RSCA Grant Awardees 23/24: Proposal Abstracts
“Bringing City Planning Canon to YouTube: A Video Textbook”; Dave Amos (CAED-City and Regional Planning).
This project will create a video textbook on the basics of city planning. Five 15 to 20 minute videos will cover major aspects of the field, and will include land use planning, transportation planning, sustainability, and housing. The final video will discuss who plans, and who has been historically marginalized. It will conclude with ways for anyone to get involved in city planning. This effort will help democratize city planning information and encourage viewers to participate in local government and planning decisions. Student researchers will help research and write scripts, as well as produce the graphics and animations to develop high-quality, engaging content. The principal investigator produces well-regarded YouTube videos on these topics already and will use their expertise to ensure the video textbook finds a broad audience.
"Local Implementation of an AI-generated Legislative News Tipsheet"; Kim Bisheff (CLA-Journalism).
AI4Reporters is an AI-generated legislative news tip sheet that is being developed by Cal Poly professors in computer science and journalism in partnership with Sacramento-based journalists and a former legislative chief of staff. It scrapes data from legislative meeting transcripts and creates a summary of potentially newsworthy developments. The project was recently awarded grant funding from the Arnold and Knight foundations and will be ready for local newsroom testing by Fall 2023.
This grant will allow student researchers to develop and test local implementations of the tip sheet in a newsroom environment throughout the 2023-2024 school year. By developing news products based on the AI4Reporters application, they will help address the decline of civic journalism in a way that dovetails with the recent launch of the journalism department's Media Innovation curriculum.
"Examining the meaning and methodological characteristics of the systematized review label: A scoping review '"; Leyla Cabugos (Kennedy Library).
Evidence Synthesis (ES) is the process and product of transparently, systematically, and comprehensively reviewing existing evidence on a topic or question. A growing number of study types falls under this umbrella, all designed to produce a picture of the state of evidence that accounts for sources of bias in research conduct, publishing, and review practices. Some types of ES, such as the systematic review, are associated with standards for conduct and reporting that have been developed and vetted by communities of practice and organizations such as the Campbell Collaboration, Cochrane, and the Center for Environmental Evidence. Producing a methodologically rigorous ES takes substantial time, and requires multiple competencies and authors, and comprehensive access to literature and tools for data management. A large portion of published ES do not conform to established standards. While many such departures go unremarked upon, they are sometimes acknowledged with the emerging practice of labeling a study a “systematized review”. In possible contrast to review types that offer somewhat codified options for attenuating full evidence synthesis methodology to deliver timely syntheses in the face of resource constraints (such as rapid reviews), methodological adaptations in published systematized reviews are varied and may not be explicitly identified by the authors. As many authors model their research methods on examples rather than on guidelines, we expect the prevalence of published systematized reviews to increase. We believe it is helpful to understand what researchers mean, and model for each other, when they use this label. Therefore, this scoping review seeks to identify which elements of ES methodology are being included, and which, if any, guidelines are invoked and implemented in systematized reviews. We will also note whether any justifications provided were based on resource constraints or on research goals.
"Watching for Sasquatch: A New Environmental Play"; Ramón Esquivel (CLA-Theatre and Dance).
There is a growing movement in American and international theatre to engage through the art form the stories, politics, science, and psychology of climate change and environmental crisis. The June 27, 2021 issue of The Dramatist featured several playwrights writing about the climate crisis, environmental racism, and other issues connected to the looming crisis. Theatre is designed to be experienced in shared space, engage the audience on intellectual and emotional levels, entertain and perhaps compel to action. Theatre has the capacity to present different opinions, viewpoints, and ideas through story, allowing characters to engage, debate, or educate each other about them. However, there is high risk of didacticism. This proposal would support the research, creation, and development of an original environmental play, Watching for Sasquatch, by playwright Ramon Esquivel, Assistant Professor of Theatre at Cal Poly. The short, ten-minute vignettes that make up the play feature characters, both human and non-human, who encounter the sasquatch in the forests and coast lands of Californai, Oregon, and Washington, USA, as well as British Columbia, Canada. The encounter means something different for each character, many of them young adults, a reflection of their relationship with the earth. What will distinguish this environmental play is its target audience: high school and college students, the very generations who will be forced to deal with intensifying climate crisis. I hope that the play is all at once funny, touching, philosophical, whimsical, dramatic, silly, existential, and spiritual without being religious.
