College of Science and Engineering

More than 640 SFSU supporters made donations during the University’s first-ever giving day 

Thanks to the generous support of the University’s alumni, faculty, staff, students and friends, SFSU’s inaugural Gators Give Day was a resounding success. More than 640 SFSU supporters united on April 2 and raised over $109,000 in just 24 hours. These gifts will immediately impact scholarships, academic programs, student organizations and essential University initiatives.

More than 60 groups consisting of colleges, schools, departments, student organizations and clubs participated in the event through their own online fundraising pages, in addition to the main University giving page. Every donation made on April 2 counted toward the Giving Day totals. 

Alumni made up the majority of those giving on Gators Give Day (26%), followed closely by SFSU staff and faculty (24%) and students (20%).

“This extraordinary day truly highlights the community spirit that defines SFSU,” said Jeff Jackanicz, vice president of University Advancement. “We are grateful to everyone who participated and helped us meet our goal of empowering student success. With so many alumni, faculty and staff, and student donors, it’s clear we are continuing to build a broad culture of community-driven philanthropy at SFSU.”

The College of Science & Engineering (CoSE) raised more than $10,000 from 59 donors, the most money raised by any individual college. CoSE plans to use the money to support its Student Project Showcase, an event that culminates in a year’s worth of faculty-guided research. Students present their research findings from at the spring event. 

“I am so grateful to the donors that provided support for our Student Project Showcase on Gators Give Day. This annual event highlights more than 200 research and senior projects across our entire college,” said College of Science & Engineering Dean Carmen Domingo. “Having the opportunity to put into practice what they have learned over the years at SFSU gives students a deep sense of pride and confidence that they have developed the skills and knowledge to launch a successful career in STEM.”

Ninety-six people donated to SFSU’s Men’s Rugby Club, the most for any campus organization raising more than $3,500.

Kiril Gupta, secretary and head of social media for the 45-member SFSU Men’s Rugby Club team, says he was especially pleased to see that the team received the highest number of student donors of any group. “When we brought the team back during the fall ’22 semester, our old officers always emphasized campus engagement and being a part of the school community,” he said. “Having a high number of donors shows to our team that we have done a great job of being a part of the school community, and we are grateful for students at SF State supporting us.” 

The team plans to spend the windfall on field rentals, new equipment, travel, medical supplies, new uniforms and more. 

If you missed Gators Give Day or still want to help, there’s always time to make a difference. Ongoing support ensures that SFSU will continue to deliver excellence and access to transformative education rooted in innovation and equity. Learn more about giving to support SFSU.  And look forward to next year’s Gators Give Day, when we’ll achieve even greater success for our campus community. 

Projects tackled memory loss, data protection, mental health and more

After successfully reinstating San Francisco State University’s in-person hackathon last year, SF Hacks kept the momentum rolling by jumping into planning their 2025 event and making it bigger and better. 

On April 4 – 6, 300 hackers convened at SFSU’s Annex 1 for the annual SF Hacks hackathon. Participants came from all over the country, with over 80% coming from all over California and 30% returning from SF Hacks 2024. The attendee number jumps to 430 when considering volunteers, judges, mentors and more. The event almost hit the venue limit on the first day.

At its core, SF Hacks is a 48-hour hardware and software building competition, but that description doesn’t fairly encapsulate the event. It is really a community affair with mini events, panels, workshops, professional and social networking, fun activities like Bob Ross painting and tennis, complimentary food … and it’s a totally free event to boot.

“Of course, we have the innovation aspect that is with all hackathons. But something we feel is important and strongly about here at SFSU is our social activism,” said SF Hacks president Marco Garcia, a Computer Science sophomore, of this year’s “tech for good” theme. 

“With so many different ways to harness technology, it’s so important we have a guiding principle and that is to build for good,” said SF Hacks Director Ria Thakker during the opening ceremony, encouraging hackers to think more deeply about what it means to build for good. “What are your preferred use cases, whose perspectives you’re considering and how to utilize your knowledge to give back to your community."

One project that placed in several categories was a robot called Remi that helps people with memory loss. When Remi sees a familiar face, it recalls and shares details about that person to the user. An SFSU team won the Best AI Emerging Technology prize with their project Secure Sense. This project helps prevent information leaks by detecting and blocking or masking sensitive data when people use generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini. 

