lee, Melissa, UC San Diego Department/Major: Medicine Mentored by Dr. Ravinder Mittal, Medicine Dr. Robert Sah, Bioengineering

Microarchitecture of the External Anal Sphincter: Crossing Muscle Fibers

Background: The external anal sphincter (EAS) is generally thought to be a circular muscle, however recent MRI studies suggest the muscle fascicles may actually crisscross through the midline perineal body (PB) to continue as transverse perinea (TP) and bulbospongiosus (BS) muscles. Objectives: To investigate the human EAS morphology using micro-computed tomography (ÂľCT) and histology to reveal the arrangement of

ABSTRACTS muscle fascicles at the ventral (12 o’clock) position. Methods: We studied 3 human cadavers samples of the PB area; one male and two females. The specimens were stained with phosphotungstic acid and imaged with μCT at (9 or 18 μm)3 voxel size. The image sets were visualized as 2D sections and 3D movies. Results: The μCT scans revealed regions of high (bright) and low attenuation (dark) correlating with muscle fascicles and fat/connective tissues respectively. The 2D sections and 3D movies reveal EAS muscle fascicles criss-crossing in the PB. Conclusion: The EAS muscle fascicles criss-cross at the ventral and dorsal midline regions. We propose that the microstructural design of the EAS is uniquely configured for circumferential closure of the anal opening.

Oral Presentation Panel 9 Bear Room Afternoon

Ledgerwood-Lee, Melissa, UC San Diego Department/Major: Medicine Mentored by Dr. Ravinder Mittal, Medicine Dr. Robert Sah, Bioengineering

High Frequency Ultrasound Imaging to Detect and Quantify Muscle Damage to Anal Sphincter Muscles Post Traumatic Injury

Introduction: During vaginal childbirth, damage to the region between the vagina and anus (perinial body, PB) can result in fecal incontinence (FI). Current clinical standard utilizes ultrasound (US) with a 3-9 MHz transducers to assess damage. This study uses higher frequency (7-15MHz) US transducer to evaluate this region. Aims: The goal of our studies was to visualize and quantify changes to the PB in healthy controls and patients with fecal incontinence (FI) using high frequency US. Methods: The US images were obtained using both the 3-9 MHz and 7-15MHz frequency transducers in 8 healthy female controls and 8 female patients with FI. Analysis was performed using Matlab to evaluate the gray level and texture gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) values. Results: FI patients presented a significant difference (p≤0.03) in the following features when compared to controls: 1) Gray Level Mean Intensity, 2) Contrast (standard deviation), 3) GLCM Contrast, 4) GLCM Correlation, and 5) GLCM Homogeneity. GLCM Energy did not present a difference. Conclusion: Our studies show that damage to the PB results in myoarchitectural changes that present as gray level and texture changes when evaluated with high frequency ultrasound.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #1

Lee, Jenna, UC San Diego Muir College Department/Major: Bioengineering Mentored by Dr. Robert Sah, Bioengineering

Micro-CT based Quantitation of Bone Regeneration in a Mouse Tibia Defect Model

Micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) is a popular tool for imaging and analyzing small-scale bone models. The reconstruction and threshold parameters used in the quantitative analysis will affect the numerical results and there have been studies that compared different micro-CT imaging systems and threshold algorithms, but the upper

ABSTRACTS and lower limits of the threshold are also significant influencers of the analysis. The aim of this study was to determine the variability in quantitation of bone regeneration as a result of varied thresholding ranges during micro-CT analysis.

Excised mouse tibias with partially healed mid-diaphysis bone defects were imaged at 9um resolution using a micro-CT scanner. Calcification was measured in a cylindrical volume of interest by visual appraisal (serial 2D images) and quantitation by a custom CTAn tasklist. Multiple thresholding boundaries were used to calibrate the analysis tasklist and different sets of data were generated for each. The BV/TV of select samples were recorded for each threshold range and compared, showing expected variability.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #10

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #21

Li, Yi, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Nuno Vasconcelos, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

RESOUND: Towards Action Recognition without Representation Bias

While large datasets have proven to be a key enabler for progress in computer vision, they can have biases that lead to erroneous conclusions. The notion of the representation bias of a dataset is proposed to combat this problem. It captures the fact that representations other than the ground-truth representation can achieve good performance on any given dataset. When this is the case, the dataset is said not to be well calibrated. Dataset calibration is shown to be a necessary condition for the standard state-of-the-art evaluation practice to converge to the ground-truth representation. A procedure, RESOUND, is proposed to quantify and minimize representation bias. Its application to the problem of action recognition shows that current datasets are biased towards static representations (objects, scenes and people). Two versions of RESOUND are studied. An Explicit RESOUND procedure is proposed to assemble new datasets by sampling existing datasets. An implicit RESOUND procedure is used to guide the creation of a new dataset, Diving48, of over 18,000 video clips of competitive diving actions, spanning 48 fine-grained dive classes. Experimental evaluation confirms the effectiveness of RESOUND to reduce the static biases of current datasets.

Liao, Lauren, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College Department/Major: Mathematics Mentored by Dr. Bradley Voytek, Cognitive Science, Neurosciences

Differentiating Neural Noise from Structured Dynamics in Electrophysiological Recordings

Oscillations are a prominent feature in the electrophysiological signals across species.

These oscillations are embedded within a 1/f background “noise” characterized by an exponential decrease in power with increasing frequency. By definition, oscillations are “bumps” above this background noise, however the nature of 1/f noise — and whether it is even “noise” — remains unclear.

ABSTRACTS To address this we calculated the spectral coefficient of variation (CV). The spectral CV is the standard deviation divided by the mean across windows of Fourier transform.

Because the CV is dimensionless, it enables comparison free from scale effects. In particular, we have theoretical predictions for values of spectral CV regarding random processes given that stationary noise signals have a CV of 1 over all frequencies. By quantifying this, we can examine whether brain signals reflect random or structured processes.

We observe frequency-dependent changes in spectral CV across different global brain states. We find that spectral CV at certain frequencies (~30-50 Hz), consistently fall around 1, which reflects the presence of stationary colored noise, while other frequencies show spectral CV different from unity, which represents non-stationary processes.

Oral Presentation Panel 9 Bear Room Afternoon

Oral Presentation Panel 5 Snake Path Room Afternoon

Lim, Fabian, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Emma Farley, Medicine

Rare Enhancer Grammar Conservation

Enhancers are genomic elements that act as switches to control the location and time of gene expression during development. Control of gene expression requires binding of specific transcription factors to recognition motifs within an enhancer. Therefore, grammatical constraints within an enhancer, in terms of the order and orientation of recognition motifs, is important for precise patterns of gene expression. We studied an enhancer that is highly conserved in the sequence, order and orientation of four recognition motifs across 500 million years. This enhancer is upstream of a gene important for neural development, somitogenesis and pancreas development.

Conservation of enhancer grammar across all deuterostomes, ranging from sea urchins to humans, is highly unusual and suggests that it is important for the activity of this enhancer. Our results show that some enhancers drive expression, while others do not.

This suggests that the conserved grammar is not sufficient for expression, and that other less conserved elements within the enhancer are also necessary. Future studies on this enhancer could elucidate the significance of this conserved grammar and novel aspects of enhancer grammar.

Lin, Wenyi, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biostatistics, Div Of, Family Medicine & Public Health Mentored by Dr. Armin Schwartzman, Biostatistics, Div Of, Family Medicine & Public Health

Image Quality Evaluation of T1-Weighted Liver MRI.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is routinely performed to detect and characterize focal liver lesions. However, the image quality is inconsistent and may affect the diagnostic task. An indicator of impaired quality is insufficient contrast between liver background and blood vessels, which may be a result of inadequate uptake of

ABSTRACTS hepatobiliary contrast agent. We propose an image analysis method to automatically classify liver image quality. After preprocessing, the method consists of extracting features from the liver images and combining them into a supervised classification algorithm. For features, we consider the parameters of a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and the Euler Characteristic Curve (ECC) of the image. In this study, 406 T1weighted liver MR images in the hepatobiliary phase (HBP) were evaluated for algorithm training and testing. Each case was annotated by radiologists as adequate or inadequate for detecting lesions based on their contrast uptake. Of these, 325 cases were randomly assigned for training. The concordance between the predicted and radiologists’ labels was 0.704 when using GMM and 0.728 when using ECC. This demonstrates that GMM and ECC features yield reasonable results for predicting image quality labels.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #1

Lopez, Jane Lilly Department/Major: Sociology Mentored by Professor Kwai Ng, Sociology Professor Natalia Molina, History Dr. Victoria Ojeda, Public Health

(Un)Authorized Love: US Immigration Law and the Effects of Institutional (Dis)Approval on Mixed Citizenship Families

Drawing on extended in-depth interviews with over fifty mixed-citizenship couples living within and outside the US, this project examines how the law creates social categories that exacerbate social inequality. My research reveals that the current family reunification system in the US promotes a system of socioeconomic class preferences–– regarding the class status of both the citizen and immigrant spouses––rather than family reunification between all US citizens and their non-citizen partners. Recent legal changes specifically penalize lower-class immigrants and citizens and limit their ability to access what is purportedly a universal citizenship right. I also find that bias in these laws as written is exacerbated in practice, as families’ varied approaches to (dis)engaging with the law also affect their family reunification outcomes. Families’ opportunities and outcomes shift dramatically depending on whether they can secure legal immigrant status or not. Those that do experience increased incorporation by both partners into American society and maintain stronger ties in the immigrant partners’ country of origin, too. Those that do not undergo dissimilation from the US and alienation in both the US and abroad.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #2

Lorenzo, Jac, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College Department/Major: Chemistry & Biochemistry, School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences Mentored by Professor Carlo Ballatore, School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences Professor Jeffrey Esko, Cellular & Molecular Medicine

ABSTRACTS

N-aryl-2-aminothiazole derivatives as potential leads for the treatment of Hereditary Multiple Exostoses

Hereditary Multiple Exostoses (HME) is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by the formation of multiple bony spurs or lumps, known as exostoses, next to long bones and other skeletal elements. HME results from mutations in the genes EXT1 or EXT2, which diminish the capacity of cells to make heparan sulfate (HS). A compelling strategy to prevent initiation or retard the growth of exostoses is the development of compounds that enhance HS formation. Phenotypic screening of compounds in a cellbased assay developed by the Esko laboratory resulted in the identification of different N-aryl-2-aminothiazoles that exhibit favorable "drug-like" physicochemical properties and minimal cytotoxicity while producing up to 300% increase in HS expression. These hits, which have been validated in secondary assays, comprise a promising compound class for further studies. We designed, synthesized, and evaluated a series of analogues to our most promising hits.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #S3

Oral Presentation Panel 1 Snake Path Room Morning

Loui, Gregory, UC San Diego Sixth College Department/Major: Arts & Humanities, Division Dean of Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2017: Earthlab, Future of Encanto

In Summer 2018, I conducted research at the UCSD EarthLab Community Station in Encanto. In this presentation, I will discuss my project on the impact that Earthlab has on the surrounding community. Our project focuses on the ways that Earthlab works as a complementary force to help underpriviledged youth in South-East San Diego.

