Winners

Congratulations to the winners of the 2026 CSU Student Research Competition!

Behavioral, Social Sciences and Public Administration

First Place, Graduate: Rachel Kanter, CSU San Bernardino

  • “I Betrayed Myself”: A Mixed-Methods Study of Moral Injury Among Survivors of Intimate Partner Sexual Violence

Second Place, Graduate: Madison Bertran, CSU Dominguez Hills

  • Parental Emotional Support as a Predictor of Emotion Expertise and Psychopathology: A 2 Sample Replication Study

First Place, Undergraduate: Marley Wood-Pilkinton, CSU Chico

  • Prompted by Pressure: Academic Constraints Motivate Students' Decisions to use AI

Second Place, Undergraduate: Kaitlyn Sung, CSU San Marcos 

  • Discrepancy between primary language and neuropsychological testing language affects objective performance but not ultimate diagnosis of Asian participants within the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) dataset

AI-Enabled Research Award: Marley Wood-Pilkinton, CSU Chico

  • Prompted by Pressure: Academic Constraints Motivate Students’ Decisions to Use AI

 

Biological and Agricultural Sciences

First Place, Graduate: Amber Peek, CSU Long Beach

  • The Fruit Fly as a Model to Study Aspirin as a Preventitive Drug for Colon Cancer

Second Place, Graduate: Amanda Tsang, CSU Fullerton

  • Rethinking Pain Treatment: Design and Evaluation of  Non-opioid Therapeutics

First Place, Undergraduate: Yahan Lin, CSU LA

  • Coordination of Circadian Rhythms and Cell Division by TlyA and FtsZ Interactions in Cyanobacteria

Second Place, Undergraduate: Arianna Miller, CSU Channel Islands

  • Toxic Impact of Lanthanide Cations (Er3+, Pr3+, and Nd3+) on Brown Planaria

AI-Enabled Research Award: Tyler Cassidy & Elijah Brunnengraeber, CSU Monterey Bay

  • Training Machine Learning Models to Identify Abiotic Stress Factors in Problematic Central Coast Weeds Using Hyperspectral Data

 

Business, Economics and Hospitality Management

First Place: Caleb Hearn, CSU Chico

  • Debt on Layaway: Buy Now, Pay Later and U.S. Consumer Finance

Second Place: Anthony McBroom, San Francisco State University

  • Sexual Orientation and Homeownership in the United States: Evidence from the 2023 American Community Survey

AI-Enabled Research Award: Mario Yanez, CSU Fresno

  • AI-Assisted Audit Execution: Automating Repetitive Substantive Procedures for Small Businesses

 

Creative Arts and Design

First Place: Celia Beaumont, San Diego State University

  • The Awkward Stage

Second Place: Maria Angela Richards, CSU San Marcos

  • In Her Space Journal: A Qualitative Study Exploring Collective Meaning Making in a Women-Centered Literary and Arts Journal

AI-Enabled Research Award: Monika "MJ" Browatzki, CSU Northridge

  • Pitch Ready: AI-Assisted Development for Media Projects

 

Education

First Place: Lorena Cortez, Cal Poly Humboldt

  • Amplifying Counterstories and Testimonios about Latine Rural Youth: The Education Experience of Oaxacan-American Youth in Rural Humboldt County

Second Place: Olive Garrison, CSU Bakersfield

  • Storying the Rainbow Panic: The Experiences of LGBTQ+ Educators in an Era of Backlash

AI-Enabled Research Award: Christine Lo, San José State University

  • Human, AI-Revised, or AI-Generated? Patterns in Student Abstract Writing in Human Factors

 

Engineering and Computer Science

First Place, Graduate: Cody Laurie, CSU Northridge

  • Going Beyond Majority Vote: Composite-Aware Soft Voting in Random Forest

Second Place, Graduate: Nourdean Shraim & Shweta Raghuraman, San José State University

  • Effect of Alternating vs Direct Current Electrical Stimulation on HEKa Cell Migration

First Place, Undergraduate: Kurt Trocino, CSU Northridge

  • Lending a Hand: A Wearable Robotic Arm with Foot Control System and Haptic Feedback Systems

Second Place, Undergraduate: Arthur Espinosa, CSU LA

  • A Two-Stage Workflow for Cooling Plate Geometry Optimization in EV Battery Packs

AI-Enabled Research Award: Cody Laurie, CSU Northridge

  • Going Beyond Majority Vote: Composite-Aware Soft Voting in Random Forest

 

Health, Nutrition and Clinical Sciences

First Place: Jocelyne Argueta, Cal Poly Pomona

  • Effect Of Maillard Conjugates Vs. Electrostatic Deposition On The Formation Of Lutein-Enriched Emulsions

Second Place: Leonel Dujardin, San Francisco State University

  • The Effect of Attentional Focus on Countermovement Jumps

AI-Enabled Research Award: Leonel Dujardin, San Francisco State University

  • The Effect of Attentional Focus on Countermovement Jumps

 

Humanities and Letters

First Place: Sarah Kula, Cal Poly SLO

  • My Little White Savior: White Purity and Saviorism in My Little Pony: The Movie

Second Place: Mary Antoinette Weigel, San Francisco State University

  • Three Features of Self-Conception

 

Interdisciplinary

First Place: Kshitij Pingle, CSU Fullerton

  • Low-Cost Pollen Monitoring and Estimation: A Deep Dive with Machine Learning

Second Place: David Harris, Cal Poly SLO

  • Optimizing Fire Unit Relocations Strategy Under Uncertain Resource Availability

AI-Enabled Research Award: Kshitij Pingle, CSU Fullerton

  • Low-Cost Pollen Monitoring and Estimation: A Deep Dive with Machine Learning

 

Physical and Mathematical Sciences

First Place: Marcello Anthony Garbo, San Francisco State University

  • Designing Safer Near-Infrared Quantum Dots: Controlled Redox Chemistry for High-Performance Nanomaterials

Second Place: Helen Lester, CSU Sacramento

  • Evaluating ERA5-Land Wind Data Across Plateau and Canyon Environments in the Grand Canyon Region

AI-Enabled Research Award: Nathan Venegas, CSU LA

  • Analysis of Microplastics and Their Organic Contaminants in Southern California Beaches Using HT-TD/Py-GCxGC-TOFMS

First and second place were awarded in every category, with separate undergraduate and graduate divisions for the three most populous categories.  The CSU's AI-Enabled Research Award was offered in all cateogies where judges deemed at least one project applicable.