Students to get research and internship experience in SUPERSTAR program

Several paid student researcher and intern positions available

By California State University, Bakersfield

March 7^th, 2022

SUPERSTAR might just be an acronym for a new California State University, Bakersfield research program but it’s also an apt description for the students who will take part in the Sustainability Undergraduate Program for Extension and Research of Science and Technology in Agricultural Region.

Sponsored by the USDA Education and Workforce Development Program with a total amount of $600,000, SUPERSTAR will allow CSUB students to get hands-on experience in different research projects related to the sustainability challenges the Central Valley faces. The program is led by project director Dr. Zhongzhe Liu, an assistant professor of engineering, who will collaborate with five colleagues from the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering and one from the School of Business and Public Administration.

As Dr. Liu noted, California’s Central Valley is one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, but that claim also comes with its share of challenges: livestock waste management, Valley Fever, crop disease, fungicide side effects, irrigation water and energy use, to name a few, plus all the impacts of climate change.

“It is important to educate and train the future agricultural workforce and prepare them for their agriculture-related career and for addressing agricultural sustainability-related problems in the Valley,” Dr. Liu said. “Some students will work with faculty mentors as research assistants on different sustainability research projects. Some students will work with the mentors from government agencies and business/community partners on service-learning internship projects.”

The goals of the program are to give students real-world experience in research, develop internships related to sustainability issues with area partners and encourage students’ interest in both the technology and economic aspects of the agricultural industry.

The program will create 52 paid student research assistant positions and develop 48 paid service-learning internships in total from the program’s start until December 2025. Each year, SUPERSTAR will have three to four research projects and 12 intern positions.

Each faculty member will lead a lab on a certain topic, each with one or two research projects to be undertaken during the course of the program:

Energy and Resource Recovery Lab led by Dr. Zhongzhe Liu will address problems related to cow manure management and wildfire-agroforestry-nexus. The first project will be on the synergistic treatment of cow manure processing products and the second will be on the production of hazardous-woody-fuel-derived soil amendment.
Microbiology Lab led by Dr. Antje Lauer will address problems related to Valley Fever and fungicide; first whether Coccidioides immitis, the fungus that causes the illness, can reclaim farmland that was used for intensive agriculture, and second how the extensive use of fungicides in industrial agriculture has shaped resistance to azole drugs among environmental fungi, including C. immitis, in the Southern San Joaquin Valley.
Environmental Economics Team led by Dr. Nyakundi Michieka will address problems related to the Valley’s agricultural economics: an empirical analysis investigating the water-energy nexus in the Central Valley, and the urban impacts on Kern County's agriculture.
Plant Pathology Lab led by Dr. Isolde Francis will address problems related to crop health, first studying biocontrol of two agriculturally important crop diseases and later the evaluation of plant beneficial properties of hazardous-woody-fuel-derived biochars.
Food Science and Nutrition Lab led by Dr. Sarah Forester will study climate change’s impact on the Valley’s grape quality.
Materials and Environmental Engineering Lab led by Dr. Luis Cabrales will address problems related to alternative irrigation water: electrochemical oxidation of produced water and membrane distillation of produced water.
Renewable Energy Integration Lab led by Dr. Ehsan Reihani will research minimizing the cost of electricity for agricultural farm through optimal operation of renewable energy system for the first year and later will work on identifying the diseases of apple orchards based on the images of the leaves.

Internships positions will also be added each year, with the first batch of internships including positions at at United States Department of Agriculture Bakersfield Office, University of California Cooperative Extension Kern County, California Bioenergy and Sun World International.

The SUPERSTAR program is a joint project with Bakersfield College and Taft College, with students from those schools being able to apply for research and internship positions as well.

Students interested in these research and internship opportunities are invited to apply for the program’s first year at bit.ly/2022CSUBSUPERSTAR by March 21. For more information, visit csub.edu/nsme/superstar.