Matthew Wheelock Stahl
Using a combination of participant-observation and interview methods, Matt will study a local subculture of “indie” rock musicians, in order to theorize this marginal subculture’s relationship to the mainstream music industry. A community “insider” as both a performer and producer, Matt will be in an excellent position to analyze the community’s unique features and to determine the extent to which it may be pioneering a new type of relationship to the mass culture industry. Matt’s Senior Honors Thesis in Mass Communications will situate the data he collects in the field […]
Melissa Florence Baird
Melissa’s interdisciplinary inquiry into the destruction of pre-historic rock art sites in California promises to shed new light on a relatively new but important field of archeological preservation. Through a combination of library research and field work in Mexico and the United States, Melissa will attempt to account for the neglect of these visual images left by ancient hunter-gatherer societies and to argue for the importance of their conservation and preservation. In addition to launching her Anthropology Senior Honors Thesis this summer, Melissa will be acquiring skills in a variety […]
Ori Adam Skloot
Ori’s project unites his interest in business with his strong commitment to environmental sustainability. Specifically, he will be focusing on the emerging recycling industry in Israel. Israel presents a particularly interesting case study, because it is a country in which industrialization and expansion continue to progress with only minimal consideration given to their environmental impact, despite generally high educational levels among its citizens/consumers. Ori will begin by studying the organizational structure, government involvement and history of Berkeley’s local recycling system in order to gain a better understanding of the factors […]
Tamarind A. Rossetti-Johnson
Tamarind will create an experiential multimedia performance piece that involves viewers in exploring processes and representations of communication. Live performers will interact with video documentation, photographs and drawings of visual symbols of technological communication, such as satellite dishes, telephone wires and television antennae. In order to add a global dimension to her performance piece, Tamarind will be traveling to Mexico this summer, where she will be researching, collecting and documenting images and interviewing people in Mexico City and Oaxaca City, focusing particularly on the traditional dances of Oaxaca performed during […]
Jeri Lynn Parrent
Through a combination of field-work and laboratory research, Jeri’s project promises to make an important contribution to our understanding of-and our efforts to preserve-the planet’s extraordinarily rich biological diversity. This summer, Jeri will travel to Panama to collect samples of Phellinus swieteniae, a fungal pathogen of black mangroves from six spatially isolated mangrove forests located on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. While in Panama, Jeri will also have the opportunity to visit the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), one of the leading tropical ecology research institutes in the world, and […]
Lillian Park
Current Bio: Lillian is proud to be part of the original cohort of the Haas Scholars Program. She completed her Ph.D in Psychology at UC Berkeley with Dr. John Kihlstrom, her Haas Scholar mentor, in 2005. Then she did a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, ON. In 2008, she moved to New York to become a professor of psychology at SUNY Old Westbury, where she is now the Chair of the department. Lillian and her husband are expecting their first child in […]
Shahram Misaghi
The goal of Shahram’s Senior Honors Thesis in Molecular and Cell Biology is to obtain a detailed picture of the structure of a novel protein, called Acr A, that has recently been discovered to play an essential role in bacterial resistance to certain antibiotics. Using the technique of protein crystallography, Shahram plans to purify large amounts of Acr A protein from bacteria, crystallize the protein, and then study the chemical structure of this protein. His intention is to identify potential weak points that can be attacked by additional drugs, disabling […]
Kwa Yu Liou
Kwa’s Senior Honors Thesis in Molecular and Cell Biology will investigate the RNase P ribozyme, which is one of many RNA enzymes being developed as promising gene-targeting reagents to cleave specific RNA sequences. Kwa’s research will establish a kinetic framework to analyze the catalytic mechanism of RNase P ribozyme to cleave a viral mRNA. By determining the ribozyme’s catalytic efficiency, he will provide insight into the engineering of RNase P for antiviral application, with potential therapeutic use in inactivating specific mRNA sequences of infectious viruses such as Herpes Simplex Virus […]
Maurilio Arreola Leon
A joint McNair-Haas Scholar, Maurilio will continue his research into the influence of the Latino Caucus within the California State Legislature, in order to determine its effectiveness in addressing issues that impact the constituencies of its members. Founded in 1973, the Caucus has grown from five members to sixteen members, tripling in size in twenty-five years. With the recent election of the second Latino Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, Latino political leadership has continued to grow. Maurilio’s timely study promises to provide crucial information and analysis about an increasingly important arena […]
Sean Poi Lee
Sean’s project addresses two major questions in biochemistry: what is the nature of antibody catalysis, and what is the nature of transiently formed refolding intermediates. He is investigating whether antibodies that have been shown to catalyze conventional chemical reactions can be made specifically to catalyze a protein folding reaction. His project is based on the hypothesis that antibodies can recognize, bind, and stabilize high-energy intermediates of the refolding process, thus accelerating the rate of refolding.