Although it can be daunting, it’s rewarding to push yourself on your own terms to see what you can do, explained SF Hacks Sponsorship Chair Keith Curry, a senior double majoring in Computer Science and Biology. “We take all these courses and learn all these skills. But a lot of times, the curriculum doesn’t test the extent of our ability. It just tests our ability to adhere to a curriculum."

However, students don’t need to be experienced coders, or even computer scientists, to participate. There are tools and mentors available to help beginners learn technical skills. This year, SF Hacks also highlighted the cross-disciplinary collaboration needed to build projects, said SF Hacks Vice President Ashley Ching, a Computer Science senior.

“We tried to get many people outside of technical roles, like product managers, researchers, UX designers and other roles more geared towards user experience or full vision,” she explained. “We aimed to get those people involved so people can learn from them.” 

More than 17 industry and academic sponsors supported this year’s event. SF Hacks 2025 was the first SF Hacks to secure a title sponsor and co-host OpenMind through the single largest contribution in SF Hacks history, the team explains. Some sponsors supported specific tracks: SFSU’s Lam Family College of Business sponsored the “best start-up pitch” track, rewarding the top team a $1,000 seed fund. In total, 32 judges awarded over $7,000 in prizes (monitors, air fryers, cash and more) across different challenge tracks and overall competition.

All of this — event logistics, finances, marketing, sponsorship and all other details — was organized by students. The core SF Hacks leadership includes over 40 students who collaborate with another 11 SFSU student organizations. 

“I’ve been here for two years. I was roped into it by my friend. Now I’m too deep into it and can’t quit,” laughed Thakker, a third-year Computer Science major. 

 “When you plan it, it’s very satisfying to see everything that you worked for and seeing the impact,” added SF Hacks Treasurer Kurt Balais, a Computer Science senior.

Learn more about SF Hacks events, this year's projects and the Department of Computer Science. 

SFSU researchers have published a step-by-step tutorial for applying machine learning to drug resistance

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing health crisis that could lead to millions of deaths by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. Antibiotics are critical for human health, but many microbes are evolving resistance to one or more drugs. San Francisco State University researchers are among those using machine learning to predict drug resistance in patients. And they’re trying to remedy a related problem, too: the lack of resources that teach how to use machine learning to detect antibiotic resistance. 

In a new paper in PLOS Computational Biology, the SFSU team published a step-by-step machine learning tutorial for beginners. Other than Biology Professor Pleuni Pennings, the remaining seven researchers on the paper were undergraduate, graduate students and post-baccalaureate students; many were first-time researchers, and nearly all were new to machine learning. 

“We wanted to do a tutorial paper instead [of a research paper] because we thought it was more important to put out a teachable resource. We struggled to find one, so we wanted to make our own,” said co-first author Faye Orcales (B.S., ’21), who worked on the project as a post-bac.

“The students may not realize that it’s sort of bold [to submit this paper to PLOS]. It just shows that we do very high-quality work,” said Pennings, adding that the students really took ownership over the writing and pushing the manuscript forward.

Collaborating with faculty in Biology, Computer Science and Chemistry & Biochemistry, Pennings is the director or co-director for the undergraduate Promoting Inclusivity in Computing (PINC) program, graduate complement Graduate Opportunities to Learn Data Science (GOLD) and Science Coding Immersion Program (SCIP), an all-virtual, self-paced coding program for students, staff and faculty. All the student researchers initially learned coding and/or machine learning from one of these programs and then continued to develop their skills via longer-term research experiences. 

“One of my motivations to making all of these materials is because I’m teaching these classes and I wish there was a book about machine learning for health or biology. Something that is doable, fun and relevant. Something that’s intuitive, practical and discusses the ethical side,” said Pennings, noting that she’s already using this published tutorial in her classes.

“When I joined the PINC program, I could see that the instructors were motivated to teach coding in a very accessible way to Biology students. I felt really comfortable in the program because my peers were fellow biologists eager to learn,” said Orcales, now a computational scientist at UCSF applying to Ph.D. programs. She hopes this new tutorial will help introduce more of her peers into the machine-learning space. “I hope our readers take away that machine learning isn’t this daunting difficult thing to learn when you have the right resources.”