Mack, Graeme, UC San Diego Department/Major: History Mentored by Professor Mark Hanna, History Professor David Pedersen, Anthropology Professor John Blanco, Literature

Sea Changes Upon the Land: Pacific Merchants and the Transformation of California, 1787-1848

From 1787 to 1848, Pacific merchants developed a maritime trading system that transformed California's geopolitical, social, and environmental character by connecting it to manufactured goods, raw resources, and communities from across the Americas, the Pacific Islands, and East Asia. Long before California's Gold Rush, I argue, Pacific merchants’ maritime activities converted California from a Spanish-mercantilist society of scattered pueblos, missions, and presidios into a cosmopolitan, transpacific, free trade community. Their efforts also drew California into the economy of the greater Pacific Ocean and forever connected its landward histories to communities across the globe.

ABSTRACTS

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #25

Oral Presentation Panel 4 Bear Room Morning

Makalinao Tiu, Maria Andrea, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences Mentored by Dr. Geoffrey Chang, School of Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences

Understanding marine and human transporters for global pollutants

One third of the population relies on seafood as a major source of protein and the pollution of marine ecosystems threatens the safety of this food source while impacting human health. Several classes of toxicants, including persistent organic pollutants (POPs), have been detected at high concentrations in seafood and the mechanism of their accumulation in humans and marine animals has not been fully characterized. In this project, we discover nanobodies that bind to these toxicants that could be useful as probes for further study and diagnostics. In order to generate such nanobody probes, we use a nanobody display system using E. coli that express a library of nanobodies on their cell surface. Upon binding a target molecule coupled to a fluorophore, we select using Fluoresence-Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) using a BioRad S3e Cell Sorter.

Genetically monoclonal nanobodies are analyzed further using a cell flow cytometer (ACEA NovoCyte) to qualitatively validate them. To improve nanobodies, we use genetic recombination to generate a new population of binders that has higher affinity for the target molecule. To increase the effectiveness of this method, we employ counter-selection strategies to increase specificity as needed.

Maldonado, Daniel, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Public Health Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: Coauthored essay, Through the Lens of the Advocate

Often we look at marginalized communities as places in need of help, more specifically in need of help from what are often powerful institutions. We look at them as charity cases, but what we often forget is that for residents within these communities that can be sources of inspiration, hope and hold promise for the future. During our time in San Ysidro we conducted over 20 interviews with residents of the community and got to see firsthand, both the joys and complications that come with being an advocate.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #10

Mandap, Joshua, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: School of Medicine Mentored by Associate Project Sciences Joseph Snider, Neurosciences Dr. Leanne Chukoskie, Institute for Neural Computation Dr. Jeanne Townsend, Neurosciences

Neurogaming for the anxious brain

Anxiety is one of the most common mental health problems facing the western world today. The most vulnerable individuals feel a disproportionate share of the impact of anxiety, and here we focus on to such groups: young college students and individuals with autism spectrum disorders (AST). While effective in many cases, treatment of anxiety by pharmacological approaches can incur unacceptable side effects and significant expense, especially in children with ASD. Alternative therapies are thus greatly sought after. Here we propose to use a neurofeedback approach to train individuals to reach a sense of “calm” associated with frontal alpha electrophysiology.

Such a behavioral approach naturally has minimal interaction with ongoing pharmacological treatment. To reach the susceptible target audience of young and ASD impacted individuals, we will use neurogaming. Individuals will play a video game that is controlled by real time brain measurements using high density EEG. The games will reward brain states associated with calm and train individuals who play it to consciously control those brain states. We hypothesize that this ability will extend beyond the game and give individuals a new tool to resist anxiety and reach a calm state.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #4

Marquine, Maria, UC San Diego Department/Major: Psychiatry Mentored by Dr. Maria Marquine, Psychiatry

Design Competition to Improve the Quality-of-Life of Seniors: Bridging the Intergenerational Gap and Promoting Successful Aging

The present study aimed to investigate the impact of an intergenerational multidisciplinary program, the “Design Competition to Improve the Quality-of-Life of Seniors”, on fostering successful aging among older adults, and promoting a positive view of aging among young adults. Open to UCSD students from all departments, the competition asked teams to design a device or platform that would improve the qualityof-life of seniors, with the support of interacting with seniors from the community. The specific aims of the project were to measure the impact of the program on (1) seniors’ well-being, and sense of generativity and purpose, and (2) students’ attitudes and feelings towards older adults. Analyses comparing pre- and post-competition survey responses showed that although seniors’ perspectives did not change significantly during the program, students’ positive attitudes towards aging and their levels of compassion seemed to increase over the duration of the program. While the various benefits of intergenerational programs have been recognized for many years, systemic research in this area is limited. The present study served as a step towards a systematic

ABSTRACTS and comprehensive evaluation of the social and mental health outcomes of this type of program.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #5

McGrath, Patrick, UC San Diego Muir College Department/Major: Biological Sciences, Engineering, Jacobs School of Mentored by Dr. Zhenjiang Xu, Pediatrics Dr. Austin Swafford, Jacobs School of Engineering Dr. Sandrine Miller-Montgomery, Jacobs School of Engineering

Benchmarking of Off-the-Shelf Regression Methods Applied to Microbiome Data

Microbiome composition is increasingly associated with human health, disease, & other features of the microbial environment (soil pH, postmortem interval, host age, etc.).

Advances in sequencing have produced a recent abundance of large-scale microbiome datasets from 16S amplicon sequencing; data that is sparse and compositional.

Regression studies show predictive potential of supervised machine learning models trained on this data. These studies commonly use Random Forest or nearest-neighbor algorithms. However, little justification is given for selection of those methods over many other off-the-shelf algorithms. This study aims to provide a such basis for future research—associating human health and disease with the microbiome—through benchmarking common regression methods across datasets from 3 separate microbiome studies.

Oral Presentation Panel 2 Red Shoe Room Morning

McInnis, Haley, UC San Diego Department/Major: Sociology Mentored by Professor Jeffrey Haydu, Sociology Dr. Daniel Cayan, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO)

Does it hold water?: How California Defined, Declared, and Responded to Droughts, 1976 - 2017

During the last five decades, California has experienced four droughts of varying severity, each leaving their economic, political, and social marks on the state. However, the way a dry period comes to be defined and officially declared as a drought varies across these four periods. Therefore, the process of determining when a drought is happening is both a scientific and a political process. This project examines how and why the standards and measurement practices of California’s water monitoring systems, as both scientific techniques and indicators used by governing bodies, changed from 1976 to 2017. It also explores how these changes in measurement, standards, and indicators matter for determining when a drought begins.

The project analyzes archives of scientific publications, newspaper accounts, and records from the California legislature and regulatory bodies to trace the actors and processes behind these changes in measurement practices and in declarations of drought using a comparative historical method. I argue that the interests that become embedded in the standards, classifications, and indicators alter the character of drought declaration.

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Oral Presentation Panel 4 Bear Room Morning

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #23

Messerly, John, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Dr. Tajana Rosing, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Hardware Optimized Pattern Computing

Numerical and categorical data can be abstracted as orthogonal, high dimensional vectors. The advantage of this representation is that data becomes more robust to memory errors, and amenable to computation over binary operators like hamming distance and boolean logic, such that learning tasks can be greatly accelerated. My CRES fellowship was spent investigating this brain-inspired computing paradigm; specifically, in the areas of facial and speech recognition. By taking advantage of random feature mapping, high dimensional space, and inexpensive classification algorithms, we were able to achieve state of the art accuracy results at a fraction of the cost.

Miranda, Alannah, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biomedical Sciences PhD Program Mentored by Dr. Michael McCarthy, Psychiatry Dr. John Kelsoe, Psychiatry Dr. Fred Gage,

Rare NTRK1 variant associated with mood disorders effects neural stem cell development

Bipolar disorder (BP) is a neuropsychiatric disorder that is characterized by a fluctuation between depressive and manic phases. Genetic data collected from a large family afflicted with mood disorders, including BP, and difficulties with sleep and memory, revealed that the affected members had a mutation in NTRK1. The variant identified is located in close proximity to a key binding site, which has been shown to play a role in neural development. This study uses neural stem cells (NSCs) derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). We hypothesized that mutant NSCs would show deficits in neural stem cell development when compared to control NSCs. qPCR showed that NTRK1 is expressed in a circadian pattern and mutant NSCs expressed lower levels of NTRK1. Cell morphology and growth rate appear to be altered in the mutant NSCs. This study demonstrates a distinct difference in the development of the mutant NSCs. Future work includes understanding through which mechanism these changes occur. Understanding how NTRK1 mutations may affect NSCs, may allow for establishing distinct sub-forms of illness that operate through different pathways, yet ultimately culminating in a final disease presentation.

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Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #9

Moon, Young Sung Department/Major: Bioengineering Mentored by Professor Susan Hopkins, Medicine Dr. Rebecca Theilmann, Radiology

Assessment of Pulmonary Structure in Healthy Untrained Control and Endurance Athletes Using MRI Measures of T2*

Endurance athletes are known to have larger lungs when compared to controls. This larger lung size may be due to an alteration in lung structure than controls or may have more tissue with a similar structure to that of controls. When using a fast gradient echo sequence, we can characterize lungs using two MRI metrics: proton density and T2*.

