2025-26 RSCA grant awardees

Cal Poly’s Office of Research (formerly Division of Research) is pleased to announce the 2025-26 cycle of the Research, Scholarly and Creative Activities (RSCA) grant program awards. 

The RSCA faculty grant program is supported by funds from the CSU Chancellor's Office and Cal Poly’s Office of the Provost. It is designed to enable faculty to contribute new knowledge through robust scholarship focused on strengthening California socially, culturally and economically. The RSCA program is one mechanism by which Cal Poly supports the Teacher-Scholar Model through the integration of excellence in teaching with excellence in research, scholarly and creative activities. 

Of the 73 proposals received, more than $289,000 has been awarded to 17 selected projects based on the criteria outlined in the RSCA Request for Proposals and guided by the review and rankings of the Academic Senate Grants Review Committee. 

The 2025-26 awarded projects are:  

• “Layerwise Randomized Smoothing for Provably Safe Machine Learning.” 
  Brendon Anderson, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering 

• “Embodying Racial Justice: Social Change via (Inter) Personal Transformation.” 
  Alexia Arani, Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender and Queer Studies, College of Liberal Arts 

• “Assessing the Efficacy of the BEACoN Research Mentoring Program.” 
  Kelly Bennion, Associate Professor, Psychology and Child Development, College of Liberal Arts 

• “Mobile Wearable Sensor-Based Biomechanical Analysis and Educational Lessons in Elementary and Middle Schools.” 
  Britta Berg-Johansen, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering 

• “Cellular Multi-Taskers: Characterizing the DNA-based functions of the threonine biosynthetic pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.” 
  Jennifer Chik, Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Bailey College of Science and Mathematics 

• “Assessing Antimicrobial Biosynthetic Potential from a Library of Ancient Microbes.” 
  Rachel Johnson, Research Fellow, and Katharine Watts,  Associate Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Bailey College of Science and Mathematics  

• “San Francisco’s Adapting Waterfronts Past, Present, and Future: Visualizing Climate Change Resilience with Augmented Reality.” 
  Gabriel Kaprielian, Assistant Professor, Architecture, College of Architecture and Environmental Design  

• “Examining the Convergence between Design Thinking, Critical Thinking, and Technical Professional Communications.” 
  Rebekah Maples, Lauren Beck and Erin Martin-Elston, lecturers, English, College of Liberal Arts 

• “Digital California Heritage Lab: Virtual Museum Pilot Project.” 
  Elizabeth Minor, Assistant Professor, Social Sciences, College of Liberal Arts  

• “Quantifying abundance and distribution of soil microfauna in a coastal California rangeland.” 
  Yamina Pressler, Assistant Professor, Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences, College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences 

• “Accelerating PDE-constrained Optimization using Active Learning Algorithms.” 
  Amuthan Ramabathiran, Assistant Professor, Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering 

• “Examining the potential of student cultural organizations for supporting the persistence of Latinx aspiring teachers at Cal Poly.” 
  Perla Ramos Carranza, Research Fellow, Liberal Studies and Biological Sciences, Bailey College of Science and Mathematics, and Alejandra Yep, Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, Bailey College of Science and Mathematics 

• “Disrupting Biofilms: Leveraging Predatory Bacteria as An Innovative Strategy for Enhanced Food Safety.” 
  Laura Rolon, Assistant Professor, Food Science and Nutrition, College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences 

• “Civilizing Missions," "Barbarians," and "Heathens": Addressing Eurocentrism in the Library Catalog.” 
  Kyle Tanaka, Senior Assistant Librarian, Kennedy Library, Jayme Yen, Assistant Professor, Graphic Design, College of Liberal Arts, and Farah Al-Nakib, Assistant Professor, History, College of Liberal Arts 

• “Addressing Prediction Biases in Agricultural Yields with Remote Sensing.” 
  Katya (Kathryn) Vasilaky, Associate Professor, Economics, Orfalea College of Business and Meha Jain, Assistant Professor, University of Michigan

• “Empathetic AI in Action: Enhancing Prosocial Behavior through Human-AI Interaction.” 
  Miranda Yin, Assistant Professor, Marketing, Orfalea College of Business 

• “Mechanochemical Depolymerization of Commodity Polymers Producing a More Sustainable Solution to the Plastic Waste Problem.” 
  Sarah Zeitler, Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Bailey College of Science and Mathematics  

Congratulations to those awarded grants, and thanks to everyone who submitted proposals. The team also extends a special thank you to the Academic Senate Grants Review Committee members for their contributions to this important program. 

Sincerely, 

Office of Research 

View the proposal abstracts for these projects.