NeuralStorm: Training Graduate Students to Take Neuroengineering by Storm
- Conference
- Location
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California Polytechnic University, California
- Publication Date
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April 10, 2025
- Start Date
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April 10, 2025
- End Date
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April 12, 2025
- Tagged Topic
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Diversity
- Page Count
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15
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--55184
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/55184
- Download Count
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33
Paper Authors
Xianglong Wang
University of California, Davis
orcid.org/0000-0001-5359-8411
Dr. Xianglong Wang is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in Biomedical Engineering (BME) at the University of California, Davis, and the program coordinator of the BME Quarter at Aggie Square clinical immersion program. Dr. Wang leads the cube3 lab, an engineering educational lab focused on community building and pedagogical innovations in BME. As a steering committee member, he helps shape the educational programs offered by the Center of Neuroengineering and Medicine at UC Davis. Before joining UC Davis, he was a career-track Assistant Professor at Washington State University (WSU). Dr. Wang is the recipient of the 2024 ASEE-PSW Section Outstanding Early Career Teaching Award, 2023 UC Davis Biomedical Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award, and 2022 WSU Reid Miller Teaching Excellence Award.
Vincent Tran University of California, Davis
Vincent Tran is the program coordinator for the NeuralStorm program at the University of California, Davis.
Gabriela Lee University of California, Davis
Gabriela Lee, MS, MBA is the Associate Director of the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine at UC Davis. In this role, she works with faculty and students from 18 departments to facilitate programming, apply for grants, manage the center's operations, conduct strategic planning with the center and university leadership, and overall ensure the center fulfills its mission and goals. She is on the executive committees of the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine, and of NeuralStorm, collaborating with the director and faculty towards the program's success.
Sadie Jean Davis Mariko Chang Consulting, Inc. and Sadie J Davis Consulting LLC
Sadie Davis, MPP is the Director of Evaluation for Mariko Chang Consulting, Inc. and the President of Sadie J Davis Consulting LLC. Ms. Davis has extensive experience in external evaluation and program assessment, specializing in the evaluation of initiatives intended to broaden participation and enhance climate in the higher education and non-profit sectors.
Mary Spooner
Dr. Spooner has supported the evaluation of the NeuralStorm (Taking Neuroengineering by Storm) program from its inception. Drawing on more than a decade of evaluation expertise assessing programs in academia, Dr. Spooner brings a vast knowledge of the use of mixed methods to assess participant skill development in programs such as NeuralStorm. Statistical methods used to assess students’ progress include paired sample t-tests that assessed changes over time (pre vs. post) in fellows’ survey responses. Two sample t-tests were also used to determine statistically significant differences in fellows and trainees’ responses at each time point. Student qualitative responses were also analyzed to determine common themes regarding student participation, program benefits, program strengths and weaknesses as well as suggestions for program improvement.
Mariko Chang
Dr. Mariko Chang is a former Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. As President of Mariko Chang Consulting, Inc. she conducts original research and external evaluation services, specializing in grants that seek to increase the retention of women and underrepresented groups in STEM in higher education. She is also an expert on wealth inequality and the author of Shortchanged: Why Women Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done About It.
Andrew X Stewart NextSense EEG
Dr Andrew X Stewart is a neuroengineering researcher working on EEG data and sleep neurotech. Previously, Dr Stewart completed a postdoc at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain, and joined NeuralStorm as it's first program coordinator, and so helped support the program and students in the early years. Andrew was a mentor to NeuralStorm Fellows and Trainees, and advocated for camaraderie in neuroengineering work at UC Davis. He worked richly with NSF for program requirements, with MCC on best program evaluation, and across UC Davis to set up events like the NeuralStorm Workshop and Research Symposia.
Christopher John Nitta
University of California, Davis
orcid.org/0000-0003-1531-2771
Tiffany Marie Chan
University of California, Davis
orcid.org/0009-0009-5080-5222
Tiffany Chan is a 4th-year undergraduate student in biomedical engineering at UC Davis and the recipient of the 2024 ASEE-PSW Section Undergraduate Student Award. She actively contributes to the cube3 Lab, where her interests lie in community building and inclusive practices. Tiffany is involved in various DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) research initiatives within the lab, including organizing student-faculty lunches and participating in the gender equity first-year seminar program. Additionally, she serves as the chair of the undergraduate subcommittee for the department's Health, Equity, and Wellness committee and holds the position of president in the BMES student chapter at UC Davis.
Angelika Aldea Tamura
University of California, Davis
orcid.org/0009-0003-2135-8220
Angelika Tamura is a third-year undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Davis. She is a research assistant for the Cube^3 lab, which primarily does research in engineering education. She is also deeply engaged in the Biomedical Engineering Society chapter at UCD, where she serves as the graphics designer and actively contributes to the Outreach and Fundraising committees. Alongside her involvement in BMES, Angelika is an enthusiastic member of B-Hours, a student-run organization dedicated to projects benefiting clinics in Sacramento. Focusing her course studies in cell and tissue engineering, Angelika is currently seeking research opportunities to further explore her passion in bioprinting and regenerative medicine.
Xin Liu University of California, Davis
Gene Gurkoff University of California, Davis
Dr. Gurkoff is an Associate Professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurological Surgery and his lab sits in the UC Davis Center of Neuroscience. Using multiple rodent models of neurologic disease, including both traumatic brain injury and temporal epilepsy, Dr. Gurkoff is interested in how insults to the brain result in changes in neural activity and behavior. Using a combination of depth and surface electrodes, Dr. Gurkoff evaluates neural oscillations across multiple brain regions, and evaluates whether changes in oscillatory activity correspond to changes in cognitive behavior (both TBI and epilepsy) and the development of spontaneous seizures (epilepsy only). Dr. Gurkoff is also interested in whether neuromodulation, and in particular electric deep brain stimulation, can drive neural activity to improve cognitive outcomes and reduce seizures following injury. In addition to his research program, Dr. Gurkoff is highly invested in the mentoring of the next generation of neuroscientists and neuroengineers. He is on the executive committee of both the NSF-funded NRT "NeuralStorm: Taking Neuroengineering by Storm" and the NIH-funded T32 "Learning, Memory and Plasticity (LAMP)." He was committee chair of the National Neurotrauma Training, Education and Mentoring (TEAM) committee from 2018-2020, and he continues to serve on this committee.
Wilsaan M Joiner University of California, Davis
Dr. Wilsaan Joiner’s research group conducts translational research in healthy individuals and clinical conditions such as Schizophrenia, Alzheimer's Disease, and patients with upper limb differences. The group uses various experimental techniques (e.g., fMRI, eye tracking, motion capture, human psychophysics) and approaches (e.g., robotics, behavioral neuroscience and computational modeling) to investigate the integration of sensory and motor signals, and the role these signals play in guiding goal-directed movements, visual perception, motor adaptation and memory consolidation. Dr. Joiner obtained his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and the National Eye Institute. He was awarded the NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) from the National Eye Institute and was the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award under the Biomedical Engineering Program. Before joining the departments of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior; and Neurology at UC Davis, Dr. Joiner was an associate professor in the Bioengineering Department at George Mason University. At George Mason Dr. Joiner was the recipient of a Mentoring Excellence Award and the Emerging Researcher/Scholar/Creator Award. At UC Davis he is a CAMPOS Scholar and was recently selected as a Chancellor’s Fellow. His current research is funded by several grants from NASA, the Alzheimer's Association, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Erkin Seker
University of California, Davis
orcid.org/0000-0003-2401-3562
Erkin Şeker is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Co-Director for the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine, and the Chair of the newly-established Designated Emphasis in Neuroengineering. His research and teaching interests are at the intersection of micro-/nano-technology and its applications to microelectronics and medicine. He received his PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia (UVA) in 2007 and held postdoctoral positions in the Department of Chemistry at UVA and at the Center for Engineering in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the recipient of a UC Davis – Graduate Studies Distinguished Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentorship Award, UC Davis – Academic Senate Distinguished Graduate and Professional Teaching Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and an NIH NIBIB Trailblazer Award.
