The Sonoma County Office of Education and SSU's School of Science and Technology partnered to provide high school juniors with an exciting new educational program, focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics this summer.
They will present the results of their work in special presentations on Tuesday, Sept. 1 in the Darwin Lobby from 6:30-8 p.m.
"This was a unique opportunity for high school students to directly participate in research projects under the supervision of Sonoma State's Science and Technology faculty," said Saeid Rahimi, Dean of the School of Science and Technology.
Twelve students were selected from a competitive application process, and participated in the 4-6 week STEM internships under the mentorship of research faculty. Students were given an opportunity to work on challenging projects and to become familiar with state-of-the-art research and development facilities. Internships include coursework, data gathering and analysis, job shadowing, field studies and observations, and visits to worksites employing science and technology professionals.
A list of the selected students and their projects includes:
Sophia Grubb
* Rancho Cotate High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Meng-Chih Su, Department of Chemistry (sum@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: Investigation of Surface Bound Proteins
* The main research effort in this group is to study the behavior of protein films adsorbed to substrate surfaces for potential use as optical, chemical or electrochemical sensors. The overall goal is to establish control over how the protein adsorbs to the surface, and how the protein responds to chemical stimulus once on the surface. The understanding of the fundamental principles governing the surface adsorption is necessary to improve control of growing proteins on various substrates, which is crucial to many practical applications, such as protein chip technologies.
Tiffany Daud
* Petaluma High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Anita Catlin, Department of Nursing (anita.catlin@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: How to Determine the Need for End of Life Care: Nurses and Doctors Speak
* Presently, two-thirds of the annual heath care budget in the United States is spent in the last two months of patients' lives. There is confusion and debate amongst both families and health care providers about when exactly a condition is "terminal" or "life limiting." 250 doctors and nurses were surveyed to identify at what point they determined that a patient was dying, would no longer benefit from curative efforts, and could be transferred to supportive hospice care. Student assists in data entry, analysis and manuscript preparation for publication.
Faith Deis
* El Molino High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Michael Cohen, Department of Biology (cohenm@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: Biomass to Biogas
* In collaboration with the City of Santa Rosa, Dr. Cohen's laboratory has launched an initiative to examine the feasibility of cultivating aquatic vegetation on treated wastewater in order to lower levels of residual pollutants in the water. Key to the success of this project is finding valuable uses for the harvested biomass. This project investigates the potential to generate methane from the harvested biomass, alone and in combination with agricultural feedstocks that are readily available in Sonoma County. Specifically, the student prepares replicates of small-scale digestion cultures in the laboratory and monitors the rate and yield of biogas production. Analysis of the results should reveal the existence of synergistic, neutral or inhibitory interactions between substrates. Additionally, the student assists in preparing samples of the feedstocks and spent digestates for carbon and nitrogen analysis. Concurrent seed germination experiments will assess the suitability of digestate as an agricultural soil amendment.
Cagsar Apaydin and Kjellen Belcher
* Petaluma High School and Santa Rosa High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Lynn Cominsky, Director of E/PO (lynnc@universe.sonoma.edu)
* Co-Mentor: Dr. Kevin McLin, GORT Director (mclin@universe.sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: Monitoring Active Galaxies with the GLAST Optical Robotic Telescope
* The Education and Public Outreach program at Sonoma State operates a small observatory located in the Pepperwood Preserve of the California Academy of Sciences. The observatory houses the GLAST Optical Robotic Telescope, a Celestron 14-inch, remotely operated telescope. For the past several years GORT has been used to make observations in support of NASA high-energy astrophysics missions (Swift, XMM), and with the launch this past year of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (formerly GLAST), the pace of work at the observatory has picked up. The primary task of the observatory is to monitor active galaxies for changes in brightness. It is used to do both routine monitoring, for which we have a catalog of 26 objects, and partake in coordinated observing campaigns with other observatories, both on the ground and in space. The interns learned how to make these observations and how to use computer software to reduce and analyze the acquired data. Included in their tasks is learning how to accurately measure stellar brightnesses and the effects of the atmosphere on such measurements, as well as becoming acquainted with the motions of objects in the sky.
Riley Yaylian
* Orchard View Charter School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Sazia Eliza, Department of Engineering Science (eliza@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: Intensity Control of a Light Bulb
* In the operation theatre of a hospital, the light intensity affects the visibility of a surgeon. It is quite helpful if the theatre is equipped with an auto adjusted emergency light panel. If any of the working light goes off, the emergency light will be automatically turned on. The auto turn on of a lamp/light bulb can be made through the design of a simple electronic circuit. The darkness of the room will be sensed by a phototransistor. As the intensity of the room goes low, the phototransistor will draw less current from the supply passing more current through the light bulb. The light will be automatically turned on to maintain the same degree of illumination in the room. In this project, the student learned about ideas of transistors and electrical lighting with the knowledge on resistance, current and voltage.
