CSUEB Students Shine at CSU Student Research Competition

Cal State East Bay had its most successful year ever at the 35th annual California State University Student Research competition.Four students (including one team of two) took first place and two students took second place at the virtual competition hosted by Cal Poly Pomona. 

The CSU competition is held each year to promote excellence in undergraduate and graduate scholarly research and creative activity. Students work with faculty mentors on their research. 

A total of 12 Cal State East Bay students shared their research projects, summarizing their work in an eight-minute video in one of 21 categories and answered questions from jurors and the audience. Only one university produced more winners. 

“The willingness to engage in such a significant amount of outside-of-the-classroom extracurricular work speaks to the ambition, drive, and passion our students have for not only their discipline of interest, but also their own professional and personal development,” said Jenny O,  Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Director of CSUEB’s Center for Student Research. “In addition, it speaks just as strongly to the dedication to, and valuing of, student mentoring held by our faculty intensively engaged in student-research mentoring.” 

Graduate student Andrés González won first place in his category — Humanities & Letters; Education (Mixed) — for the second year in a row for his project titled “Utilizing Reflexivity: Strategic Self-Disclosure and Insider Perspective in Qualitative Research with Transgender and Non-Binary People.”

Co-presenters Lisa Ouyang and Taylor Quintana took first place in Behavioral & Social Sciences; Interdisciplinary (Mixed) for the project “Early treatment of inflammatory pain prevents the transition from acute to chronic pain in rats.” It was the second straight successful year for Ouyang, who earned a second place finish last year as a freshman and sole presenter. 

Aerin Riegelsberger was Cal State East Bay’s third winner for the project “Putting The Ball In The Patient's Court: Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy In U.S. Family Planning Clinics” in the category Behavioral, Social Sciences, and Public Administration (Graduate).

Cal State East Bay’s second place winners were:

• Graduate student Aarohi Shah for the project “Can Ion Exchange Resins Be Used to Remove Boron from Produced Waters and Increase Water Sustainability?” 
• Undergraduate Andrew Stanciulescu for the project “Investigating the Effects of Visualization Media in the Classroom.”

“The success we had in this year's CSU Student Research Competition represented a true team effort among the student competitors, their faculty mentors, and the Center for Student Research (CSR),” O said.