T2*, a MRI decay constant, changes with the concentration of lung tissue. We hypothesized that athletes have more lung tissue and thus a different lung structure when compared to controls. MRI was used to measure lung density and T2* of ten endurance athletes (6M/4F, age=24±4y, height=175±9cm) and nonathletic controls (6M/4F, age=22±2y, height=174±9cm). MRI data were acquired in duplicate at functional respiratory capacity (FRC) and total lung capacity (TLC). Matlab was then used to determine the mean T2* at each lung volume. There were no significant differences between groups for age (p=0.09), height (p=0.88), or weight (p=0.98). There was no significant difference in whole lung T2* between groups at FRC (Athletes:1.24±0.14ms, Controls:1.18±0.11ms) and TLC (Athletes:0.95±0.08ms, Controls:0.96±0.09ms). These results suggest that athletes have more of a similar structured lung compared to controls.

Oral Presentation Panel 7 Marshall College Room Afternoon

Morgan, Eric, UC San Diego Department/Major: Cognitive Science Mentored by Dr. Virginia De Sa, Cognitive Science Dr. Pamela Reinagel, Biological Sciences

Preliminary Study of Contextual Interactions in Non-Stereotypical Simple Cells

Traditional modeling and psychophysical testing of simple cells in the primary visual cortex assumes that the spatial receptive field of a simple cell has a stereotypical configuration of one light-sensitive region flanked by two dark-sensitive regions, or vice versa. While these three-"subfield" configurations are the typical result when simple cell receptive fields are examined, simple cells with only one or two subfields are also found with reasonable frequency. In this psychophysical study, we studied the interaction between cells of differing subfield configurations by looking at changes in visual brightness contrast threshold of a center stimulus when flanked by a pair of stimuli of various configurations. Our results suggest that each type of simple cell has different lateral connections to other cells based on their respective configurations, and therefore the spatial field configuration should be considered in future modeling and psychophysical studies of V1. These interactions add extra complexity to the processing of visual information, and their study could lead to better understanding of cortical processes in general.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 8 Green Table Room Afternoon

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #6

Mousavi, Mahta, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Virginia de Sa, Cognitive Science Professor Mohan Trivedi, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Novel methods to improve reliability in brain-computer interfaces

People with severe motor impairments such as ALS and brain-stem strokes eventually lose the ability to control all voluntary movements. As this includes movements required for speech and eventually includes eye movements, they lose the ability to communicate and become totally locked in unable to communicate with loved ones or express their medical needs. The vast majority are cognitively unimpaired but trapped in their own bodies. For people who are totally locked-in, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide the only communication outlet. In this project we seek to improve the reliability of communication for these people using external EEG-based BCIs. EEGbased BCIs are non-invasive and avoid open brain surgery, risk of infection and loss of signal quality over time, but they currently have low and unreliable information transfer rate. In this proposal, our goal is to provide methods to improve reliability and efficiency of the BCI. Since locked-in patients must completely rely on a BCI to communicate with the outside world, fast and reliable transfer of information to their surrounding environment is critically important to improving their quality of life.

Niwa, Maho, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Professor Maho Niwa, Biological Sciences Professor Jonathan Lin, Pathology

Dissecting the Contribution of Lipotoxic Stress-Induction of the UPR

In eukaryotic cells, functions of individual organelles must be regulated in response to various conditions. Functional homeostasis of organelles is maintained via timely alterations in the levels and activities of organelle constituents including lipids and proteins, according to changing cellular demands and environmental cues. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) functions as the gateway for the secretory pathway proteins, ensuring that newly synthesized proteins destined for secretion are properly folded and assembled. When demands of ER functions become excessive, a condition known as ER stress, homeostasis is achieved by activation of signaling pathways such as the unfolded protein response (UPR).

The mammalian UPR is activated via three separate ER transmembrane components; ATF6, IRE1, and PERK. Recently, we made a seminal finding that ATF6 serves as a dual UPR stress sensor, integrating the increased demands of both ER lipids (termed lipotoxic stress) and ER chaperones and protein folding enzymes (proteotoxic stress), through its transmembrane and luminal domains, respectively.

Furthermore, lipotoxic stress-induced ATF6 leads to preferential increase in transcription of genes involved in lipid metabolism. We will present our study on investigating molecularly dissect mechanisms of ATF6 activation in response to

ABSTRACTS increased demands of lipids or proteins, and how lipotoxic stress-induced ATF6 activates preferentially lipid gene transcription.

Oral Presentation Panel 5 Snake Path Room Afternoon

Ojeda, Alejandro, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Jyoti Mishra, Psychiatry Professor Kenneth Kreutz-Delgado, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Closed �Loop Learning to Enhance Cognition in Children with Attention Deficit Disorder

Impairments in sustained attention and heightened distractibility are commonplace in our society and especially in children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Nearly 10% of US children suffer from ADHD and there are currently no treatments for this disorder that are targeted to its specific brain circuit dysfunctions.

Here, I will present my graduate research in neural engineering towards developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that can address circuit deficits underlying the dynamics of attentiveness and distractibility. In particular, I will demonstrate innovative algorithms that I have developed for implementing real-time noise adaptive brain imaging and network state estimation. We believe that this technology will allow us to design a successful closed-loop neurotechnology treatment for individuals with ADHD.

Oral Presentation Panel 5 Snake Path Room Afternoon

Paden, Jon, UC San Diego Department/Major: California Inst for Telecomm & Info Tech (Cal-(IT)2)), San Diego Supercomputer Center, Visual Arts Mentored by Professor Sheldon Brown, Visual Arts Dr. Darren Lipomi, Nanoengineering Dr. Jurgen Schulze, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Augmented Reality and Somatic Sensing Team : Interdisciplinary research in frontiers of of physical interfaces within virtual mixed environments.

The Augmented Reality Techniques in Somatic Sensory Team (ARtSSt) is a research group built to investigate Augmented Reality as a platform for cross-disciplinary research. Here we merge developments in Virtual Reality, Neuroscience, Embedded systems, Speculative Design, and Nanomaterials to design new models of Augmented and Mixed Reality Experiences. We specifically focus on experience and look toward mixed immersion and meaning through somatic interaction within AR environments.

Effectively pushing the boundaries of sight, sound, and touch. Developing how these senses will and are changing our perception of relationships to digital physical environments.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #28

Pan, Jack, UC San Diego Department/Major: Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Mentored by Dr. Maria Vernet, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Dr. Andrew Barton, Biological Sciences

Small Phytoplankton Dominate Community Size Structure in an Antarctic Fjord

As the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) region responds to a warmer climate, the impacts of glacial meltwater on the Southern Ocean are expected to intensify. Because fjords provide an extreme in the meltwater’s spatial gradient from the glacio-marine boundary to the WAP continental shelf, Andvord Bay is an ideal study site to understand the impacts of environmental conditions, particularly glacial meltwater, on phytoplankton community composition and their spatial distribution. While meltwater processes are weaker in Antarctic fjords in comparison to the Arctic, they can still influence phytoplankton due to the direct entrainment into water column; meltwater is rich in macro-nutrients and iron, induces stratification, and impacts underwater light field, but the net effect of these factors is elusive. Fluorometric chlorophyll measurement indicates that the concentration range is ~1 order of magnitude higher in Dec. 2015, while significant deep chlorophyll and phaeo-pigment accumulations were found in Apr. 2016. Concurrent high-performance liquid chromatography samples were also collected; and in the context of environmental conditions, further analyses of these samples can illustrate the spatial distribution of phytoplankton community composition and their seasonal variability. The hypothesis being tested is the impact of meltwater presence can shift phytoplankton community to one that is dominated by cryptophytes due to reduction in salinity and mixed layer depth.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #16

Paolillo, Emily, UC San Diego Department/Major: Psychiatry Mentored by Dr. David Moore, Psychiatry Dr. Patrick Mercier, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Dr. Job Godino, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of

Heavy Drinking and Antiretroviral Adherence Don’t Mix: Assessing Real-Time Relationships Using Ecological Momentary Assessment and Wearable Alcohol Biosensors

Optimal adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) is necessary for persons living with HIV (PLWH) to remain healthy, virally undetectable, and prevent HIV transmission.

Heavy alcohol use increases risk for ART nonadherence; however, the mechanisms by which this occurs are unclear because of past studies’ reliance on retrospective selfreports. The current study proposes to enhance and potentially transform our understanding of mechanisms driving the alcohol-nonadherence relationship (e.g., acute alcohol-induced cognitive/physical impairment) by collecting real-time, real-world data via smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and a novel wearable alcohol sensor (BACtrack Skyn). This project importantly expands upon prior research examining the relationship between heavy alcohol use and ART adherence by

ABSTRACTS introducing innovative mobile and wearable technology. Thirty heavy drinking participants living with HIV will wear the alcohol sensor and complete daily EMA surveys about ART adherence and cognitive and physical function for two weeks.

Results from this project are necessary to guide the development of real-time, individualized mobile interventions to improve ART adherence among PLWH, which has undoubted potential to enrich and promote both individual and public health.

Oral Presentation Panel 8 Green Table Room Afternoon

Pasipanodya, Elizabeth, UC San Diego Department/Major: Psychiatry Mentored by Dr. David Moore, Psychiatry Dr. Kimberly Brouwer, Public Health Dr. Julian McAuley, Engineering, Jacobs School of

Exploring Concerns About Research Using Mobile Technology to Support Antiretroviral Therapy Adherence: Using Focus Groups to Inform Interventions among Minorities Living with HIV in the Context of Methamphetamine Use

Background: Methamphetamine (meth) use poses a barrier to antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence. Although meth is used across all socio-demographics, minority persons living with HIV (PLWH) shoulder much of the health burden. As smartphones are ubiquitous, they are a promising vehicle for intervention delivery in this population.

Objective: To examine minority PLWH’s appraisals of risk/benefit in research using smartphones to support ART adherence and cessation from substance use. Methods: Three focus groups among African-American and Hispanic PLWH (total N=13) who use meth were conducted. Transcribed audio-recordings were qualitatively analyzed.