Visit SFSU’s Department of Biology to learn more about student opportunities like Promoting Inclusivity in Computing (PINC), Graduate Opportunities to Learn Data Science (GOLD) and Science Coding Immersion Program (SCIP).

The University will collaborate with other universities and two national labs to train students for the renewable energy workforce

Viruses have a bad reputation and for good reason. Despite their connection to disease, some viruses can be used for good. San Francisco State University Assistant Professor Archana Anand wants to address the knowledge gap about phages — viruses that infect bacteria — and their potential renewable energy applications, such as helping develop biofuels and mitigating methane emissions.

To achieve this goal, the Department of Energy (DOE) awarded Anand a $2.2 million grant for a new Phage Pathways program. By collaborating with national labs and other universities, the three-year program is poised to strengthen the pipeline for renewable energy microbiologists.

“The aim of this grant is to cultivate a new generation of microbiologists. But they will not be focused entirely on traditional microbiology but will focus on the intersection of microbial ecology and renewable energy,” said Anand. “I don’t think the academic needs have met the job needs in the renewable energy-microbiology ecology space.”

At the core of this program is SFSU’s partnership with Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) — two major DOE-funded institutions — and San Diego State University (SDSU), UC Davis and Skyline Community College. Together, they will update curricula in microbiology courses at the different universities, create new student research opportunities at each institution and provide students with cross-institutional mentorship for research, leadership and career development. Students will receive financial support for their participation. 

“This program could be impactful for students’ careers going forward,” said Anand of this DOE grant and the importance of collaborating with the national labs. She notes that there’s been an increase in these labs collaborating with institutions like SFSU. “Hopefully, the students will be really into this program and will come back to find a job in a similar setting.” 

A major part of Phages Pathways is to introduce more students into renewable energy and microbiology workforces. Each year, the Phage Pathways will recruit 20 undergraduate and graduate students from SFSU, SDSU, UC Davis and Skyline College. This annual cohort will include 10 SF State students (five third- and fourth-year undergraduates and five graduate students). Skyline students will participate in SFSU offerings. SFSU’s program will also complement Skyline’s SEA-PHAGES, a similar program restricted to first- and second-year undergrads. Anand explains that many of these students drop out of this workforce pipeline because they lack relevant training opportunities during their latter undergraduate years. 

“If they drop that continued exposure to this topic, then students do not have an interest in this and they do not develop the necessary skillsets,” Anand explained. “What we’re saying is that the [Skyline] students can feed into SFSU’s program.” 

During the school year, students will attend the updated microbiology courses at their home university and participate in research at SFSU, SDSU or UC Davis. They will also attend a three-day symposium at UC Davis with student presentations, workshops and keynote lectures.

In the summer, all participants will attend two multi-day research workshops created by SFSU and LBNL researchers. One weeklong bootcamp will teach students fundamental phage research techniques for phage discovery, such as phage isolation and characterization. The second workshop will teach students how to analyze and annotate phage genomics data. Each year, two students will be selected to attend an additional 10-week intensive research internship at SNL that focuses on wet lab and computational skills crucial for bioenergy applications. Throughout the year, the program will also offer various professional development activities that will be open to the Phage Pathways cohorts and students outside of the program. 

“To drive these breakthrough discoveries and move science forward, we should enable undergraduate and graduate students at all universities — not just at R1 institutions — but for everyone to engage in high impact research,” Anand said. “You never know who the next Einstein is going to be.” 

Learn more about SF State’s Department of Biology and apply for Phage Pathways online. 

The new science building creates a dynamic, inclusive learning environment by ‘putting science on display’

SAN FRANCISCO – January 24, 2025 – San Francisco State University (SFSU) held a dedication ceremony today for its new Science and Engineering Innovation Center (SEIC), an all-electric science building filled with innovative student-centric teaching spaces. Located prominently on 19th Avenue, the building was constructed with the future in mind, specifically designed to prepare students for various STEM workforces while emphasizing student academic support and sustainability.  

“In some ways more important from the local perspective, 80% of our science and engineering alumni live in the Bay Area, 83% stay in California and 8% of the employees in the largest Bay Area biopharma companies are [from] San Francisco State. This new center will grow the already significant number of alumni working in the Bay Area STEM industries by preparing our graduates to better compete in these fields. An investment in San Francisco State is an investment in the health and future of California,” said San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney during the ceremony.

