Greetings from Director, Dr. Ron Coleman Ph.D.

It has been a busy and exciting Spring for the Student Research Center. We started out with the CSU Student Research and Creative Activity Symposium which saw 50 competitors in eight sessions present their exciting research and creative activity. It is always a delight to see and hear what our students are doing. We followed this up with the first Create, Make and Share event, held in collaboration with the new Stinger Studio Makerspace. The Studio was filled with the creative products of students, faculty and staff. It was so successful; we will be holding this every semester. Finally, we just returned from the systemwide CSU Student Research Competition where not only did our team of students do well, garnering two first places and four second places, but Sac State outdid all other CSU campuses! Congratulations and thanks to all the folks that participated in our events this year and we look forward to an even better future. Read on for more details on the exciting events we had this semester. 

The Student Research Center is thrilled to share the Sacramento State awardees from the 37th Annual CSU Wide Student Research Symposium on April 28 & 29, 2023. The CSU Wide Symposium is a student research competition amongst all CSU campuses. This year's symposium, held at San Diego State, included eight Sacramento State student research presentations. We are proud to announce that six of the eight presentations were selected as awardees in their category. In addition, Sacramento State was the highest awarded campus in this year's symposium. We congratulate the Sacramento State students on their outstanding academic research and scholarly work! 

Rachel Sedillos, Chemistry: Investigations into the First Total Synthesis of Lorneic Acid F
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Claudia Lucero

The Student Research Center, in partnership with the new StingerStudio Makerspace in the University Library, are happy to have hosted a successful first annual Create, Make, and Share Faire. For this event, all Sacramento State staff, faculty, and students were invited to showcase their creative side and display their creations in the new StingerStudio on April 21, 2023. This event was not a competition, but a faire to allow the Hornet Community to share their creations with each other, and to welcome the new StingerStudio to campus. There was a variety of impressive creations in this year's faire from students, staff, and faculty alike. 3D printed assisting devices for animals in need, handmade candles resembling lifelike food, a musical photograph experience, and an intricate handmade greeting card were just a few of the creations Hornets shared at the faire. Stay tuned for the announcement for the next one!

A monthly feature highlighting outstanding research and creativity on campus

Did you know that some fish species provide extensive care to their offspring? Many female parents release their eggs into the open ocean then swim away, leaving the eggs with nothing but hopes, dreams, and the genetic makeup to survive independently once they hatch. But for a species of fish called cichlids (pronounced sic-lids), this is far from the case. In fact, cichlids spend much of their time caring for their offspring in a multitude of ways. In some cichlid families, the mother will hover over the nest of eggs while the father circles the area. Another cichlid, the African Mouthbrooder, holds her eggs safely in her mouth. Once they’ve hatched, she will continue to utilize her mouth as a shelter for her offspring, allowing them to come and go as they gain their independence and enter their teenage years (in biological terms, these are called fry.) After all, the open water can be a scary place for a fry, and the mother’s mouth offers a safe haven to protect her young from any fishy business they might get into. Finally, some cichlid mothers even change color as means of communication, showing how truly bright and intelligent fish are.

Did you also know that cichlids are being studied right here at Sacramento State? Olivia Sinclair, a Sacramento State biology graduate student, has been extensively studying the reproductive and parental behavior of cichlid fishes. She is in the final stretch of her study, where she is analyzing the relationship between female parent body size, egg size, and number of eggs (called fecundity) in cichlid fishes.

Sinclair came to Sacramento State as a master’s student after completing her undergraduate degree in animal science at UC Davis, an academic journey that offered its fair share of ups and downs for her. Her dedication to studying biology was settled while taking a particularly rigorous undergraduate course – biochemistry. In the course, she was subject to comments that doubted her abilities in the field. However, Sinclair’s determination, plus a dash of competitiveness, propelled her to the top of the class. After realizing her success in such an arduous course, her interest in the field only grew from there.

