Community College Biomathematical Research Intitation Program (C2BRIP)

C2BRIP is an NSF-funded program to engage Essex County College students in summer research projects at NJIT. Recruitment of the summer 2020 cohort will begin in January 2020. 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).

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.

  • ECC students: Elizabeth Epstein, Mariia Goriachi, Luis Lara, and Karen Reyes
  • High school students: Evan Fagan (Columbia High School) and Fritz Huggins (Governor Livingston High School)
  • NJIT student participant: Shuhrah Chowdhury
  • NJIT graduate student mentors: Jonathan Trinidad and Emel Khan
image image

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.

  • ECC students: Sean Bacote, Angela Castillo, and Alyssa Marie Maquiling
  • NJIT graduate student mentor: Timothy Barnes
  • External mentor: Christopher Wilson (Loma Linda University)
image

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.

  • ECC students: Mahamadi Compaore, Michael Edwin, Serge Foppossi, Alyssa Marie Maquiling, Alfonse Mazzoni, Edwin Mwallo, Ralph Erickson Suarez, Mohamed Traore, and Daquan Wright
  • NJIT student mentors: Binah Ezra and Alina Mohit-Tabatabai
image

Urban Scholar Society

I served on the board of the Urban Scholar Society, a nonprofit providing educational outreach to youth in the greater Newark area. The mission of the Urban Scholar Society is to engage the community and empower students through STEM. The society was founded by Joe Geissler, a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering at NJIT and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences University.