At the ceremony, San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, District 19 Assemblymember Catherine Stefani and CEO of Gilead Daniel O’Day shared SF State’s role in the biotech and engineering pipelines and how SEIC will prepare SFSU’s diverse students for the industry workforce. 

The ceremony marked the completion of the new 125,000-square-foot SEIC building and renovation of the existing adjacent Science Building. SEIC is home to the College of Science & Engineering’s (CoSE) Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and School of Engineering (SOE), as well as the CoSE dean’s office and the College of Professional & Global Education (CPaGE) campus operations on the fifth floor.  

The college anticipates SEIC will serve all 7,000 CoSE students and thousands of general education students each year. The building is also open to the University community for seminars, workshops, student activities and more. CoSE Dean Carmen Domingo hopes that the building will be an inclusive space where students can see themselves as future engineers, chemists and scientists. By “putting science on display,” SEIC can help demystify what it means to be a scientist — and who can be in these fields.  

“The SEIC is more than a science building; it’s an inclusive space for students to explore, innovate and learn with cutting-edge technology and talented faculty,” said Domingo. “This major achievement, made possible by our generous partners and donors, will help thousands of diverse graduates make a profound impact on our regional workforce.”

A few of SEIC’s highlights include: 

• A configurable large learning space for over 100 students on the first floor that can be rearranged to facilitate group work, with an interactive AV system that allows students and instructors to dynamically share work and learn from each other. 
• Three studio-style integrated lecture/lab chemistry classrooms  
• Chemistry research labs with industry-standard equipment, introducing new experimental capabilities for protein crystallography, enzyme kinetics and drug development 
• A robotics and mechatronics lab with a multi-robotic-arm-automatized assembly line 
• Power systems (a collaboration with PG&E) and energy systems labs (supporting a Department of Energy-funded Center of Excellence in energy efficiency) to study power distribution and HVAC/energy research, respectively 
• A structural and seismic engineering lab with strong wall and floor and a robotic motion platform to test structural dynamics, hazard mitigation and more 
• A makerspace and two garages with large and small machining equipment for student projects, like concrete canoes, Formula 1 SAE racecars, steel bridges and other senior projects 

New equipment and programs in the building were funded by the Catalyze the Future campaign, which raised over $25 million from private sources. Individual donors — alumni and non-alumni alike — made generous gifts to support SFSU’s continued leadership in fueling the region’s biotech and tech workforce pipelines. Industry partners such as the Genentech Foundation, Gilead Foundation, Agilent and Keysight were among the generous corporate donors helping outfit SEIC with the cutting-edge research equipment and support for student success initiatives and programming. Additionally, a $5 million challenge grant from the Wayne and Gladys Valley Foundation was crucial to the campaign’s success. 

Based on student feedback, SEIC includes comfortable study spaces with ample natural light throughout the building. The design also incorporated spacious workspaces for group work, such as tutoring and senior projects. Many of the rooms and labs have large windows so visitors can see research happening in real time.  

“It’s really cool. We have a building we can be proud of and say, ‘Come, check out this work,’” said Senior Computer Engineer Emely Villa, who has been looking forward to working in SEIC since coming to SFSU in 2021. “There are a lot of display areas, too, where our old projects are going to be able to be displayed. … It’s very nice to be proud of showcasing the work at the new [SEIC].” 

SEIC is on track for LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Gold certification. In November, at the CSU Facilities Management conference, SEIC won two awards for the architecture and engineering and the energy efficiency categories. The building is SFSU’s first all-electric building with a micro-grid; it has roof-top solar panels and a battery back-up power system. The landscaping incorporated adaptive and native plants, no-mow grass and bioswale to improve its resistance to climate change.   

Learn more about SFSU’s College of Science & Engineering.  

Student research at SFSU leads to a new article on frog calls and deadly infections in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 

What noise does a frog make? Many of us would say “ribbit, ribbit.” Funnily enough, the Pacific tree frog (aka Pacific chorus frog) is the only species that really ribbits. (Listen to the variety of “peep,” “waaaaaaa,” “pa-tank,” and more sounds from other species on AmphibiaWeb.) Given how widespread Pacific tree frogs are in California, there’s a chance you’ve seen or heard their ribbits yourself. 

