C²BRIP is an NSF-funded program to engage Essex County College students in summer research projects at NJIT. Recruitment of the summer 2024 cohort will begin in January 2024. If you are an ECC student that is interested in mathematical biology, or an NJIT student that would like to serve as a mentor, please contact me (diekman@njit.edu) or Professor Ines Figueiras (Essex County College, Division of Mathematics, Engineering Technologies & Computer Sciences, ifigueir@essex.edu).

2022 project

In the fifth year of the program, three ECC students and an NJIT graduate student mentor worked together on a project involving deep learning, cardiac arrhythmias, and circadian rhythms. The students presented a poster on their research entitled "Using Deep Hybrid Modeling to Identify Biophysical Mechanisms Underlying Circadian Rhythms in Cardiac Arrhythmias" at the 2022 Undergraduate Summer Research and Innovation Symposium held at NJIT on July 27, 2022. We also visited IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY (where the Jeopardy! challenge between IBM Watson, Ken Jennings, and Brad Rutter took place) and the students presented their research to our collaborators.

2021 project

In the fourth year of the program, four ECC students and an NJIT graduate student mentor worked together on a project involving deep learning and COVID-19 transmission. The students presented a poster on their research entitled "Using Deep Hybrid Modeling to Determine Treatment Strategies for COVID-19 Patients" at the 13th Annual International Undergraduate Research Symposium held at NJIT on July 29, 2021. Some of the students also presented at the 12th Annual Garden State-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation/Northern New Jersey-Bridges to the Baccalaureate STEM Research Conference held virtually on February 25, 2022.

2019 project

In the third year of the program, four ECC students, two high school students, one NJIT undergrad, and two NJIT graduate student mentors worked together on projects involving circadian rhythms and cancer. The students presented posters on their research, one focused on dynamical systems entitled "Mathematical modeling of circadian rhythms, tumor growth, and radiotherapy" , and one focused on machine learning "Exploring the Viability of a PLSR-based Machine Learning Method in Predicting Circadian Phase", at the 12th Annual International Undergraduate Research Symposium held at NJIT on August 1, 2019. Some of the students also presented at the 11th Annual Garden State-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation/Northern New Jersey-Bridges to the Baccalaureate STEM Research Conference held at Rutgers University - New Brunswick on October 11, 2019.

2018 project

In the second year of the program, three ECC students and an NJIT graduate student mentor worked together on the project "Predicting apneas in preterm infants from physiological time series data". The ECC students presented their research at the 11th Annual International Undergraduate Research Symposium held at NJIT on July 27, 2018 and at the 10th Annual Garden State-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation/Northern New Jersey-Bridges to the Baccalaureate STEM Research Conference held at Rutgers University on October 12, 2018.

2017 project

In the first year of the program, nine ECC students and two NJIT undergrad mentors worked together on the project "Mathematical modeling of a central nervous system catecholaminergic cell line". The ECC students presented their research at the 10th Annual International Undergraduate Research Symposium held at NJIT on July 27, 2017 and at the 9th Annual Garden State-Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation/Northern New Jersey-Bridges to the Baccalaureate STEM Research Conference held at Kean University on October 13, 2017.