Dr. Younger Kim and Dr. Silva, from B-CU, received funding from NSF to establish an interdisciplinary modeling REU. Dr. Krejci has served as a mentor in the program since 2018.
REU Summer 2019
Dr. Krejci and Dr. Juan Calderon, Computer Science/Engineering, served as co-mentors for two undergraduate researchers: Mary Abu Safieh from Los Medanos College in Pittsburge CA and Gabrielle Watkins from B-CU. Both students utilized machine learning to develop to test whether an artificial neural network could predict chlorophyll a concentrations based on correlations between in situ water quality samples and spectral signatures from Sentinel 2.
REU Summer 2018
Undergraduate researcher, Tigara Smith, from Edwards Walter College in Jacksonville, FL studied the effects of salinity on survival of a copepod species from the Halifax River Lagoon, FL. Tigara conducted field sampling and cultured the copepods in five salinities, monitoring the population daily for one week. Jimmy Jones from Arizona State University served as a co-mentor for the project.
The data from Tigara’s laboratory salinity trials were placed into a logistic population growth model in MATLAB to model the impacts of salinity on population growth over time. Tigara’s research was selected and funded to present a poster at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute capstone conference at Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio.