University of California Irvine

One of CSULB BUILD’s Ph.D. Partners is University of California Irvine (UCI). Dr. Gillian Hayes, Professor of Informatics and Vice Provost of Graduate Education at UCI, serves on the External Advisory Board for CSULB BUILD and provides the overall leadership and coordination of BUILD collaborative activities with the assistance of Dr. Celina Mojica, Director of Postdoctoral Affairs and Extramural Support. Faculty from the Veterans Administration Long Beach Healthcare System have joint appointments at UCI and serve as faculty mentors for CSULB BUILD student trainees. Our collaboration with UCI includes a variety of activities summarized below.

Field Trips

UCI has organized annual campus field trips for CSULB BUILD student trainees where they have the opportunity to meet with underrepresented doctoral students—who were CSULB alumni—to ask questions about their experiences in graduate school and transitioning from CSULB to UCI. They also have the opportunity to meet with UCI faculty and take tours of their research labs.

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)

As part of our collaboration, CSULB BUILD student trainees have applied to and have been accepted to UCI’s SURF Program. This internship pairs undergraduates with UCI faculty to conduct doctoral-level research and provides research training workshops and events that are designed to help prepare students to apply for graduate school. This summer research experience culminates in a research symposium where students present the research they have worked on during the summer.

Colloquia Series

Part of CSULB BUILD’s training program is a series of Colloquia held twice a semester. Faculty from UCI have been featured speakers at several of them. Open to all faculty and students on campus, the series serves as a recruitment tool for new BUILD faculty mentors and BUILD students, as well as help facilitate networking research opportunities between UCI faculty and CSULB faculty and students.

Workshops

UCI has coordinated with our Research Resources and Training Coordinator to help identify instrumentation and research methodology expertise to provide CSULB BUILD-sponsored faculty and student research training workshops at UCI.