As many students’ academic journeys were halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, so was Sinclair’s. During the peak of monotonous homebound life, Sinclair harnessed her boredom in search of something new and exciting to further her education. It was during this time that she discovered Sacramento State biology professor, Dr. Coleman’s, fish lab in Humboldt Hall and its graduate program. Previously, Sinclair had no experience studying the reproductive and parenting traits of fish. But much like a fish to water, Sinclair quickly took to the subject after beginning her graduate work in the lab. This led Sinclair to her current three-part study that has defined her graduate career thus far; The Effect of Egg Size and Female Parent Body Size on Fecundity in Cichlid Fishes in the Wild and in the Laboratory.

The first step of Sinclair’s three-part study involved collecting data on a scarcely studied species of cichlid in their natural habitat of Costa Rica. Her most recent trip to Costa Rica was January 2023, where she collected data on female parent body size, egg size, and fecundity in 55 cichlid nests. Step two of this study compared the data of these cichlids in Costa Rica to the cichlids being bred and cared for at the fish lab in Humboldt Hall. In the final step, Sinclair bred 35 cichlid species in the lab, where she applied a specialized equation to accurately predict the number of offspring of any individual cichlid of any body size. The most impressive part? Sinclair created this equation herself.

Sinclair plans to wrap up her study this summer, after breeding a few more cichlids in the fish lab before publishing her work.  However, the impact of Sinclair’s research reaches far beyond Sacramento State, as it will provide a foundation for many other future studies of this nature. Now that there is an understanding of how different biological factors, such as female parent body size, affect fecundity, people can start to examine the impact of additional ecological variables such as water temperature. Sinclair’s study also benefits conservation efforts, and can be used to better understand population stability, as fecundity is often a significant indicator of how stable a population is.

What’s next for Sinclair? Sinclair plans to continue her academic career across the pond, as she will begin attending Oxford University in Fall 2023 as a doctoral student. While there, she hopes to study additional species and organisms, such as guppies, a completely different species of fish. What makes guppies entirely different is the fact that, unlike cichlids, guppies are live bearing fish. For Sinclair, this would provide a fascinating contrast and entirely new direction for studying reproductive behavior in fish. Sinclair also hopes to collaborate with others on campus who are studying different species to see if there is an underlying evolutionary mechanism that spans all species. A few species studies currently underway at Oxford include wolves in Yellowstone, butterflies, and sheep.

As Sinclair prepares for her next (quite remarkable) step in her academic career, she hopes to inspire her fellow Hornets with a few words of advice:

“Something that I wish someone told me is that there’s always hope even if you think you’ve messed up your academic career. You can succeed and you can accomplish really incredible things as long as you stay dedicated and believe in yourself. As cheesy as that sounds, it goes a long way, it turns out. Never in a million years did I think I would be going to Oxford for a PhD in biology. Growing up, even just being a girl in school, not necessarily in science, I thought that I was stupid for a lot of my childhood, and I realized how common that is. That was a huge insecurity and its sad to think there’s a lot of girls thinking that about themselves, when really that’s not the case. A huge part of my scientific journey is realizing that I am capable of doing these things even though I might have messed up earlier. Stick with it, keep working hard, and if you ever feel like you’re not going anywhere, just look back at all the progress that you’ve made over the past year or two years.”

We hope Sinclair looks back on the last few years and is proud of what she has accomplished at Sacramento State, and what she has contributed to the scientific community. We look forward to seeing what exciting accomplishments she will make as she continues to make waves in biology. 

The Student Research Center will begin the recruitment process this summer for its new Student Advisory Committee. A position on this committee is a volunteer role and an excellent opportunity to become involved in promoting research and creative activities on campus. More information to come soon!

Interested in becoming involved in campus research but unsure where to start? The best place to start is to connect with a campus faculty member whose area of research matches your research interests. You can see a list of faculty and their areas of research and expertise by visiting your department page. Once you have a faculty member or two in mind, reach out to them to set up a time to meet whether by appointment or office hours. When you meet, you can express your interest in research to them and start a conversation about how you can get involved. Some faculty may not be taking any more students for research at the time. That’s okay! They will still be able to point you in the right direction to get your foot in the door with research.