During mating season, female frogs in this species choose males based on variations in their call — something scientists find intriguing from an evolutionary standpoint. “If all females have the same preference for type of call, then why haven’t all males evolved to have the exact call and be uniform?” said Julia Messersmith (M.S., ’21). “One theory is the Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis.”

The hypothesis connects male frog calls to their possible resistance to parasitism, a serious global problem facing amphibians. Messersmith studied this hypothesis for her master’s thesis at San Francisco State University and published her findings in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. She and two other SFSU students co-authored the paper with their faculty advisers, SFSU Biology Professor and Department Chair Vance Vredenburg and Associate Professor Alejandro Vélez (now at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville).

The 40-year-old Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis posits that male frogs’ mating call traits (or plumage traits in birds) are related to their health, specifically their resistance to parasitism. Like other amphibians, Pacific tree frogs are in danger of contracting Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), a fungal pathogen killing amphibians worldwide. If the Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis is right, it’s possible that female frogs are preferentially choosing the calls of “healthier” males. Although Bd infection is normally lethal, Pacific tree frogs sometimes fare better than other species — but this makes them effective carriers for disease who can spread the pathogen to other amphibians via water or direct contact.

“[Vredenburg] had a lot of trust in me and a lot of the undergrads in his lab. He let us do things that maybe wouldn’t be done in other labs, but I think totally could be done by a lot of undergrads,” Lutz said. As he’s progressed in his own career, he says that level of trust in undergrads is not always the case elsewhere. As an SFSU graduate student, his research experience even led him to collaborate with H.T. Harvey & Associates — a consulting firm providing ecological support to public agencies, private entities and nonprofits — and get a job with Applied Technology and Science, another consulting firm in the area.

“SF State is such a beautiful place for a growing scientist. They really allow you to reach your maximum potential,” Azar said. “They are there for you and want you to succeed.” 

Learn more about the SFSU Department of Biology.

The grants expand research opportunities in engineering, robotics and quantum computing

Technology is constantly evolving, which means industries — and the people who work for them — must change to keep up. San Francisco State University faculty want to make sure their students have the skills and flexibility they need to compete in these growing, ever-shifting fields such as civil, mechanical and computer engineering and quantum computing.

Three new grants — two from the Department of Defense (DOD) and one from the Department of Energy (DOE) — will expand the research capabilities of San Francisco State students and better prepare them to achieve their academic and career goals. The faculty leading these projects are in SF State’s School of Engineering (SOE) and Department of Computer Science. 

Structural hazard mitigation research

A $541,541 DOD grant was awarded to SOE Professor Zhaoshuo Jiang, who leads the Intelligent Structural Hazard Mitigation lab. The funds support purchasing two state-of-the-art shake tables (Quanser Corporation’s six-degrees of freedom hexapod motion platforms) and a high-throughput data acquisition system (DAQ). This new equipment will significantly advance the capacity of performing experimental testing with accurate sensing and control, thereby enhancing the institution’s ability to support diverse research areas that are of interest to DOD. The new tables can hold a load of up to 100 kg per platform and shake objects in all three axes, a significant step up from the currently available tables, which only move along a single direction and can accommodate a maximum of 7.5 kg. This means researchers can assess larger prototypes under more realistic conditions. The DAQ system from Crystal Instruments is a high-performance, modular platform designed for real-time dynamic signal analysis, offering flexibility in channel configurations and real-time processing capabilities. The DAQ system will be integrated with the shake tables to assemble a complete instrumentation that supports a wide range of state-of-the-art research and offer unprecedented research capacity in SOE at SF State.

“This new equipment will allow students to gain hands-on experience with common research purpose of characterizing, modeling, and testing various systems,” Jiang said. “By working directly with state-of-the-art technology, our students will develop skills that make them highly competitive and well-prepared for careers in these fields.”

The new instrumentation will be housed in the applied project space in the University’s new Science & Engineering Innovation Center (SEC). Jiang’s collaborators include SOE Professors Cheng Chen and Xiaorong Zhang, Associate Professor David Quintero and Jenna Wong, and Assistant Professor Zhuwei Qin.

Human-machine performance lab

DOD awarded another $409,433 grant to School of Engineering Associate Professor David Quintero to acquire state-of-the-art instrumentation for a human-machine performance lab. The new equipment will include a treadmill, markerless motion capture and human-machine interaction equipment like a robotic leg, hip exoskeleton and rehabilitation robot. Combining these instruments will help establish a research system that integrates humans and machines to enhance human physical and cognitive performance. 