Results: Participants expressed apprehensions about collecting highly personal data, citing concerns of the risk of disclosure of their HIV status and meth use, potential legal consequences, invasiveness of assessments, and security breaches. They also suggested strategies to mitigate risks, including “coding” questions and adequate privacy and data safeguards. Conclusions: PLWH harbor significant concerns with the use of smartphone applications in adherence research in the context of meth use. However, they are likely to be willing research participants if appropriate protections to ameliorate risk are in place. This project contributes to participatory design in research and furthers respectful participant engagement among minority PLWH.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 6 Red Shoe Room Afternoon

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #S2

Porcu, Alessandra, UC San Diego Department/Major: Psychiatry Mentored by Professor Davide Dulcis, Psychiatry Professor Michael Gorman, Psychology

Mechanism of photoperiod-induced neurotransmitter plasticity affecting behavior

Light and circadian clocks interact to produce rhythmic behaviors essential for survival.

The principal circadian pacemaker in the mammalian brain is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which is synchronized to the day-night cycle by direct retinal input.

Altering day length (photoperiod) induces neurotransmitter (NT) plasticity in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN), leading to depression-like behavior in adult rodents. We investigated whether photoperiod also changes NT expression in SCN neurons, which control the activity of PVN neuronal circuits in adult mice.

Significant differences in the number of SCN neurons expressing either vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP) or neuromedin-S (NMS) were found in response to shortor long-day photoperiod. Consistent with NT plasticity, co-expression ratios of these neuropeptides were also affected. Moreover, alterd photoperiod exposure induced changes in the number of NMS-expressing SCN-to-PVN projection neurons which directly activate PVN dopaminergic neurons. By chemogenetic (DREADDs) activation of NMS neurons in the SCN during the dark phase we were able to shift the locomotor activity onset and increase the number of dopaminergic neurons in the PVN. Our findings provide a potential link to the mechanism regulating seasonal NT plasticity affecting mood and depression-like behaviors.

Raj, Subathra, UC San Diego Marshall College Department/Major: Cognitive Science Mentored by Dr. Ying Wu, San Diego Supercomputer Center

Resting State and Task-related Brain Dynamics Supporting Creativity

This study investigates how creative thinking is modulated by different modes of task engagement. A guided version and an open-ended version of a computer game tasking the player with finding a way to enter a locked house were created. Twenty-nine healthy adults participated in two separate sessions, each featuring either the guided or discovery-based scenario. Immediately before and after each scenario, resting state EEG was recorded. Additionally, the Alternative Uses Task was administered, which is a psychometric test of creative thinking where participants enumerate novel uses for a conventional item.

After the guided scenario, participants tended to generate slightly more alternative uses. These behavioral changes were accompanied by a slight decrease in post-task resting state beta (15 – 35 Hz) and gamma (50+ Hz) power. On the other hand, resting state beta, gamma, and alpha (8 – 12 Hz) band power all tended to increase after the discovery-based task. This pattern of outcomes reveals that open-ended problem solving tends to modulate resting state EEG to a greater degree. Further, the observed resting state changes may be related to neurocognitive mechanisms that sustain creative thought in the wake of resource-intensive task engagement.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 7 Marshall College Room Afternoon

Oral Presentation Panel 4 Bear Room Morning

Ramirez, Jorge, UC San Diego Department/Major: History Mentored by Dr. Natalia Molina, History Dr. Nancy Postero, Anthropology

Violence, Migration, and Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination in Southern Mexico’s Dirty War Period, 1970s-1980s

Since the 1980s the agricultural regions of the Pacific Coast in Baja California, Mexico and California, U.S have shifted towards indigenous southern Mexicans as laborers. The large presence of these communities has generated anthropological and sociological studies that consider the unique aspects of indigenous Mexican migrants, particularly of the Mixtec and Zapotec people from Oaxaca, Mexico. In conversation with this literature and through a long-range historical study of migrant departure, this presentation emphasizes the indigenous Triqui people from Oaxaca, Mexico, whose experience with violence since the 1930s enables a window into the relationship between western Oaxaca and the agricultural regions of the U.S.-Mexico Pacific Coast.

To investigate this, the talk analyzes the meaning of indigeneity through the Triqui people’s efforts for self-determination within the context of Mexico’s Dirty War period that made visible the colonial relations for indigenous people. Ultimately, it seeks to grasp at the ways in which the indigenous Triqui people confronted, navigated, and survived amidst a rapidly changing and violent world in southern Mexico and in their migration process along the U.S.-Mexico Pacific Coast.

Reynders, Stephen, UC San Diego Department/Major: Science Studies Program, Sociology Mentored by Professor Mary Blair-Loy, Sociology Professor Pamela Cosman, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Performing Scientific Promise: On Campus Interviews of Faculty Candidate Finalists [Abstract redacted owing to proprietary information.]

Oral Presentation Panel 7 Marshall College Room Afternoon

Ribeiro, Raphael, UC San Diego Department/Major: Chemistry & Biochemistry Mentored by Professor Joel Yuen-Zhou, Chemistry & Biochemistry Professor Boubacar Kante, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Ultrafast remote control of chemistry in optical cavities

Control of chemical reactivity often involves changing environmental conditions.

Conversely, strong coupling between light and matter offers a way to modulate chemical dynamics without changing the starting material. In this work, we propose a

ABSTRACTS hybrid photonic-molecular device that supports ultrafast tuning of reaction yields. We show how the photoexcitation of a remote catalyst in an optical microcavity can nonlocally influence the efficiency of a photochemical process happening in another microcavity. We demonstrate this with simulations for the externally-driven cis-trans isomerization of HONO. By increasing the excited-state population of remote catalyst molecules, we show the isomerization efficiency can be enhanced by an order of magnitude.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #27

Oral Presentation Panel 6 Red Shoe Room Afternoon

Rush, Brian, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Curt Schurgers, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

E4E Aerial LiDAR

With much of the Maya ruins hidden beneath dense jungle, it can be difficult to discover new artifacts and historic sites. The emergence of LiDAR scanning enabled archaeologists to create 3D maps of terrain. The nature of this type of scanning then allows them to look for signs of ruins before going into the field. However, these scans can run at a high cost due to the need to fly a manned aircraft with an expensive LiDAR unit. As LiDAR sensors decrease in cost and weight, and reliable drones become more widely available, it is now feasible to build drone-based LiDAR systems. The goal of this project is to build a payload, and software pipeline to fly an unmanned mission over a target area to find these ruins. The drone will fly a predetermined path, take LiDAR scans of the area, combine them with position and heading data from an onboard computer, and construct a 3D point cloud of the surveyed area. Once we have this point cloud, we will be able to compare the quality of data produced by manned aircraft to a low-flying drone.

Sadegh, Sanaz, UC San Diego Department/Major: Neurosciences Mentored by Dr. Anna Devor, Neurosciences Professor Yeshaiahu Fainman, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Non�degenerate 2 �photon microscopy for deep brain imaging

The ability to descend to the single-cell level in intact brain and observe neuronal activity at high resolution, across the cortical depth and beyond, has long been a dream of scientists interested in understanding neuronal circuit activity. Yet, penetrating deep into the brain remains a challenge due to the scattering and absorption of light by cerebral tissue. The invention of two-photon microscopy pushed the frontiers of life imaging allowing high-resolution measurements through hundreds of microns of biological tissues. Conventionally, two-photon excitation is carried out in the, so-called, degenerate regime where the two photons originate from the same laser source and have the same energy. The photon energies, however, do not have to be the same, if

ABSTRACTS their sum equals to the energy needed for transition to the excited state. This so called “non-degenerate” two-photon excitation has the flexibility of independent choice of the wavelength and power for each beam. Here we show that this degree of freedom translates to increase in brightness of fluorescent reporters of neuronal activity, and reduction in background fluorescence and absorption and scattering at operating spectra, opening the possibility of deep brain imaging.

Oral Presentation Panel 1 Snake Path Room Morning

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #11

Saidi, Samir, UC San Diego Department/Major: Bioengineering Mentored by Dr. Matthew Shtrahman, Neurosciences Dr. Joseph Ford, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Building Novel Optical Tools for Neuronal Circuits

Hebb’s postulate states that correlated firing between two synaptically coupled neurons strengthens the synapse, forming the basis of learning, but a gap in knowledge remains regarding how changes at the synaptic level result in circuit-level learning. We are studying a network motif in the hippocampus where direct and indirect streams of information converge to facilitate comparison. The entorhinal cortex (EC) receives sensory information and sends it to CA3 and CA1 both directly and indirectly by routing it through the dentate gyrus (DG). Thus, CA3 and CA1 form convergence points for direct and indirect pathways and a hypothesized substrate for learning. To measure real-time network changes, we are building a novel two-photon microscope capable of recording calcium activity of multiple identified cell types within the DG and CA1/CA3 simultaneously in awake animals. We employ remote focusing and adaptive optics to image two optical sections in the mouse brain separated in depth by over 0.5mm for the first time. By manipulating inputs from the EC via electrical stimulation and during behavior, and measuring simultaneous network activity in multiple hippocampal subregions, we ask how information in converging pathways modifies network activity during learning.

Salmeron Salvador, Cristina, UC San Diego Department/Major: Pharmacology, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Mentored by Dr. Martin Tresguerres, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Professor Susan Taylor, Pharmacology

Characterization of a Golgi-specific signaling microdomain: implications for human health and marine life

The Golgi apparatus is an intracellular organelle responsible for protein processing and secretion. Changes in carbon dioxide, pH and bicarbonate levels (“acid/base stress”) may impair Golgi function leading to disease. Preliminary results in fish cells indicate the presence of the acid/base-sensing enzyme soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) in the Golgi.