"Using Wastewater to Study SARS CoV2 Evolution"; Pat Fidopiastis (CSM-Biological Sciences Department).
In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic gained momentum, all "non-essential" activities on campus were restricted. In response, the Fidopiastis lab shifted from studying bacterial-host interactions to developing molecular tools to detect and quantify SARS CoV2 in campus and city wastewater. Earlier in the pandemic,
mandatory saliva testing of individuals was the primary means to identify virus transmission patterns and inform public health decisions; a small percentage (i.e., 1-2%) of these clinical samples were subjected to genome sequencing to identify virus variants. Meanwhile, wastewater methodology played a secondary role in
assessing community-wide virus transmission. Towards the mid to later stages of the pandemic, expansion of home antibody tests resulted in reduced centralized data collection, inadvertently creating gaps in our understanding of the dynamics of virus transmission, and further reducing our ability to identify virus variants.
Notably, wastewater analysis is not dependent on individuals providing samples to a certified testing facility, thus this methodology has become the primary means of monitoring community-wide virus transmission. Our methods can detect and quantify SARS CoV2, but lack the genome sequencing component to differentiate virus variants. Here, we request funds to sequence virus genomes from archived wastewater samples maintained in the Fidopiastis Lab, collected from January 2021 to the present. By doing so, we will study virus evolution in our community, identify traits that influenced virus transmission, and map the timing of calendar events (e.g., holidays, etc.), implementation of various mitigation strategies, and clinical data, with the rise and fall of variants in our community.
"Social Policy and Extreme Weather: How Tightly Woven is Our Safety Net?"; Leanne Giordono (CLA-Political Science).
Extreme weather events are expected to increase in the frequency and severity in the upcoming decade (Allen et al., 2018). Vulnerability to the impacts of climate change is expected to be higher among populations that experience high poverty and other barriers to inclusion and prosperity (Hallegatte et al., 2020). Evidence
suggests that strong social safety nets increase resilience to climate change, especially when integrated with other efforts to build resilience and adapt to the growing risks of climate change (International Panel on Climate Change, 2022). Almost a decade ago, Gough (2013) identified these new risks as one of the primary
challenges to social policy. More recently, Tenzing (2020) identified a global “social protection” approach intended to address issues of inequality and marginalization in the context of climate change. But there is little information about the degree to which United States safety net system has responded to these calls with efforts to identify and address risks associated with a changing climate and/or integrate services with emergency response and related resilience-building initiatives. This project will use a mixed methods approach to fill gaps in our knowledge about US social policy efforts to anticipate and adapt to the climate change risks faced by populations served by the traditional safety net. This research spans traditional disciplinary boundaries by examining how social policy is responding to a phenomenon (climate change) that has historically been examined through a predominantly environmental/energy policy lens. The project will build on
the Principal Investigator's prior research agenda, including a scoping review that the proposed Principal Investigator is currently conducting with BEACoN program support.
"Climate Change and Alpine Plant Community Shifts in California"; Dena Grossenbacher (CSM-Biological Sciences Department).
Alpine areas are warming at faster rates than lowland areas because of anthropogenic climate change (Pepin et al. 2015). Thus, alpine areas are seen as bellwethers of ecosystem change and are model systems for studying climate change. The Sierra Nevada contains the majority of alpine habitat found in California. Notably, peaks in this region are home to 51 rare and 71 endemic alpine plant species (Colwell 2013).. As temperatures continue to rise, species endemic to alpine habitat in the high Sierra are increasingly at risk (Parmesan 2006). Understanding community responses to warming is critical for conserving biodiversity in these rare ecosystems. In the 1990’s, alpine vegetation plots were established across the high Sierra in California. However, these plots have never been resampled. In this study, Cal Poly students and the PI will resample plots
to assess the rate of change in alpine vegetation. To-date, we have resampled 147 plots. We propose to finish sampling the remaining 30 plots, and to complete and submit a major publication to a peer reviewed journal. This work will provide the first ever glimpse of recent trends across California’s alpine plant communities under a changing climate. Additionally, students and the lead PI will collaborate with the National Park Service to install new management plots, map informal trails, and perform public outreach, thus bridging three disparate fields – ecological science, environmental management, and scientific public outreach.