Quintero leads SF State’s CARE (Controls for Assistive and Rehabilitation Robotics) lab, which focuses on designing wearable robotic systems that can be viable solutions for movement assistance for people with limited mobility, such as amputees or people with impaired limbs from neuromotor control deficiency. Current projects include an exoskeleton glove to help individuals with limited mobility. For this new interdisciplinary lab space, Quintero is collaborating with School of Engineering Professors Xiaorong Zhang and Zhaoshuo Jiang and Assistant Professors Sanchita Ghose and Alyssa Kubota, and Department of Kinesiology faculty Professor Kate Hamel and Associate Professor Leia Bagesteiro.

“This equipment is an important accomplishment for having SF State students access to get hands-on research practice using such equipment that will allow our students to be competitive in the job market and/or pursue Ph.D. programs,” Quintero explained. “The robotic leg alone has only be at R1 institutions and the company has stated we are the first West Coast region to acquire the robotic leg.”

Quantum computing comes to SFSU

SF State, along with Lawerence Berkeley Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, is part of new multi-institutional project funded by the DOE. Associate Professor of Computer Science Wes Bethel and Assistant Professor Daniel Huang were awarded $250,000 as part of the larger five-year grant aiming to bridge the gap between theoretical quantum advantages and practical scientific applications. 

Researchers will develop quantum algorithms and quantum machine learning methods applicable across diverse scientific domains. Quantum algorithms might help overcome limitations of classical data encoding such as its high computational expense of time and memory. Unfortunately, these quantum approaches have not yet improved speed. The scientists will therefore focus on efficient quantum data encoding and error mitigation. Their project will study the relationship between scientific data analysis algorithms, data types, quantum data encoding and current quantum hardware. In addition to introducing new research prospects at SF State, this project provides students new opportunities to collaborate with prestigious national labs. 

“The grant also results in new opportunities for SFSU students in the form of education and research,” Bethel said. “The SFSU Computer Science Department offers a new course in quantum computing, and the grant provides support for a limited number of students to work as part of the multi-institutional team.”

Learn more about opportunities in SFSU’s School of Engineering and Department of Computer Science. 

Using this tool, organizations can prioritize finding the right candidates to maintain healthy work culture

It feels like narcissism is everywhere these days: politics, movies and TV, sports, social media. You might even see signs of it at work, where it can be particularly detrimental. Is it possible to keep a workplace free of destructive, manipulative egotists? 

More and more organizations have come to San Francisco State University’s experts in organizational psychology asking for help doing just that. In response, University researchers developed a tool for job interviews to assess narcissistic grandiosity among potential job candidates. San Francisco State Psychology Professors Kevin Eschleman and Chris Wright and four student researchers led the project, published in the Journal of Personality Assessment.

“We focused on narcissism because it’s one of the most commonly talked about characteristics of people. Really, it represents a lot of things that can go bad in terms of a team,” Eschleman said. “But it’s a characteristic that is very attractive in the short-term. [Narcissists] often have tendencies to be very goal-oriented and are often very successful. There’s a lure to somebody who is high in narcissism.” 

The tool developed by the SF State researchers — the Narcissism Interview Scale for Employment (NISE) — is a set of behavioral and situational questions that can be incorporated into a job interview. One question asks respondents to describe their approach to leading a team. Another asks how candidates would procced if they disagree with a plan that the rest of their team likes — and the project requires unanimous consent to move forward. Interviewers are trained to rate candidate responses, providing a more scientific and consistent way to evaluate a candidate’s propensity for narcissistic grandiosity. 

The project started four years ago when Eschleman noticed an uptick in organizations asking about effective teams, candidate selection and how to avoid “bad apples.” It’s easy for organizations to be enticed by how a candidate’s skills appear on paper, but failing to properly consider personality might derail team-oriented environments, Eschleman notes. Employees with narcissistic grandiosity tend to have inflated views of self and make self-focused and short term-focused decisions instead of considering long-term organizational needs. They may also abuse and try to protect their sense of power and control, he adds.