Similarly, Protein Kinase A (PKA) is present in various compartments of mammalian cells, including Golgi. Because sAC produces the second messenger cAMP, which is the

ABSTRACTS physiological activator of PKAs, we propose that sAC and PKA constitute a novel signal transduction mechanism by which Golgi function adjusts to metabolic and environmental acid/base stress. However, there are multiple sAC and PKA variants with differential biochemical, regulatory and localization properties. Thus, the aim of this project is to characterize the sAC and PKA variants present in Golgi. For this purpose, we are performing immunocytochemistry using specific sAC and PKA antibodies on knockout mouse samples and sAC-overexpressing HEK cells. We will next study the effects of pharmacological and genetic down-regulation of sAC and PKA activity on Golgi function and structure.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #22

Sanchez-Roige, Sandra, UC San Diego Department/Major: Psychiatry Mentored by Professor Abraham A Palmer, Psychiatry

Intersection of Impulsive Personality Traits and Drug Experimentation: A Genome-Wide Association Approach

Impulsive personality traits are complex heritable traits associated with numerous neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly substance use disorders. In collaboration with the personal genetics company 23andMe, Inc., we performed several genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on measures of delay discounting and impulsive personality traits (Monetary Choice Questionnaire; Barratt Impulsiveness Scales, BIS; and Impulsive Behavior Scales, UPPSP) and drug experimentation (number of different classes of drugs an individual has used) among ~23,000 research participants of European ancestry. The impulsivity and drug experimentation traits showed SNPheritabilities that ranged from 5 to 11%. Genetic variants of the gene GPM6B were associated with delay discounting (P = 2.40 × 10−8, rs6528024); genetic variants of the gene CADM2 were significantly associated with the UPPSP sensation seeking subscale (P = 8.3 × 10−9, rs139528938) and showed a suggestive association with drug experimentation (P = 3.0 × 10−7, rs2163971; r2 = 0.68 with rs139528938). The lead SNPs rs139528938 and rs2163971 associated with sensation seeking and drug experimentation, respectively, are highly correlated (r2 = 0.69, r2 = 0.57) with an intronic SNP of CADM2 (rs57401290) that showed a genome-wide significant association with self-reported risk-taking propensity (rs57401290: p = 5.3 × 10−9), and nominal associations with number of sexual partners (rs57401290: p = 6.0 × 10−7) and number of children (rs57401290: p = 6.2 × 10−7) in the UKBiobank cohort. Multiple subscales from both BIS and UPPSP showed strong genetic correlations (>0.5) with SUD traits from our and independent cohorts, including drug experimentation, smoking initiation, and lifetime cannabis use. Delay discounting and several BIS and UPPSP subscales were genetically correlated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), supporting their use as endophenotypes for ADHD. Several impulsivity traits from BIS and UPPSP were moderately correlated but not collinear.

Our findings demonstrate a role for common genetic contributions to individual differences in impulsivity. Furthermore, this study is the first to provide a genetic dissection of the relationship between types of impulsivity and various psychiatric disorders.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #16

Schreiber, Dimitri, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Michael Yip, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Professor Alexander Norbash, Radiology

An opensourced, 7 degree of freedom, MRI compatible robot to enable dexterous in-bore manipulation.

Despite Magnetic Resonance Imaging's (MRI) many safety and information advantages over Computed Tomography (CT) scans, their increased cost and procedure time precludes them from commonplace use in interventional radiology. We are developing an open-source 7 Degree of Freedom (DoF) MRI-guided biopsy targeted at core needle biopsy of the lungs with the hydraulic-hydraulic rolling diaphragm transmission is combined with a novel Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) clutch-brake to enable an extended working range for the long travel prismatic axis. Our robot has a working area of 1000x250x250mm while having an in bore cross-section 16cm^2 and with a full system prototype cost of approximately $5,000. It can be replicated using off the shelf components, and simple machine tools, 3D printing, and laser cutting. Furthermore, all components of the robot and transmission exhibit excellent force transparency and exhibit minimal backlash. The large working volume, fast travel rates, and simple setup procedure increase the feasibility of MRI guided needle lung biopsy.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #28

Sengsourinho, Chantal, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Natural Reserve System Mentored by Dr. Heather Henter, Natural Reserve System

Conservation Solutions Docent Program 1

The spread of the Argentine ant leads to the displacement of native ants from their habitat. This loss of ant diversity may have effects on other species.

To examine such effects, the spread and impact of invasive ants in the Dawson Los Monos Canyon Reserve in Vista, CA, will be mapped. This project will be done in collaboration with AP Environmental Science students from Rancho Buena Vista High School. Students will learn to set pitfall traps, identify ants, summarize collected data, and map the spread and impact of invasive ants in the reserve.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 4 Bear Room Morning

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #12

Sharp, Cristian, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Physics Mentored by Dr. Matthew Shtrahman, Neurology Clinic Programs, Neurosciences

Clinical 2-Photon Microscope

Traditionally, electrode-based methods have been the principal technique for monitoring brain activity in both the experimental and clinical setting. However, electrophysiological techniques have clear limits, including electrode density and tissue invasiveness.

More recently, the development of optical approaches for measuring neuronal activity offers many promising features. Specifically, two-photon microscopy uses pulsed infrared light, which exhibits limited scattering in biological tissue, to record optical signals in thousands of individual cells. In conjunction with fluorophores that report neuronal activity, this approach can track activity in large neuronal networks with single cell resolution in awake behaving animals.

There is tremendous potential for two-photon microscopy to impact the diagnosis and treatment of human brain disease. In particular, patients with operable brain disease such as medically refractory epilepsy or intracranial tumors would benefit greatly from techniques offering precise resection of affected tissue. In this project, we aim to develop the key technologies for establishing two-photon microscopy as a viable clinical tool for studying human brain function.

Spiegelman, Lindsey, UC San Diego Department/Major: Chemistry & Biochemistry Mentored by Dr. Partho Ghosh, Chemistry & Biochemistry Dr. Victor Nizet, Pharmacy, School Of

From structure to function of the Enterococcus faecalis virulence factor Esp

Enterococcus faecalis is a major cause of life-threatening nosocomial infections. The multidrug-resistant and epidemic-associated MMH594 strain of E. faecalis carries a pathogenicity island (PAI). Encoded on this PAI is Esp, a large surface-associated protein that is markedly prevalent in clinical as compared to commensal strains. To gain insight into the function of Esp, we determined the 1.4 Ă… resolution structure of its unique N-terminal region, which shares no sequence homology with proteins of known structure and is impervious to structure prediction algorithms. The structure of the Esp N-terminal region revealed that it is composed of two nearly identical domains, each composed of an immunoglobulin-related fold that typically occurs among bacterial adhesins. In functional experiments, we found that that the Esp N-terminal region provides significant stabilization to E. faecalis biofilms. Intriguingly, the biofilm stabilizing activity of the N-terminal region was autoinhibited by a downstream portion of Esp, suggesting that the biofilm-stabilization function of Esp is under regulatory control.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #15

Stec, Dominik, Department/Major: Bioengineering Mentored by Dr. Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk, Ophthalmology Dr. Hannah Carter, Medicine

Insights into the mechanism of glaucoma via RNA-seq analysis of mice retinas under the model of intra-ocular pressure

The accelerated death of retinal-ganglion cells are what characterize glaucoma, a neurodegenerative disease leading to blindness. Before cell death, retinal-ganglion cells are marked by senescence according to an increase of p16INK4a expression and we hypothesize that early screening and removal of these senescent cells may contribute to slowing the process of mass RGC death. By doing so, blindness by glaucoma may be avoided and the further blooming of senescent pre-death cells can be stopped. Our RNA-seq analysis of gene expression in retinal-ganglion cells under intra-ocular pressure as a model for glaucoma hopes to reveal the changes and regulation of molecular pathways leading to senescence in cells. From this analysis we found that genes in several key biological pathways and groupings were significantly influenced, including genes related to the extracellular matrix, the immune system, and the apoptotic process. These findings reinforce further investigation into the prevention of glaucoma.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #31

Streeter, Carrie, UC San Diego Department/Major: History Mentored by Dr. Rebecca Jo Plant, History Dr. Erik Groessl, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of

Relaxation to the Rescue: Mind-Body Medicine and World War II

By many measures, World War II challenged the psychological stability of numerous civilians and soldiers. Our project contributes new findings about the short-and longterm consequences of efforts to alleviate these strains. We focus especially on understudied campaigns to bolster emotional health with a specific neuromuscular technique known as progressive relaxation. Drawing on archival data from physical education leaders, soldiers, military officers, housewives, and college students, we show how assumptions about race and gender informed the uneven dissemination of this technique among different populations. Our comparative analysis explains why progressive relaxation was widely taught to white female civilians, even as it was largely excluded from black communities, hotly debated for use among the nation’s first enlisted female soldiers, and omitted from nearly all health programs for men. We also examine efforts to make relaxation more compatible with white masculinity, and provide groundbreaking analysis of post-war marketing campaigns that pitted feminized mind-body techniques against pharmaceutical innovations. By uncovering inconsistencies in how U.S. institutions addressed the emotional needs of those impacted by the war, our study reveals influential sites for the cultural production of health disparities.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #13

Oral Presentation Panel 3 Marshall College Room Morning

Svensson, Kristoffer, UC San Diego Department/Major: Orthopaedic Surgery Mentored by Dr. Simon Schenk, Orthopaedic Surgery

Loss of pyruvate dehydrogenase E1 alpha 1 (PDHA1) in skeletal muscle impairs high-intensity exercise performance

Glucose oxidation is an important energy source for exercising muscle, especially at higher intensities. While the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC) is the ratelimiting enzyme for conversion of pyruvate to acetyl-CoA in the mitochondria, its contribution to running capacity at different exercise intensities, or to the adaptive response of skeletal muscle to exercise training, has not been fully elucidated. Thus, we generated mice (PDHmKO) with inducible, skeletal muscle-specific knockout of pyruvate dehydrogenase E1 alpha 1 (PDHA1), a structurally essential PDC subunit.

Neither body weight, whole-body energy metabolism or glucose tolerance were different between PDHmKO mice or littermate controls (WT). While exercise performance during low-intensity endurance- and voluntary wheel running exercise was comparable between genotypes, exercise performance during high-intensity sprint exercise was impaired in PDHmKO mice. Taken together, skeletal muscle PDHA1 is not a critical regulator of systemic glucose tolerance or energy expenditure, but supports exercise performance at higher intensities.

Swanson, Lee, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biomedical Sciences PhD Program Mentored by Dr. Pradipta Ghosh, Medicine Dr. Soumita Das, Pathology

A Boolean Network of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Reveals a Novel BarrierProtective Therapeutic Target

Our gut barrier separates trillions of luminal microbes from our immune system.

Although a leaky gut barrier has been implicated in the initiation and progression of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), barrier-protective therapies are yet to emerge. We carried out asymmetric analysis of transcriptomic datasets using Boolean logic and built a network of invariant relationships between genes and chart disease path(s) from healthy to disease. These paths revealed disruption of epithelial tight junctions (TJs) as an initiating event and predicted PRKAB1 (β1 subunit of AMP-kinase) as one of the major targets with a known mechanism of action, favorable expression pharmacology, and targetable by potent agonists.