Eric Lu
* Rancho Cotate High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Mohammad Haider, Department of Engineering Science (haider@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: Sensor Signal Processing and Telemetry
* Recent technological improvements of health care monitoring equipments, micro- and nano-fabrication processes and wireless communication technologies have led to the developments of miniature, lightweight, and energy-efficient circuit solutions for biomedical sensor applications. The silicon-based micro-fabrication and microelectromechanical techniques have been successfully applied for the fabrication of a large range of miniature biomedical sensors. Ubiquitous growth of wireless sensor networks has opened up a new and innovative application of wireless technology in medical as well as in healthcare field. This trend has just been started and it is expected that wireless networks are going to become an integral part of medical solutions due to their benefits in reducing healthcare costs and increasing accessibility for the patients as well as the healthcare professionals. With this project the student gets hands-on experience with the sensors, especially biomedical sensors, simple circuit design technique and basic concept of wireless communication.
Jared Carr
* Montgomery High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Izabela Kanaana, Department of Mathematics and Statistics (izabela.kanaana@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: Graph Theory and its Real-World Applications
* Graph theory is a branch of mathematics that is easily accessible and does not require much prior knowledge, but has many real-world applications in a variety of fields. For example, consider a railway network connecting various towns. How can we find the shortest (or the cheapest) route between two specified towns in the network? Is it possible to plan a trip to visit each town exactly once and then return to the starting point? How do we schedule a route for a maintenance team so that they cover each section of railway at least once, and travel as little as possible? All these questions can be answered using graph theory. In this project we introduce elements of graph theory and consider its applications to problems of this type.
Katie Schmidt
* Healdsburg High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ali Kujoory, Department of Engineering Science (ali.kujoory@ieee.org)
* Project Title: Design and Build a Pedometer
* A pedometer is a device that records the distance a walker or a jogger covers over time. In this project, the student makes use of a switch that can respond to the body motion at each step and trigger a circuit that would eventually increment a counter and register properly the number of steps that have been covered.
Isabel Love
* Santa Rosa High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Jeremy Qualls, Department of Physics and Astronomy (quallsj@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: An Investigation of Magnetocaloric Materials Towards Refrigeration
* Magnetocaloric materials are novel materials that get hot or cold when a magnetic field is applied to them. This allows them to be ideal candidates for components of more efficient refrigerator devices. Over the last five years a wide number of new materials have been realized that have large magnetocaloric effects with materials that are not too expensive or toxic. In this project, the student works with a number of magnetocaloric materials looking for the impact of pressure and sample geometry in attempts to better understand and improve this phenomenon. SSU has a state of the art Magnetic Field Laboratory with fields up to 17 Tesla that the student worked with.
Taylor Lee
* Petaluma High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Suzanne Rivoire, Department of Computer Science (suzanne.rivoire@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: Open-Source Software for Modeling Computer Power Consumption
* The intern participatd in the release of an open-source software package to model a computer's power consumption and help prepare the software for release by adding features, improving the performance of the current (unreleased) implementation, testing the software and models developed, and/or producing documentation for the user community.
Weston Stauffer
* Petaluma High School
* Faculty Mentor: Dr. Hongtao Shi, Department of Physics and Astronomy (hongtao.shi@sonoma.edu)
* Project Title: Magnetic Semiconductors
* Semiconductors have important applications in data storage, mobile devices, and optoelectronics, etc. While silicon is the most popular semiconductor for electronic devices, other materials are being explored for high-speed applications and for optical applications, such as light-emitting diodes and laser diodes, in the blue or ultraviolet regimes. In this project, electrochemical reactions were used to fabricate zinc oxide films on different wafers, a material suitable for blue or UV applications. Facilities in the Keck Microanalysis laboratory on the campus were used to investigate the structural and optical properties of these samples. The samples were doped with magnetic ions to try to form diluted magnetic semiconductors for future applications in spintronic devices.
The STEM Program is open each summer to high school juniors who are enrolled in science, mathematics, technology, and/or pre-engineering coursework in Sonoma County high schools. Upon completion of the internship, students receive a $1,000 stipend underwritten by the Sonoma County Office of Education.
The students are also be invited to enroll in related courses at Sonoma State University during their senior year of high school. Attendance at these classes will require concurrent enrollment at SSU and their local high school.
