CSULB Biological Sciences

Starting the week with our student of the day: Alexis Codding!

Alexis is an M.S. candidate studying marine ecology with a passion for quantitative ecology. Her research has taken her from California kelp forests to coral reefs in French Polynesia and even bird banding stations. She loves combining fieldwork and data analysis to better understand how ecosystems respond to environmental change. While fieldwork first drew her to ecology, she has developed a love for using data to reveal the hidden patterns that shape ecosystems.

To end another amazing week, here’s our student of the day: Kelly Hood 🎓

Kelly is one of Dr. Stankowich’s graduate student who defended her thesis Spring 2026. Kelly will be continuing in the role as the CSULB Vertebrate Museum Collection Manager and considering picking up a number of new hobbies like woodworking, rock climbing, and taxidermy in her new spare time

Today’s student of the day is: Claribel Alcantar 🎉

Claribel is one of Dr. Allen’s students who just received their Master’s in Biology. Claribel defended her thesis in spring 2026. In the fall, Claribel will be getting her Ph.D. in Ecology at UC Davis in the Marine Environmental Physiology lab led by Dr. Anne Todgham.

Starting off the week with our student of the day: Adrian Lopez-Lopez! Adrian just finished his master’s program in Biology. He is currently working in UCI’s transgenic mouse facility with the husbandry and genotyping teams to produce transgenic mouse models for research, with a focus on Alzheimer’s disease. He hopes to apply for the 2028-2029 cycle of PhD programs with the goal of researching the genetic regulation of autoinflammatory disease.

Even though grad season is over, we still want to celebrate our students and highlight their milestones! Our student of the day is: Daniel Erdody.

In Fall 2026, Daniel will continue his academic journey as a PhD student in the Mathematical, Computational, and Systems Biology program at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), where he plans to further develop computational approaches to understand enzyme function and microbial metabolism. His long-term goal is to advance computational biotechnology by integrating bioinformatics, machine learning, and systems biology to accelerate discovery in sustainable bioenergy and environmental microbiology.

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Biological Sciences Hooding and Award Ceremony Spring 2026 🎉🎉

On Sunday, we celebrated a wonderful chapter in Biological Sciences. From our graduates to awardees, we are incredibly proud of your dedication, hard work, and perseverance. Look at where it has brought you! To our graduates, we can’t wait to see where science takes you. We know the future of science is promising thanks to students like you. To our awardees, we are looking forward to seeing you have plenty more accomplishments in these upcoming semesters.

Thank you to our staff for putting this amazing ceremony together. Thank you to our faculty for guiding our students and pushing them beyond their limits. Thank you to the families and loved ones who showed up. It is because of support systems like yours that students can perform their very best.

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Congrats to Kelly Hood for successfully defending her thesis today! Kelly, we appreciate everything you do for our department, and we are so happy we got to be a part of this moment! Woohoo!

Today we celebrated Dr. Gharakhanian’s retirement! Her legacy will live on in the Biological Sciences Department. Her dedication to teaching, research, and countless contributions are appreciated and will be missed dearly. Our department wishes her nothing but joy in this new chapter.

Fun Fact: thanks to Dr. Gharakhanian’s awesome contributions, we now have a set protocol on receiving dry ice.

Yesterday’s BIOL 696B Poster Session 🧬🔬🧪🧫

Some of our grad students had a chance to show the research projects they have been working on. All our students work so hard; we love to see them show off ther hard work!

Our CNSM Faculty Research Showcase speakers 🔊 Special shoutout to Dr. Putman and Dr. Carter for representing Biological Sciences.

So proud of all our faculty in CNSM!