Using organoid-derived monolayers from colon we show that pharmacologic activation of PRKAB1 protects TJs against stress-induced collapse when exposed to IBDassociated invasive microbes and ameliorates DSS-induced colitis in mice. We found that PRKAB1 is suppressed in patients with IBD. Additionally, TJs were disrupted in diseased organoid-derived monolayers, indicating an intrinsic defect in the IBDepithelium; activation of PRKAB1 could repair defective TJs in organoid-monolayers generated from IBD-afflicted patients. These findings provide proof-of-concept for a

ABSTRACTS novel network-based drug discovery approach in IBD that were overlooked using traditional approaches.

Oral Presentation Panel 4 Bear Room Morning

Syau, Della, UC San Diego Muir College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Randolph Hampton, Biological Sciences Dr. Sonya Neal, Biological Sciences

Using Substrate-Induced Toxicity to Characterize dfm1 Δ null Growth Stress

ER associated degradation (ERAD) is a quality control pathway that destroys misfolded proteins in the ER lumen or membrane. The HRD (HMG CoA Reductase degradation) pathway is a branch of ERAD. In baker’s yeast, proteins (substrates) degraded by the HRD pathway undergo the steps of ubiquitination, retrotranslocation, and degradation.

Recently, the rhomboid Derlin, Dfm1, was identified as a key participant in membrane protein retrotranslocation. We observed that cultured dfm1Δ null cells with overexpressed membrane substrates grew slower than wild-type strains. We propose that the slow growth is caused by accumulating membrane substrate-induced stress. To test this idea, we developed a substrate-induced toxicity assay by generating dfm1Δ knockout strains with strongly expressed ER membrane substrates controlled by the galactose-inducible (GAL1) promoter. We performed this assay with other ERAD stabilizing mutants, as well as with variations in Dfm1’s conserved domains.

We have demonstrated that dfm1Δ null undergoes a substrate-induced growth stress.

This stress is specific to dfm1Δ null, and is relieved by Dfm1’s conserved transmembrane segments. Understanding how membrane substrates cause this stress when Dfm1 is absent will provide unprecedented insight on the role of Dfm1 in membrane-related stress.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #3

Tai, Jesse, UC San Diego Marshall College Department/Major: Veterans' Affairs Mentored by Professor Mahadevan Rajasekaran, Veterans' Affairs

Identification of Fibrosis Markers in Human Urethral Scar Tissue

Urethral stricture disease is the constriction of urethral lumen caused by fibrosis or scarring of the urethral epithelium and the surrounding corpus spongiosum. Strictures in males can result from trauma and inflammation. It is estimated that the incidence of urethral stricture disease is about 200-1,200 cases per 100,000 people. Urethral stricture disease produces voiding and storage-related urinary symptoms, which can ultimately impair renal function. The pathophysiology of urethral stricture disease is known, but the exact cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie fibrogenesis remains unclear.

The objective of this project is to identify the fibrotic markers (TGF-β, Collagen-1, SMAD 1,2,3) and to specifically evaluate the role of novel fibrogenic pathways that involve the Girdin signaling cascade as well as related Integrin signaling pathways that lead to increased stricture severity. We used Western blot and qPCR to determine protein and gene expression levels. Our results showed increased levels of these

ABSTRACTS markers in scar tissues. Clear understandings of these molecular mechanisms will allow us to develop effective therapies to prevent stricture disease.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #29

Oral Presentation Panel 9 Bear Room Afternoon

Tamura, Ashley, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Chemistry & Biochemistry Mentored by Dr. Alina Schimpf, Chemistry & Biochemistry

The Colloidal Synthesis of Nickel Selenide Nanocrystals

Transition metal dichalcogenides, a class of layered materials, have gained much attention for their potential as next-generation electronic materials. Attributed to their two-dimensionality, the properties of these materials are anisotropic and deviate from their bulk counterparts. A colloidal synthetic approach was utilized due to the control it gives over the electronic, optical, and chemical properties. This project explores a wide range of synthetic parameters in order to obtain size-, shape- and phase-tunable nickel selenide nanocrystals, which can then be used as sacrificial templates for the synthesis of hollow and core/shell tungsten selenide nanocrystals. Recently we investigated the use of various selenium precursors and solvents as well as effects of various reaction times and temperatures, some of which produced monodisperse, non-sintered nanoparticles.

This has helped optimize the overall synthesis and brings us closer to our goal.

Tian, Katherine, UC San Diego Muir College Department/Major: Biological Sciences, Obstetrics/Gynecology Mentored by Dr. Kellie Breen Church, Obstetrics/Gynecology Dr. Richard McCosh, Obstetrics/Gynecology

Glucocorticoid Action in Immortalized Kisspeptin Cells

Stress can inhibit fertility by suppressing pulsatile luteinizing hormone (LH) secretion and impairing downstream gonadal function. Pulses of LH originate from a pulse generator within the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus, called kisspeptin neurons. These kisspeptin neurons also contain neurokinin B (encoded by Tac2) and dynorphin (encoded by pDyn) and are called KNDy neurons. The KNDy hypothesis posits that each pulse of kisspeptin secretion causes a pulse of LH secretion, and that neurokinin B stimulates a pulse of kisspeptin secretion while dynorphin terminates it. Our lab has demonstrated that the stress hormone, corticosterone, inhibits LH pulses in mice. I used an immortalized kisspeptin cell line, KTaR cells, to test the hypothesis that glucocorticoids act in kisspeptin neurons to inhibit pulses. I demonstrated that KTaR cells express glucocorticoid receptors with RT-PCR and that these cells respond to glucocorticoids by luciferase assays using a glucocorticoid-sensitive MMTV promoter.

Treatment with dexamethasone did not change mRNA abundance of Kiss1 or pDyn, but decreased mRNA abundance of stimulatory Tac2. This raises the possibility that glucocorticoids may change the activity of the pulse generator by altering stimulatory factors involved in pulse generation.

ABSTRACTS

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #1

Oral Presentation Panel 3 Marshall College Room Morning

Tierra, Beatrice, UC San Diego Sixth College Department/Major: Bioengineering Mentored by Dr. Robert Sah, Bioengineering

Micro-CT based Quantification of Bone Registration in a Mouse Tibia Defect Model

Micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) is a popular tool for imaging and analyzing small-scale bone models. The reconstruction and threshold parameters used in the quantitative analysis will affect the numerical results and there have been studies that compared different micro-CT imaging systems and threshold algorithms, but the upper and lower limits of the threshold are also significant influencers of the analysis. The aim of this study was to determine the variability in quantitation of bone regeneration as a result of varied thresholding ranges during micro-CT analysis.

Excised mouse tibias with partially healed mid-diaphysis bone defects were imaged at 9um resolution using a micro-CT scanner. Calcification was measured in a cylindrical volume of interest by visual appraisal (serial 2D images) and quantitation by a custom CTAn tasklist. Multiple thresholding boundaries were used to calibrate the analysis tasklist and different sets of data were generated for each. The BV/TV of select samples were recorded for each threshold range and compared, showing expected variability.

Tilvawala, Gopesh, UC San Diego Department/Major: Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Mentored by Dr. Alexander Khalessi, Neurosurgery Professor James Friend, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Professor Alexander Norbash, Radiology

Neurotendo: Nintendo for Neurointerventionists, technology for remote neurovascular navigation.

Employing engineering techniques for conducting biomedical research at multiple scales, this project provides microcatheters with fully hand-steerable soft-robotic tips useful for treatment of cerebral aneurysms not seen in commercial or research effort to date, producing genuine interventionist-controlled motion unlike the passive soft, floppy microcatheters on the market, and, by necessity, at scales an order of magnitude smaller than hand-steered catheters used in cardiac applications. This solution will overcome the failure rate of current techniques in endovascular neurointerventions to treat such aneurysms and substantially expands the number of patients that may be effectively and promptly treated.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #8

Oral Presentation Panel 5 Snake Path Room Afternoon

Trappe, Nicole, UC San Diego Muir College Department/Major: Cognitive Science, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Mentored by Professor Tajana Rosing, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Sensing Cognitive Decline in Elder Homes

Cognitive decline has become one of the most mentioned topics in the realm of aging.

As we continue to live longer and have a desire to remain in our own homes, it has become paramount to track and monitor the onset of cognitive issues such as Dementia and Alzheimer's. Our project utilizes both physiological and environmental sensors to track the daily habits, activities, interactions, and health of our participants without infringing on their privacy and routine. Under a central data aggregator, all these sensors are integrated so that the data can be collected, stored, and used to determine and address the progression of cognitive decline.

Trott, Sean, UC San Diego Department/Major: Cognitive Science Mentored by Dr. Benjamin Bergen, Cognitive Science Dr. James Hollan, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Why are some people better at inferring what others mean?

People often speak ambiguously, as in the case of indirect requests. Certain indirect requests are conventional and thus straightforward to interpret, such as “Can you turn on the heater?”, but others require substantial additional inference, such as “It’s cold in here”. How do comprehenders make inferences about a speaker’s intentions? And what makes a comprehender more or less successful? Here, we explore the hypothesis that comprehenders do so in part by mentalizing—encoding what the speaker knows or believes about the world—and that differences in mentalizing ability predict how well comprehenders draw these inferences. In Experiment 1, we find that comprehenders’ pragmatic interpretations are significantly influenced by a speaker’s inferable knowledge states. In Experiment 2, we find that variability in this effect is explained by individual differences in comprehenders’ mentalizing ability. Finally, in Experiment 3, we find that both effects are robust across different dependent measures of inference.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 4 Bear Room Morning

Truong, Emily, Department/Major: Education Studies, Mathematics Mentored by Professor Fonna Forman, Political Science Professor Teddy Cruz, Visual Arts

UCSD Blum Summer Field Internship 2018: EarthLab, A Space for Scientific Literacy in an Underserved Neighborhood

In Summer 2018, I conducted research at the UCSD EarthLab Community Station in Encanto. In this presentation, I will discuss my project which centered around EarthLab as a valuable space for the promotion of science literacy in an underserved neighborhood. For the project, I co-authored a journal article based on information from my own experience working there as a teacher's assistant, interviews with the EarthLab teachers and students and online research. The journal article discusses the structure of EarthLab academies, the significance of having an outdoor learning space and the main takeaways for other locations trying to implement a similar program.

