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CYNTHIA WOOD and EVA GABRIELA BAYLON
These UCSD LSAMP students were selected to serve on the student panel at the NSF LSAMP 2009 Workshop on Best Practices for the Recruitment and Transition of Engineering and Science Students from Community Colleges to Four-Year Institutions. Wood and Baylon transferred from San Diego City College to UC San Diego and are preparing to graduate in June 2010. Both plan to pursue graduate degrees. At the SACNAS 2009 National conference, held recently in Dallas, Wood took second place in the mathematics competition, “Who Wants to be a Mathematician?” and Baylon won a Poster Award in the Engineering category for her research 'Self Healing Polymer.'
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Spotlight on UC San Diego CAMP Alumni ROBERT VALTIERRA and SERENA MOSEMAN-VALTIERRA
Robert Valtierra, B.S. Structural Engineering 2008, is in his second year of the Ph.D. program in Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. Valtierra won numerous awards for his research as an undergraduate, including first place in “sustainability research” in UCSD’s Earth Week Environment and Sustainability Initiative, in 2007. His project, “Development of Electronic Fuel Injection and flex Fuel Retrofit System,” came with a $1,500 cash prize. Valtierra was a 2006 CAMP Summer Research Scholar and presented at the CAMP Statewide Symposium in 2007 and 2008. He also won a best poster award at SACNAS in 2007. He presented at NCUR 2008 at Salisbury University in Maryland. At SACNAS 2009 in Dallas, Texas, Valtierra presented “Acoustic Measurement of Water Saturated Materials Using an Impedance Tube Technique.” Serena Moseman-Valtierra, Ph.D. in Oceanography 2008, is an adjunct faculty member at Boston College and has a postdoctoral fellowship at Woods Hole. She also presented at SACNAS 2009, “Nitrogen Loading Affects the Climatic Role of Coastal Marine Wetlands,” in the Postdoctoral session. Moseman-Valtierra conducted the research with colleagues from the U.S. Geological Survey. By the time she completed her doctorate, Moseman-Valtierra was first author on five publications and was awarded UCSB's Outstanding Graduate Student. She completed a B.S. in Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, Summa Cum Laude, and a M.S. in Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She also has had several international collaborations, including at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology and at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her many awards include the U.S.G.S. Mendenhall Postdoctoral Fellowship (2008-2010). Valtierra and Moseman-Valtierra were married in Summer 2009 on the East Coast. Dr. Moseman has served as a CAMP mentor and role model on the San Diego campus. The couple met through their participation in CAMP-UCSD.
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| UC SANTA CRUZ HOSTS SPECIAL COMMENCEMENT ACTIVITIES |
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| Students wore decorated mortar boards and hand-stitched quilted stoles by Malika Bell, UCSC CAMP Program Coordinator, and Yulianna Ortega, CAMP Program Assistant. Commencement 2009 was a day to remember! |
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INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
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GILBERTO CARDENAS and the Mexican Cave Fish
Applied Mathematics major Gilberto Cardenas, a transfer student from Orange Coast College to UC Irvine, experienced the thrill of a lifetime entering caves in Mexico to study cave fish. He turned a project studying predator-prey interactions into an investigation, discovering that many cave fish near San Luis Potosi, Mexico, were going extinct. Thousands of caves existed in the area. The possibility that dynamiting in nearby mines was a possible culprit led him to hone his communication skills and interview many local residents. He learned that the dynamiting had caused some cracks in caves, causing the water to seep out.
Cardenas presented his findings at the Astyanax International Meeting, a meeting unusual in that it focused on one type of fish, the blind cave fish. Biologists from all over the world discussed their findings, and Cardenas met scientists from France, England, and Croatia, among others.
Cardenas anticipates completing a B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics in June 2010, and continue on to earn a master’s degree and eventually a doctorate. He is considering an interdisciplinary master’s in computer science, art, and engineering. Currently he is working on a project with zebra fish, which he presented “Fish Larvae Respond to Fluid Shearing” at the SACNAS National Conference in Dallas, October 2009. Previously, Cardenas presented at the 2009 Western Regional Honors Council Conference in Spokane, Washington, and at the West Coast Biological Sciences Undergraduate Research Conference at Point Loma College, San Diego.
He says, “I was very fortunate to get into the CAMP program.”
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