"Learning Factory – A Roadmap for the Transition from Industrial Technology to Smart Manufacturing"; Rafael Guerra Silva (OCOB-Industrial Technology and Packaging).
A learning factory is a training environment that simulates a real-world production system. Although the term was first coined in the US in 1994, the concept became popular in Europe during the last two decades, while evolving and integrating new tools and topics. Nowadays, over a dozen learning factories are established in Europe and a very active international association. The present study will focus on developing a learning factory concept for smart manufacturing in the Industrial Technology and Packaging program.
This research will explore previous experiences in the field and expert interviews to identify best practices and key success factors in training programs built around the learning factory concept. Our goal is to leverage learning factory methodologies to improve the quality and efficiency of training in smart manufacturing, increase student engagement, and achieve a better alignment of training programs with the needs of employers and industry. The results of the study should provide valuable insights for educational institutions
and training programs while advancing better outcomes for students and employers.
In the long term, the goal is to develop a learning factory that will bridge all the areas in the Industrial Technology and Packaging to smart manufacturing. Lean manufacturing, supply chain, product development and packaging (through end-of-line automation) are ideal candidates to provide scenarios, case studies and complementing principles that might lead to new design concepts and lines of research.
"Design of Multi-DOF Worm Origami Robot"; Mohammad Hasan (CENG-Mechanical Engineering).
Origami robotic systems are a subset of soft robots that mix the ability of soft robotics to operate in harsh, irregular terrain, with the well-defined dynamics of rigid robotic structures. These systems offer immense potential for applications such as search-and-rescue, fault diagnostic of interior of mechanical systems (such as tight pipes, engines, etc) and even biomedical applications. A great deal of research has been put into stationary origiami components. Less work has gone into locomotion using origami structures, especially in applications in which multi-degrees of freedom (DOFs) is required. In this student-centric proposal, a multi-DOF miniature worm origami robot is proposed, which uses inexpensive processing tools to produce (paper, 3D printing). This system's design is to be investigated along with numerical and analytical dynamical analysis of its response. Parameter identification and PID control are later performed. Finally, a camera will be added to the system to incorporate simple machine vision.
"Africancalifornios.org: Data Visualizations that Explain the Role of Afro-descendants in Early Spanish and Mexican California (1768-1850)"; Cameron Jones (CLA-History) and Foaad Khosmood (CENG-Computer Engineering/Computer Science and Software Engineering).
This project is focused on the creation of a public digital history website, AfricanCalifornios.org. The website will be a repository that highlights the lives and family ties of Afro-descendants in Spanish and Mexican California. The lack of awareness of Africans and their descendants in early California is, of course, due in part to structural racism in the way history has been studied and disseminated, but also stems from a lack of documentation. One of the few documents that does contain racial data is the 1790 census of California, which identifies roughly 19% of the population as being of African descent. Using data science techniques, we are using the limited data available to build family trees, maps, and databases that will show the extent and influence of the African diaspora in pre-U.S. California. This will be made available to the public through our website AfricanCalifornios.org. Understanding these familial and social connections is essential to understanding the history of the lives of African Americans as California later became part of the United States. Through this project we hope to overcome one of the difficult hurtles in studying populations of color: historians have numerous records on the numbers and labors of Africans and Afro-descendants in the Americas but understand relatively little about their personal lives as compared to Euro-Americans. Ultimately, this project is about reincorporating Africans into the history of the Americas, reversing the whitewashing that has been prevalent in histories of the American west.
"Multidisciplinary Computational Research for Undergraduate Students"; Joyce Lin, Paul Choboter, Elena Dimitrova and Warren Roche, (CSM-Mathematics).
The primary objective of this project is the acquisition of a computer server for students to perform complex simulations. Current options for students in the College of Science and Math to run simulations that require heavy computation are quite limited, yet applications to real-world modeling are becoming more complex and data-driven.
We propose four multidisciplinary projects in the areas of fluid dynamics, biology, and data science, all from a mathematical perspective, that will be supervised by senior and junior faculty. Student engagement (through senior projects, the BEACoN research program, master's theses, or other funding) in these projects will be made immediately possible by the server, but we also plan to use this as a starting point for a larger external grant that would allow for more computational resources, including upgrades to the server being proposed here as well as other standalone networked servers and dedicated support.
Students will benefit from the increased research opportunities and growth of their skill set, as well as the opportunity to work on an interdisciplinary project. The real-world project will help enhance their career development, and the experience of presenting and publishing research will be critical to their future.
"Educational Context and Investments in Child Health Across Africa"; Sara Lopus (CLA-Social Sciences).
Across contexts, educated women tend to have later age at first marriage, delayed first births, longer inter-birth intervals, and higher investments in their children’s schooling and health. Although much is known about these individual-level relationships, less is understood about the influence of the broader educational contexts within which women operate. With RSCA support, I will (1) prepare a new academic article on this topic and (2) prepare and submit an extramural grant proposal, in which my co-author and I will propose to investigate child-level health outcomes as a function of women’s access to education, school quality, trajectories of educational expansion, and credentialing norms. The contributions of this interdisciplinary, multi-year project will be of both theoretical interest (to sociologists, demographers, economists) and applied interest to public health practitioners and education policy advocates in the Global South.
"Assessment and Digitization of the Plant Sciences Entomology Collection"; Ryan Perry (CAFES-Plant Sciences).
The Plant Sciences entomology collection is in serious need of organization, digitization, and updates to bring it to current entomological standards. There are roughly 500,000 specimens currently held in the collection, with the vast majority having been collected by Cal Poly students over the past several decades. Digitizing the information within the collection leads to interdisciplinary work, making access to biological information quick and easy for students working on a number of different projects/assays. Having the specimen information uploaded to an online database will also allow researchers from other institutions to access the data for collaborative work. There is a large number of specimens from the Swanton Pacific Ranch, which are irreplaceable and need to be databased and incorporated into the main collection. Working over the summer will be the precursor for a National Science Foundation Infrastructure Capacity for Biological Research (Capacity) Program grant to completely digitize and catalog the insect collection.
"User Experience for Social Impact: Establishing a University-Nonprofit Collaboration"; Krista Sarraf (CLA-English), Hocheol Yang (CLA-Graphic Communication), David Gilette (CLA-English/ Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies) Michael Haungs (CENG-Computer Science/ Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies), Franz Kurfess (CENG-Computer Science and Software Engineering) and Emily Robinson (CSM-Statistics).
This project creates a research program for addressing socially significant issues in local communities by partnering user experience (UX) experts with regional nonprofit organizations. UX is a growing field that centers on empathetic design for human users. Nonprofits attempt to enrich people’s education, health, and knowledge production, and UX is a creative problem-solving mechanism that can positively impact nonprofit work. The expected project outcome is proof of concept of a UX for Social Impact project for generating numerous socially important and impactful research opportunities for researchers and students supporting non-profit organizations.
Phase one is a mixed-methods study: a survey distributed to United States academics and nonprofits who are engaged in using UX research for social impact, and a follow up focus group or in-depth interviews with nonprofits and academics in California. During this phase, we will also meet with consultants who have successfully built UX academic-industry partnerships. Phase two involves a pilot project to conduct UX research for local nonprofit organizations, including but not limited to The Paso Robles Children’s Museum and Assistance League – San Luis Obispo County. This project will facilitate student involvement in all stages of development, from researching program models, to applying UX research strategies (such as interviews with users) in the context of the nonprofit partnership.
This project takes an interdisciplinary approach to support the UX research needs of non-profit organizations, especially focusing on their diversity related problems. We draw on our team’s expertise in various research methodologies and communication capabilities.
