Student Honored for Research to Improve Belonging in Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical engineering senior Tiffany Chan has received a Hanson Family Undergraduate Research Publication Award from the Undergraduate Research Center at the University of California, Davis. 

The annual award recognizes publications of outstanding undergraduate research, scholarship or creative activity in any academic subject conducted at UC Davis with guidance by UC Davis faculty. 

The award honors Chan’s paper, “Improving sense of belonging in biomedical engineering students through student-faculty lunches,” which she developed as part of the Cube³ Lab, led by Assistant Professor of Teaching in Biomedical Engineering Xianglong Wang.

“I’m incredibly honored to receive this award,” Chan said. “The recognition means a lot and reflects the impact of ongoing efforts to build community and belonging in engineering. I’m especially thankful to Professor Wang for his mentorship and encouragement throughout this journey.”

Chan’s paper was the result of a multipronged effort. In 2023, she developed, organized and secured funding for free lunches that bring undergraduate biomedical engineers together with faculty members to improve a sense of social, academic and personal belonging for students within the department. Each month, Chan identified four students to pair with one faculty member for a casual meeting at The Gunrock, an on-campus restaurant near the Silo.

“These lunches have turned out to be very successful,” Wang said. “In the past two years, we have conducted one lunch every month during the academic year, benefiting upward of 70 BME undergraduate students.”

With Wang’s guidance, Chan transformed this initiative into a formal research project — using survey design, statistical analysis and qualitative coding — to understand how these events fostered community and reduced communication barriers between students and faculty. Through this research, she found that faculty-student lunches are an economical method for promoting an equal sense of belonging for undergraduates of different academic levels and ethnic and gender identities.

“This project has reinforced my commitment to applying rigorous research in education for all,” Chan said. “I aim to continue developing scalable, evidence-based interventions that support students from all backgrounds in engineering.”

When Chan graduates with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering this summer, she will have published seven peer-reviewed articles on engineering education research, including work on a new course for first-year students to learn about and find solutions to the issues women face in engineering.

“All these publications and being recognized with this award have validated Tiffany’s motivation and dedication to research for the past two and half years,” Wang said. “I am looking forward to seeing more exciting things to come when Tiffany starts working on her M.S. thesis with me in the fall to improve the assessment of our clinical immersion Quarter at Aggie Square program.”

Tiffany plans to pursue a Ph.D. with a dual focus in biomedical engineering and engineering education at UC Davis, with the goal of becoming a teaching-oriented faculty member.