CSUBIOTECH Support Fund

Created in 1987, the California State University Biotechnology (CSUBIOTECH) program, formerly the California State University Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB) has the mission of providing vision, leadership and support for biotechnology education and research throughout the CSU to promote biotechnology and economic development in California. The strategic goals of CSUBIOTECH are to promote innovative biotechnology education and research across the CSU system and provide leadership in training California's biotechnology work force. CSUBIOTECH aims to extend, develop, and expand relationships with regional and industrial partners, and enhance general education across the CSU and California for better understanding of biotechnology issues, challenges, and opportunities.

CSUBIOTECH provides grants and awards, organizes the annual CSU Biotechnology Symposium, promotes industry-responsive curricular innovations, and serves as a liaison between the CSU and government, regional and biotechnology industry partners, including philanthropic partners. The program is cross-cutting involving students, faculty and administrators from life sciences, physical sciences, health sciences, engineering, mathematics, agriculture, business and computer science departments and divisions, and more across the system, including the Chancellor’s Office.

CSUBIOTECH is administered and managed by an Executive Director, based at SDSU, who reports to the CSU Chancellor through a 6-person Presidents’ Commission (drawn from Presidents of the 22 campuses). The Program Office at SDSU is staffed by a Program Administrator, an Administrative Analyst, Administrative Support Coordinator, and a Student Program Specialist. The Program Office is advised and supported by an 18-member Strategic Planning Council comprising faculty and deans from several of the CSU campuses and external representatives from industry, and a 92-member-Faculty Consensus Group comprising biotechnology faculty representatives from all CSU campuses. Altogether, over 1,000 CSU students, faculty, deans, and administrators interact with the CSUBIOTECH program office yearly.

Proposed CSUBIOTECH Travel Awards

Many talented students at SDSU work hard to perform research to push the boundaries of knowledge and improve the lives of Californians. Part of delivering on this effort is attendance of the CSUBIOTECH annual symposium to present posters or give oral talks. Funds are required to support more SDSU students to present their research at this forum that brings their peers from across the CSU system. The CSUBIOTECH Student Travel Grant Program supports faculty-mentored CSU student travel to biotechnology-related professional meetings and workshops or to collect biotechnology-related data at shared instrumentation facilities or research sites.

An average of 5 students SDSU students are supported each year. The goal is to raise $100,000 to endow travel awards to support additional 10 SDSU students a year to attend and present faculty-mentored research at the CSUBIOTECH symposium, biotechnology-related professional meetings and workshops or to collect biotechnology-related data at shared instrumentation facilities or research sites annually, but that number is limited due to funding constraints.

Student Travel Award Campaign Support

The Sethuraman Lab at San Diego State University develops new computational methods, software, and pipelines to understand speciation, genomic ancestry, and human evolution. Over the years, grant funding from CSUBIOTECH has supported numerous undergraduate and graduate students in our lab to (a) understand the evolution of size in a parthenogenetic wasp (2020 CSUPERB COVID-19 microgrant; Tovar et al., 2025), (b) develop a forward-time polyploid genome simulator to estimate evolutionary history and timing of speciation (2023 Graduate Travel Award to Tamsen Dunn; Dunn and Sethuraman 2024), (c) quantify biases and develop new methods to estimate evolutionary history during gene flow from unsampled “ghost” populations (2023 CSUBIOTECH Research Development Grant; Sethuraman et al., 2025, Wanjiku and Sethuraman 2025, Sethuraman 2025), and (d) the development of a composite public health index from combining data from the WHO and large genomic biobanks (2025 CSUBIOTECH Doris Howell Research Scholar – Sathvika Musuvathy). With growing needs to develop new and efficient computational methods that combine inference and data visualizations from large genomic datasets, CSUBIOTECH continues to support training of the next generation of undergraduate and graduate students in bioinformatics labs across the CSU to drive discoveries.

"I began studying biochemistry as an undergraduate at San Diego State University, but did not truly enjoy my major until I joined Dr. Tom Huxford’s Structural Biochemistry Lab in my sophomore year. I appreciated the hands-on experience that the research lab provided, along with the opportunities to learn new skills and problem solve, and committed to spending as much time in the lab as I could between classes. In my senior year, I applied for and was honored to receive the Howell-CSUBIOTECH scholarship for my project researching the structure of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) kinase domain in complex with a novel small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor. This scholarship helped fund the completion of my undergraduate degree, which allowed me to focus wholeheartedly on my research project, and played a large role in further igniting and supporting my passion for biochemistry. In part due to this encouragement, I decided to stay at San Diego State University in the Structural Biochemistry Lab, pursuing an MS degree in chemistry with a focus in biochemistry." - Ingrid Sebor, MS Student