Oral Presentation Panel 9 Bear Room Afternoon

Tsai, Chu-Hsien, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Chemistry & Biochemistry Mentored by Professor Neal Devaraj, Chemistry & Biochemistry Dr. Henrike Niederholtmeyer, Chemistry & Biochemistry Ahanjit Bhattacharya, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Targeting proteins into glycolipid droplets for higher reaction efficiency [Abstract redacted owing to proprietary information.]

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #7

Valdez, Jesus, UC San Diego Muir College Department/Major: Cognitive Science Mentored by Dr. I-Wei Shu, Psychiatry

Using EEG neurofeedback to decrease medial frontal theta activity in patients with PTSD

The salience network (SN) shares brain areas and works closely with memory systems to monitor and recall threats to the organism. Such activity can be assessed using electroencephlography (EEG); for example, recall of fearful memories is associated with greater medial frontal theta EEG activity.

Recall of trauma-related memories also involves SN and memory systems, and excessive trauma-related SN activity contributes to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). For example, PTSD+ subjects often exhibit greater medial frontal theta activity, the above-discussed marker of greater SN activity.

We hypothesize that decreasing medial frontal theta activity may be a effective treatment for PTSD. To validate this, we used EEG neurofeedback to train PTSD

ABSTRACTS patients to inhibit frontal theta activity in PTSD patients. More specifically, by using visual representations of their theta activity as cues, EEG neurofeedback allows the patient to, in real time, decrease their theta activity.

In this preliminary analysis, PTSD patients learning to inhibit medial frontal theta power exhibited > 35% decrease in PTSD severity.

Furthermore, clinical improvements were associated with lower resting theta power. At the single-subject level, lower theta power correlated with improved PTSD symptoms.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #14

Oral Presentation Panel 8 Green Table Room Afternoon

Velloze, Isabelle, UC San Diego Marshall College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. David Strong, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of Matthew Stone, Family Medicine & Public Health, Dept of

Effect of Packaging on Smoking Perceptions and Behavior: A Randomized Trial

We are addressing the impact of cigarette packaging and labeling on consumer perceptions and on smoking behavior; and the effectiveness of graphic warning labels on communicating risk of tobacco products.

Smokers handle their packs frequently. Product packaging is a crucial medium by which the tobacco industry communicates product attributes, including reassurances about risk. The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) is a landmark treaty enacted to ensure that every person is informed of the health consequences, addictive nature and mortal threat posed by tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke.

The objective of this project is to undertake rigorous research to provide data showing that usage of graphic warnings will influence consumer perceptions of their cigarettes.

The design and extensive objective measurements are significant innovations on the currently published research in this field and should lead to significant advances in tobacco regulatory science. I will be presenting on the study design and data collection techniques for the study thus far.

Venuprasad, Pranav, UC San Diego Department/Major: Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Mentored by Professor Pamela Cosman, Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)

Quantifying Gaze Behavior during Real World Interactions using Automated Object, Face, and Fixation Detection

Gaze behaviour in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is abnormal in terms of social looking behaviour, joint attention to objects, as well as the basic timing and accuracy of each gaze shift. Hence the analysis of gaze behaviour is important in assessing the development of the child. We record gaze behaviour from a subject wearing eye-tracking glasses during a real-world interaction with other people, with multiple objects that are referred to or manipulated during the interaction. The resulting gaze-in-world video from each interaction can be manually coded for different

ABSTRACTS behaviours, but this is extremely time-consuming and requires trained behavioural coders. Instead, we use neural networks to detect objects and faces in the video. The time sequence of gazes landing within the bounding boxes of the faces/boxes is processed for run lengths to determine “looks�, and the performance of the algorithm is compared to an expert ground truth. We are also extending the work to include an analysis of the response time of the subjects to various audio cues during the interaction.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #17

Vrbanac, Alison, UC San Diego Department/Major: Biomedical Sciences PhD Program Mentored by Dr. Victor Nizet, Pediatrics Dr. Pieter Dorrestein,

Interrogating the Whole Organism Impact of Antibiotics

Recently, antibiotic usage has come under scrutiny for associations with obesity, a multitude of other metabolic diseases, and as an instigator of secondary microbial infection such as C. difficile colitis. These negative health effects have been attributed to antibiotic-induced dysbiosis or blighting of our commensal microbial communities.

Though fecal samples are often used as an indicator for microbiome health, the commensal microbiota varies widely across body sites, exerting differential impacts on the local metabolome. To understand how antibiotics fully impact the whole-organism, we developed a metabolome-microbiome 3D mouse model. Thirty mice were split into three treatment groups, receiving a single i.p. injection of ampicillin, vancomycin or PBS. Five mice per group were sacrificed 24 hours after treatment and the remaining five mice in each group sacrificed 6 days later. All mice were dissected into 77 sub-organ pieces and samples analyzed by untargeted LC-MS/MS metabolomics and 16S rRNA sequencing. Metabolite and microbiome distribution was mapped onto an MRIgenerated 3D mouse model for visualization and metabolite annotation performed with GNPS4. As expected, organ was the strongest driver of metabolite composition, though analysis on an organ-by-organ basis revealed high-level compositional changes in beta diversity with antibiotic treatment for many organs. Organs with high bacterial colonization (cecum, colon, lungs, etc.) and were more accurately classified by treatment group using random forests. In the cecum, many tri and dipeptides were significantly elevated in the 24 hour (acute) ampicillin and vancomycin groups compared to control while certain bile acids, such as cholic acid, were significantly decreased. Various lysophosphatidylcholine molecules, a lipid associated with inflammation in bronchoalveolar lavages, were significantly elevated in the lungs of the acute ampicillin treated group. Interestingly, many metabolite changes were also observed in the uterus, including an increase in lysophosphatidylcholine and prostaglandins with acute antibiotic treatment. 16S rRNA sequencing data revealed distinct microbial changes by antibiotic type and reduction of alpha diversity with antibiotic treatment, and will be used for further metabolite – microbe correlations.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #12

Wang, James, UC San Diego Department/Major: Chemistry & Biochemistry Mentored by Dr. Daniel Chao, Ophthalmology Dr. Andrew Kummel, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Silica Nanoparticles as Optical Coherence Tomography Contrast agents for Retinal Disease

Many blinding ophthalmic diseases such as glaucoma and macular degeneration result in cell death in the retina. A critical need in diagnosis and treatment of diseases is the ability to visualize cell death on a cellular level in the retina, as current methods for assessing disease revolve around indirect measures of cell death such as visual fields, or visual acuity.

In this project, we assess whether silica nanoparticles can be used as OCT contrast agents to detect cell death.

We present preliminary data on the ability silica nanoparticles to be detected in OCT phantoms in vitro and detail our future plans to conjugate silica nanoparticles to markers of cell death.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #26

Wang, Junwei, UC San Diego Warren College Department/Major: Chemistry & Biochemistry Mentored by Professor Alina Schimpf, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Polyoxemetelate Frameworks Composed of Presslyer Anions and TransitionMetal Cations

Polyoxemetelate Frameworks Composed of Presslyer Anions and Transition-Metal Cations Junwei Wang, Linfeng Chen Principle Investigator: Alina M. Schimpf Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCSD Polyoxemetelates (POMs) are inorganic polyatomic ions, consisting of transition metal oxyanions linked by shared oxygen atoms. We use transition-metal cations, such as Mn2+, Co2+, Ni2+, and Fe2+/3+, to link a Preyssler POM, K14NaP5W30O110, into an extended framework. This research focuses on determining the best conditions to afford linked structures, and explores the effects of various synthetic conditions on the final structure of the framework. Specifically, we tested different temperatures, concentrations, metal/POM ratios, metal anions and pH conditions. Optimum conditions for linking with various transition metals will be presented.

ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentation Panel 7 Marshall College Room

Wang, Tinghao, UC San Diego Department/Major: Philosophy Mentored by Professor Samuel Rickless, Philosophy

Beyond Killing One to Save Five: Sensitivity to Ratio and Probability in Moral Judgment

Afternoon

Some would support killing one innocent person to save five, while others would argue that such acts are wrong, regardless of their maximizing utility. The research focus on moral dilemmas concerning tradeoffs between one and five lives may obscure more nuanced commitments involved in moral decision-making. Six studies (N = 2177) examine the role of the actual numbers of lives involved, and the impact of making the outcomes probabilistic rather than certain. Participants are remarkably sensitive to expected value for probabilistic harms under single evaluation, but deviate from it under joint evaluation. Participants deviate from expected value for probabilistic saving even under single evaluation. Collectively, the studies suggest that people are nonconsequentialists who are sensitive to expected value among other considerations.

Poster Session B

Washington, Andrew, UC San Diego Eleanor Roosevelt College

PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #26

Department/Major: Cognitive Science Mentored by Dr. Brad Voytek, Cognitive Science Scott Cole, Neurosciences

Bursting properties of neural oscillations: open-source software development

Neuroscientists who work with electroencephalogram (EEG) waveforms are oftentimes interested in periods in which a brain rhythm is highly active, or “bursting.� These bursts are typically easily characterized by human eyes, but prove difficult to distinguish automatically through use of computer software. While there are several mathematical definitions of a burst, each has its own strengths and drawbacks which change vastly across subjects, areas of the brain, and the frequency band of the neural activity. The purpose of our proposed research is 1) to develop a code base which helps researchers by giving them a toolkit to easily analyze bursts in neural oscillations, and 2) to use that toolkit to analyze the alpha (8-12 Hz) rhythm bursting in the visual cortex. The latter purpose of this research can improve our mechanistic understanding of how neural oscillators are generated.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #27

Welkie, David, UC San Diego Department/Major: Center For Circadian Biology (CCB) Mentored by Professor Susan Golden, Biological Sciences, Center For Circadian Biology (CCB) Dr. Bernhard Palsson, Bioengineering

Creating a predictive metabolic model of photoautotrophic metabolism in cyanobacteria to improve bioengineering design

The model cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 is a proven photosynthetic organism for metabolic engineering and for investigating circadian regulation. A collaborative effort between the S. Golden and B. Palsson laboratories has produced a genome-scale metabolic model (GEM) of S. elongatus. This work led to the discovery of unique attributes of cyanobacterial metabolism, improved gene annotations, and produced a powerful resource that allows researchers to better exploit cyanobacterial metabolism and test bioengineering principles. This first iteration enabled a computational representation of obligate phototrophic metabolism that effectively models photon absorption and accounts for self-shading. A subsequent challenge is the need to simulate diurnal growth and the influence of the circadian clock on metabolite partitioning in order to use the model to realize higher bioproduct yields in outdoor cultivation strategies. Thus, we identified genes that are specifically necessary in a day-night environment by screening a dense bar-coded transposon library in both continuous light and diurnal growth conditions, comparing the fitness consequences of loss of each nonessential gene in the genome. In addition, we are performing a quantitative metabolomics time-course spanning the day-night transitions to extend the modeling framework to the inherently non-steady state dynamics of diurnal growth. By combining time-course cell physiology data and metabolomics to characterize changes in resource allocation and metabolite pooling, respectively, such dynamics become in-scope for genome-scale modeling. By integrating both biomass and metabolite dynamics into a genome-scale model to simulate non-steady state processes, we hope to answer fundamental questions regarding regulation, photoperiod adaptation, and photoprotective mechanisms, while generating a distributable modeling platform that will enhance engineering of this important organism.

