Andrea Valdez, a senior biology major, is on a microbe mission. Valdez, in conjunction with Dr. Gretchen Hofmann’s lab at UC Santa Barbara, is studying a wasting disease contributing to the recent demise of sea stars, a keystone species in the near-shore environment. Valdez is using molecular techniques to determine the diversity of bacterial organisms found on sea stars with wasting disease, and comparing them to bacterial populations on healthy sea stars.

The work, which comprises much of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program application that Valdez is writing this semester, will contribute to a greater understanding of this complex disease. Valdez began the study in Hofmann’s lab last summer, and continues it this semester in the campus lab of Dr. Aparna Sreenivasan. She is funded in part by the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and CSUMB’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center, and hopes to present this project at regional and national conferences this year. She has also found time to serve other students in a variety of ways. She’s an officer in the university’s chapter of Beta Beta Beta, the national biological honor society; helps other students through the Peer-to-Peer Mentor program; works as a teaching assistant for molecular biology and organic chemistry courses; and co-directed last semester’s Undergraduate Research Week events.

Valdez is one of three CSUMB students featured in a new publication from the CSU. The California State University Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program has published its first “Program Recognizing Outstanding Undergraduate Distinction” or PROUD, an online look at outstanding students throughout the system’s 23 campuses.

Lilyana Gross, a math major, and Jenny Brown, a biology major, are featured along with Valdez. All are UROC participants.

See page 31 of the publication.pdf) to read their stories.

*Read more field notes from the Division of Science and Environmental Policy*

*Information for this story provided by Aparna Sreenivasan and PROUD.*