“This isn’t a categorical diagnosis,” Eschleman clarified, noting that everyone probably falls somewhere on the continuum of narcissism. “What we’re looking at are people’s consistencies over time. It’s how they view themselves or how others view them consistently over time. Do they engage in these actions consistently?”

The authors acknowledge that this assessment is not a perfect science. There are many other factors in building a successful team and healthy work environment. But they hope their tool will increase the odds for success.

While the researchers have been studying these topics for years, they wanted to make sure their tool was easy to use and could be adapted by different work environments. It is why they focused on job interviews, something accepted and considered appropriate by both organizations and applicants in the hiring process.

Sharon Pidakala (M.S., ’22), one of the study authors, is now a People & Development Manager at Lawyers On Demand in Singapore. Her work involves talent acquisition, culture, development, organizational policies and employee engagement. 

“I’ve been grateful to put my research into daily use. It’s really important to make sure that these questions are not outrightly direct because you don’t want it to look like you’re asking someone, ‘Are you a narcissist?’” explained Pidakala, whose SFSU thesis focused on developing the NISE tool. “These questions are raised in a way to make it look favorable for the candidate.”

Pidakala came to SF State specifically to get this type of training. With an undergraduate background in psychology, she sought specialized training in organizational psychology to further refine and expand her expertise in the field.

"Attending SF State and studying organizational psychology has been incredibly valuable, equipping me with versatile skills that can be applied globally," she said. 

Learn more about SFSU’s Industrial/Organizational Psychology program.

Two new papers could help improve understanding of octopus arm function, development, evolution and more

Octopuses are fascinating. Their eight arms gracefully whip through water and can accomplish extraordinary tasks like using tools and opening jars. While humans have one spinal cord attached to their brain, in octopuses, it’s almost like each arm has its own spinal cord (minus the actual spine) and nervous system. These arms can even initiate a response without consulting the brain. 

How octopus arms can do all this at a cellular level has largely remained a neuroscience mystery — one that’s proved difficult to study because of technological limitations and the expense of research. But now San Francisco State University researchers are starting to provide answers. 

Trying to overcome those previous limitations, the San Francisco State researchers created three-dimensional molecular and anatomical maps of the inner neuronal circuitry of octopus arms. Their recent findings were published in two scientific papers in the journal Current Biology.

“Having [these two papers] converging at the same time means the amount we can learn from any single experiment is just astronomically higher,” SF State Biology Associate Department Chair and Assistant Professor Robyn Crook said of her lab’s research. “I would say these papers are really facilitating discovery in new ways.” 

This research was supported by an Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised grant of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Crook’s Allen Distinguished Investigator (ADI) grant was the first recipient in the California State University (CSU) system since the grant’s inception in 2010. 

A traditional two-dimensional look at the octopus arm is comparable to taking a thin slice out of the middle of a fruit loaf. It’s difficult to know if distribution of fruits and nuts in that slice is representative of distribution and interactions throughout the loaf. Instead, postdoctoral fellow Gabrielle Winters-Bostwick and graduate student Diana Neacsu took multiple sections along the octopus arm to create 3D reconstructions of cell distribution and gross anatomy, respectively. 

The ADI project and Crook’s mentorship were instrumental for Neacsu, now a Ph.D. student at Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven in Belgium. During her two years in Crook’s lab, Neacsu gained advanced technical skills and networked and collaborated with more senior researchers, and now she has more scientific research papers in the pipeline. 

“Before I met her, I never really understood the concept of mentorship,” Neacsu said of Crook. “I kind of just thought [mentors] were teachers that are available during office hours.” 

Neacsu’s and Winters-Bostwick’s papers enabled a myriad of research opportunities both within Crook’s lab and beyond. Other labs have already showed interest in using these tools for cephalopod neuroscience research. 

The SF State team is looking at live tissues and seeing how they respond to chemical and mechanical stimulation, trying to understand neurons firing in real time. With the new 3D maps, they can make realistic predictions about what’s happening inside an octopus arm to create these responses. There are also a lot of evolutionary questions Crook’s lab is eager to answer. 

“Why do you have an animal with this much complexity that doesn’t seem to follow the same rules as our other example — humans — of a very complex nervous system?” Crook asked. “There’s a lot of hypotheses. It might be functional. There might be something fundamentally different in the tasks octopus arms have to do. But it could also be an evolutionary accident.”

Learn more about research in SF State’s Department of Biology.