Oral Presentation Panel 4 Bear Room Morning

Wilson, Andrew, UC San Diego Marshall College Department/Major: Biological Sciences Mentored by Dr. Jeffrey Esko, Cellular & Molecular Medicine Dr. Anne Phan, Cellular & Molecular Medicine

Enhancing Ear Regeneration through Heparan Sulfate Deficiency

Our research project seeks to address one of the longest standing challenges in biology: how to enhance regeneration in mammals. Specifically, my part in the project will determine if inducing a deficiency in heparan sulfate in mice can enhance ear regeneration. Our research has the significant potential to transform our understanding of regeneration and provide an avenue for the development of new agents for treating wounds and diseases. This research proposal is an

ABSTRACTS extension of ongoing work in the lab. In preliminary experiments, we have found that pharmacological inhibition of heparan sulfate biosynthesis by glycoside treatment in mice accelerated the rate of full-thickness excisional cutaneous wound closure. My research goal is to expand our project from cutaneous wound healing into ear regeneration and determine if heparan sulfate deficiency can enhance regeneration in a more complex injury. I performed 2 mm ear punch wounds on adult mice deficient in heparan sulfate. I quantified the ear wound and collected tissue for histological analysis. I have found that mice deficient in heparan sulfate have enhanced ear wound healing. Neogenic cartilage is observable by histological analysis. I am in the process of testing pharmacological inhibitors of heparan sulfate synthesis as a therapeutic agent for wound healing. My research will expand our understanding of regeneration in mammals and how far it can be enhanced through heparan sulfate deficiency.

Poster Session A PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #21

Wittenberg, Eva, UC San Diego Department/Major: Linguistics Mentored by Dr. Eva Wittenberg, Linguistics

The mess reveals the system: People use top-down cues to resolve errors in contexts with highly random noise, but not with highly structured noise

Listeners give speakers the benefit of the doubt – when there is noise in the signal, people seemingly effortlessly correct for it. This process has been described by the Noisy Channel model (Levy, 2008; Gibson, Bergen, & Piantadosi, 2013). We also know that people sensitize themselves to different kinds of errors, depending on the input: They pay more attention to word forms when proofreading for typos, and more to word meanings when reading texts with lexical substitution errors (Schotter, Bicknell, Howard, Levy, & Rayner, 2014), and the rate or error correction often depends on both grammar and semantic plausibility (Gibson et al., 2013; Poppels & Levy, 2016). But will people treat the same error differently depending on different contexts?

We present evidence that people adjust their error correction process to the experimental environment in the following ways: When they cannot detect a pattern in the noise, they rely on their expectations for grammaticality (Exp.1 and 2). Thus, the messiness of the input brings forth their expectation about how speakers use grammatical rules. However, a discernible pattern in the noise leads to a reduction of the use of top-down cues in the correction process (Exp 3): People pay more attention to the actual acoustic input and use grammatical preferences (tense and personhood) less.

ABSTRACTS

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #S1

Oral Presentation Panel 3 Marshall College Room

Wong, Kirsten, UC San Diego Revelle College Department/Major: Bioengineering Mentored by Dr. Adam Engler, Bioengineering

Non-Coding Genomic Regulation Identified by Disease-in-a-dish Modeling

Understanding how common polymorphisms in non-coding regions regulate function is difficult. As a model system, we examined how the non-coding RNA ANRIL regulates cardiac phenotypes associated with fibrotic remodeling. To understand how niche remodeling regulates ANRIL’s effect, induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (CMs) from patients homozygous for the risk (R/R) or non-risk (N/N) 9p21.3 locus were cultured on a methacrylated hyaluronic acid hydrogel capable of mimicking cardiac fibrotic stiffening. While CMs contracted synchronously in physiological niche independent of genotype, only R/R CMs exhibited asynchronous contractions after stiffening. Similarly, dynamic stiffening reduced connexin 43 expression in only R/R CMs and decreased dye transfer, pointing to altered gap junction expression. Increased short isoform ANRIL expression in R/R CMs mediated c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) phosphorylation-based mechanism to impair gap junctions after stiffening. Locus deletion or treatment with JNK antagonist after stiffening was sufficient to prevent asynchronous contraction by maintaining gap junctions. Thus specific niche changes can differentially affect cell function and identify unique regulation, even for non-coding loci.

Yeung, Kay, UC San Diego Department/Major: Pharmacology Mentored by Professor Jing Yang, Pharmacology

Single-cell Epigenomics and Transcriptomic Analysis of Metastatic Tumor Dormancy in Breast Cancer

Morning

[Abstract redacted owing to proprietary information.]

Poster Session B

Zhao, Eric, UC San Diego

PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #15

Department/Major: Nanoengineering Mentored by Professor Jesse Jokerst, Nanoengineering

Shape-dependent toxicity of silicon carbide nanomaterials to human mesenchymal stem cells

Silicon carbide is a strong and inert material that is commonly used to coat medical devices to prevent biofilms. However, studies on the toxicity of this material at the nanoscale are limited. Here, we show the effects of silicon carbide nanoparticles and nanowires on human mesenchymal stem cell viability, proliferation, adhesion, migration, differentiation, multipotency, and cytokine secretion. We found that stem

ABSTRACTS cells could effectively uptake the nanoparticles and nanowires, but the nanowires were cytotoxic. Stem cells labeled with silicon carbide nanowires showed limited proliferation and adhesion, reduced migration and multipotency, inhibited differentiation, and abnormal cytokine secretion. These studies indicate that the biocompatibility of a material depends not only on the chemical composition, but also the morphology.

Poster Session B PC West Ballroom A Poster Board #24

Zubatiy, Tamara, Department/Major: Cognitive Science Mentored by Dr. Virginia de Sa, Cognitive Science Professor Tajana Rosing, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) Associate Professor Laurel Riek, Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)

Exploring Interventions for Encouraging Healthy Living by Comparing Event Related Potentials During Word Recall and Recognition in Elderly and Young People

In this contribution we compare the event related potentials (ERPs) that occur during word recall and recognition in young people and elderly people. We compare the differences in ERPs for recall versus recognition. We also compare how the ERPs change depending on whether or not the word makes sense in the sentence, and the effect of this in elderly versus young people. We expect that elderly people will show distinctive ERPs compared to young people in the condition that the word does not make sense in the sentence. If time permits, we present a classifier to distinguish elderly and young ERPs.

OFFICE OF RESEARCH AFFAIRS STAFF

Dr. Sandra A. Brown Vice Chancellor (858) 534-3526 • sandrabrown@ucsd.edu

v Dr. Miroslav Krstic Senior Associate Vice Chancellor (858) 534-5556 • mkrstic@ucsd.edu

v Dr. Mark Lawson Director of Training and Education (858) 534-7644 • mlawson@ucsd.edu

v Kyle Nakanishi Business Manager (858) 822-5321 • knakanishi@ucsd.edu

v Dr. Shannon Muir

Director of Research Proposal Development Service (858) 822-3144 • semuir@ucsd.edu

v Jessica Wholey

Administrative Assistant (858) 534-3530 • jwholey@ucsd.edu

v Elena Gavrilescu

Administrative Assistant (858) 534-3527 • egavrilescu@ucsd.edu

v Leticia Egea

Program Coordinator (858) 534-6236 • legea@ucsd.edu

ACADEMIC ENRICHMENT PROGRAMS STAFF

David Artis, Ph.D. Dean, Undergraduate Research Advancement, Director, Academic Enrichment Programs (858) 822-4161 • dartis@ucsd.edu

v Veronica Bejar Assistant Director, Academic Enrichment Programs/McNair Program (858) 534-8254 • vbejar@ucsd.edu

v Thomas K. Brown, Ph.D. McNair Program Coordinator (858) 534-2937 • tkbrown@ucsd.edu

v Jessica Davis, M.A. Faculty Mentor Program Coordinator (858) 534-5791 • jjd010@ucsd.edu

v Kirsten Kung, Ph.D. Research Programs Coordinator (858) 822-3750 • kkung@ucsd.edu

v Adele S. Savage, M.A. Health and Medical Professions Preparation Program Coordinator (858) 534-7579 • asavage@ucsd.edu

v Sophia Tsai, Ph.D. Research Scholarships Coordinator (858) 534-9014 • stsai@ucsd.edu

v Michael Markulin Executive Assistant/ Office Manager (858) 822-0385 • mgmarkulin@ucsd.edu

The Chancellor's Research Excellence Scholarships (CRES) was launched after the UC San Diego Strategic Planning Process identified four research themes to focus on as we build the student-centered, research-focused, service-oriented public university of the future.

These themes are:

Understanding and Protecting the Planet Enriching Human Life and Society Exploring the Basis of Human Knowledge, Learning and Creativity Understanding Cultures and Addressing Disparities in Society

CRES supports these research priorities and continues the university's investment in access and affordability for all students interested in an exceptional educational experience. This program will build the interdisciplinary expertise necessary to address society's greatest challenges and forge new intellectual enterprises, which increasingly rely on the ability to work across diverse disciplines, either individually or as members of multidisciplinary teams.

https://CRESsymposium.ucsd.edu