Karen A Moxon University of California Davis
Prof. Moxon is a professor in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery at the University of California, Davis. She was a pioneer in the development of brain-machine interfaces early in her career and uses these technologies to understand how the brain encodes cognitive information and how that encode goes awry under different neurological disorders. She has championed education in neuroengineering, creating one of the first graduate programs focused on re-engineering the brain and is now director of the NSF Research Traning grant 'NeuralStorm, taking engineering by storm'. This training grant is preparing graduate students for the future of engineering that will require team-based science between engineering, neuroscientists, computer scientists, psycologist and clinicians, please follow us on LinkedIn. She is also the founder and co-director of WINE: Women In Neural Engineering (womeninneuralengineering@gmail.com), please join us.
Abstract
“NeuralStorm: Taking Neuroengineering by Storm” is a neuroengineering-focused research traineeship program funded by the National Science Foundation. Since the program’s inception in 2022, the NeuralStorm program focused on promoting diversity in the next generation of neuroengineers to perform convergent science by integrating the latest advanced in neuroscience, engineering, and computer science in an ethical way. NeuralStorm promotes diversity and convergent science by integrating multiple programs on campus, with core members being neuroscience, psychology, biomedical engineering, computer science, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and electrical and computer engineering. The program has since enrolled 16 funded Ph.D. student fellows, of whom 8 are women and 3 are underrepresented minorities. An additional 77 Ph.D. students, 36 master’s students, 75 undergraduate students, and 9 Postdocs, have attended at least one event sponsored by NeuralStorm. Ph.D. students that complete a specific subset of the activities receive a Designated Emphasis in Neuroengineering label on their diplomas to formally recognize their training in neuroengineering. The programming for NeuralStorm, covering coursework, professional development, research, and community building, is required for funded fellows but also open to all on campus who are interested. Students are first introduced to NeuralStorm by participating in a 5-day workshop before the start of the academic year with basic training in biomedical ethics, neuroscience, Python, and machine learning. The workshop also provides professional development content in leadership, scientific rigor, reproducibility and responsible conduct of research, and life as a graduate student. The program is also supported by two graduate courses: “Introduction to Neuroengineering” and “Neural Signals & Machine Learning Tools for Neural Data”. Optional practicums (short courses) in machine learning and statistics were also provided to the students. The program facilitates the development of an individual development plan between the student and the advisor(s). The Neuroengineering Journal Club, Seminar Plus (seminar plus discussion and lunch with seminar speaker), and Neuroengineering Lunch and Learn events expose students to advances in neuroengineering research while students conduct their own research in parallel. The formal activities are supplemented by informal gatherings among the students to promote community building. Fellows’ research mentors are required to participate in formal training in mentoring and courses in diversity, equity, and inclusion. We assessed the outcomes of the program quantitatively by pre/post-surveys (issued before the workshop and at the end of the academic year) and qualitatively through semi-structured interviews, with the help of an independent evaluator. In end-of-year assessments of Year 1 (2022-2023), both funded fellows and unfunded trainees reported increased confidence in aspects of neuroengineering skills, ethics, outreach, teamwork, and communication on 5-point Likert-scale survey questions, with some individual questions achieving statistically significant improvements (p<0.05). All students have also demonstrated high interest and satisfaction levels to NeuralStorm and associated activities. These sentiments have been echoed in the analyses of interviews, where students commented on the value of the workshops, courses, and research-focused activities in the program. Students also specifically commented on the supporting environment, inclusivity, and diversity in the participation, by creating an environment conducive to community building and including people from all neuroengineering-related backgrounds (undergraduates, graduates, postdocs, faculty).
Wang, X., & Tran, V., & Lee, G., & Davis, S. J., & Spooner, M., & Chang, M., & Stewart, A. X., & Nitta, C. J., & Chan, T. M., & Tamura, A. A., & Liu, X., & Gurkoff, G., & Joiner, W. M., & Seker, E., & Moxon, K. A. (2025, April), NeuralStorm: Training Graduate Students to Take Neuroengineering by Storm Paper presented at 2025 ASEE PSW Conference, California Polytechnic University, California. 10.18260/1-2--55184
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