"The Use of AI-Created Selfies in a Public Service Announcement (PSA) Campaign Targeting College Students: The Impact of Self-Reference on Issue Relevance and Engagement."; Yan Shan (CLA-Journalism) and Ruoxi Rachel Ma (CLA-Graphic Communication).
Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to a collection of technologies that allow computers to stimulate human intelligence to perform a variety of advanced tasks. Recent developments in machine learning have enabled AI to create hyper-realistic and high-resolution images, audio, and video that never existed before. AI-created content, which owes us with its endless creativity and imagination, is now being utilized in design and production processes across media and graphic communication industries. There have been several important studies to examine the practices of AI and its impact on the creative process; however, more research is needed to understand AI-created content from the audience’s perspective. Because average audiences may need help understanding how exactly AI works, they may not react to AI-created content in the way expected by professionals. This proposed study supplements the existing literature on AI by focusing on how users react and evaluate AI-created selfies, a particular type of AI-created content. We will design experiments by comparing evaluation towards AI-created selfies versus user-created selfies in the context of a public service announcement (PSA) campaign targeting college students. CP undergraduate students will be involved in this project as student researchers in every aspect including content design and creation, experimental development, data collection and analysis, conference presentation, and publication in peer-reviewed journals. The outcome of this project presents an interdisciplinary approach that will interest scholars of advertising and public relations, public health education, graphic communication, and computer science.
"Sustainable Development of Sensing Nanocomposites for Structural Health Monitoring"; Long Wang (CENG-Civil and Environmental Engineering).
Sensing technologies play significant roles in structural health monitoring systems for monitoring and assessing structural conditions in real-time, which can enhance the safety, reliability, sustainability of various structures. While engineered nanomaterial (ENM)-based sensors have remarkable potential to transform conventional sensing devices, large volume of ENMs released into the environment can significantly jeopardize the environment and public health. Thus, there is a pressing need to develop the next-generation sensing materials in a more eco-friendly and sustainable manner. The goal of this multidisciplinary proposal is to sustainably develop sensing nanocomposites for monitoring spatially distributed structural damage. Particularly, built on PI’s previous experience in nanomaterial manufacturing and sensing technologies, this project will focus on three major research thrusts: 1) fabrication of eco-friendly particle-based nanocomposites; 2) experimental characterization of mechanical and sensing behavior of the nanocomposites; and 3) integration of nanocomposites with an electrical imaging technique to detect and locate damage on cementitious structures. The broader impacts of this project will include: 1) scientific contributions to developing high-performance multifunctional materials in an eco-friendly, scalable, and low-cost manner; 2) students’ hands-on experience on innovative research; 3) enriched curriculum and course materials; and 4) multidisciplinary collaborative opportunities at Cal Poly and with other Universities.
"'The Variety Problem’: Exploring Intra-Varietal Heterogeneity of an Heirloom Wheat"; Nicholas Williams (CAFES-Natural Resources Management & Environmental Sciences).
The proposed project, which probes the ambiguities of agricultural plant taxonomy, contributes to a research and education program that revolves around common, or bread, wheat (Triticum aestivum). The program is working to support the establishment of a climate resilient local grain economy in San Luis Obispo County through seasonal planting experiments and seed banking, which provides undergraduate research and project-based learning opportunities. The program is also scholarly, where wheat serves as an object of study through which to explore and expand our understandings of the relationships that plants have with both people and other organisms in their environments.
Using a common garden(s) experiment we will plant multiple ‘strains’ of an heirloom wheat variety, Sonora White Wheat, procured from seed banks, crop breeders, and farmers in the Southwestern US. We will assess plant health and yields, as well as test for nutrient variability post-harvest, using this data to both aid future crop selection and generate insights into agroecological influences on wheat variety heterogeneity that will be probed further in forthcoming studies. In tandem, we will also conduct key informant interviews with wheat breeders, seed savers, farmers, biotech lawyers, bakers, millers, and other consumers. These interviews will collect information about the perceivable characteristics between and within wheat varieties to better understand the socio-cultural and economic dimensions of agricultural plant taxonomy, the issues inherent to it, and ultimately if and how intra-varietal heterogeneity is accounted for in key stakeholders’ understandings and constructions of highly valued wheat varieties.
