This summer, our campus was a living laboratory of curiosity, creativity and collaboration. Undergraduate researchers across many disciplines worked alongside faculty and graduate students exploring bold questions and contributing solutions to real-world problems. Here, we highlight two programs funded by external grants that brought students from across the country and from our local community colleges to our campus this summer to engage in research.
The School of Engineering and Computer Science hosted 13 undergraduate students funded by the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduate (NSF-REU) site at Washington State University Vancouver and University of Houston Clear Lake. This is a three year award in which the REU site hosts a cohort of undergraduate students across the nation each year to participate in various research projects focused on real-world scientific problems including flow simulations for managing large wind farms, droplet ejection modeling for advanced manufacturing, and microfluidic cancer cell detection in liquid biopsy. The site activities include students training on using data-driven approaches (e.g., machine learning, advanced system software, and emerging hardware) to address the big data issues in the study of these scientific research problems. The program is led by Xuechen Zhang (91ԹϺ) and Xiaokun Yang (U of Houston Clear Lake) with Linda Chen, Chris Qin, Hua Tan, Scott Wallace and Xinghui Zhao participating as faculty advisors.
This year’s cohort of undergraduate students came from 10 institutions across the country (UCLA, UC San Diego, Oregon State University, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers, University of Maryland, University of Houston Clear Lake, Columbia University, Carleton University, and 91ԹϺ).
At the end of the summer, the students participated in a Summer Research Showcase held in the Engineering and Computer Science Building. The energy was electric during their poster presentations and the level of their research was impressive. Through the NSF-REU program these students didn’t just conduct research, they enriched our campus culture by bringing their passion and curiosity to our community, reminding us all who participated that undergraduate research cultivates a campus climate where asking bold questions is the norm, and where discovery is woven into the everyday rhythm of academic life. We are excited to continue engaging undergraduate students in research for many years to come.
Another program focusing on science brought community college students to campus over the summer. Since 2023, the SW Washington “Regional Alliance for Inclusive Science Education” (RAISE) has supported the RAISE Summer Research Internship Program for Clark College and Lower Columbia College students interested in gaining research experience in the natural sciences. The goals of the RAISE Summer Research Internship Program are to encourage early college students to experience the excitement of conducting research in science labs and/or in the field, to begin to see themselves as scientists, and to feel encouraged and welcomed into the 91ԹϺ community as future transfer students earning a BS degree.
The RAISE Internship program is in many ways similar to the NSF-REU program. Each RAISE Intern is paired with a “Research Mentor,” a 91ԹϺ faculty member who leads an active scientific research laboratory on campus. Interns work on one or more research projects alongside their mentor, graduate students, other undergraduates, technicians, postdocs and other lab personnel. The interns gain invaluable skills and inquiry experiences while contributing to their mentor’s research enterprise.
Unlike REU-like summer research internship programs, the time requirements for RAISE interns are intentionally flexible, to accommodate the many work and family responsibilities community college students often juggle. RAISE interns may work part-time or full-time, depending on the type of research they are engaging in and the constraints of their schedules. For many of the interns, their internship extends into the academic year; indeed, for some past interns, they have remained employed in their mentor’s lab throughout the following fall semester (usually after they have transferred to 91ԹϺ).
This past summer, four community college students (3 from Clark College & 1 from Lower Columbia College) worked with science faculty members as their Research Mentor. Eva Larman (Clark) is working with Jonah Piovia-Scott investigating the susceptibility of amphibians to fungal pathogens in Washington and California. Katie Warner (Clark) is working with Gretchen Rollwagen-Bollens to quantify the feeding rates and behaviors of native freshwater mussels in the Columbia River Basin. Deena Ochoa Stevenson (Lower Columbia) is working with Cynthia Cooper to understand the function of specific proteins on auditory and visual system development in zebrafish. Danny Grozav (Clark) is working with Seth Rudman to develop and apply “association genetics” (the combination of genomic tools and bioinformatics) to find linkages between variability in an organism’s genome to the variation in that organism’s traits.
Each of the 2025 interns has decided to transfer to a 4-year university to complete a BS degree! Deena, Danny and Eva started at 91ԹϺ this fall 2025 semester, and Katie will transfer to Oregon State University for the fall quarter! We are super excited about the success of this program!