Micaela Shonafelt
The unique visibility of Etruscan women has garnered great interest among scholars of Etruscology. That said, the status of these women in the 4th -1st century BCE, a period that witnessed the waning of Etruscan identity in the shadow of the emerging Roman Empire, has not yet been a major focus of study. Working to enhance our conception of the changing roles of women in Southern Etruria as they became assimilated into the patriarchal gender hierarchy of the Roman Republic, Micaela will be traveling to Rome to closely analyze the […]
Caleb Choy
Glioblastoma is the most common, malignant primary brain tumor with a median survival time of fifteen months. Single tumor cells escape surgical resection and become resistant to radiation and chemotherapy by spreading into microenvironments that support viability. Caleb is focusing on two specific proteins: CD44 (a cell-surface glycoprotein that directly links with the cell cytoskeleton) and Src kinase (involved in the upregulation of signaling pathways)both of which promote the tumors invasion. CD44 interacts with Src activity to control actin proteins that form microfilaments fundamental to cell shape, division, and motility. […]
Mohammad Saffari Doost
Sleep is essential for human health. In particular, insufficient or low-quality sleep causes higher risks for cardiovascular diseases. Mammals exhibit distinct rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep, and non-REM sleep is associated with lower heart rate and blood pressure. However, how neural circuits coordinate sleep and heart functions remains unclear. The nucleus ambiguus (Amb), located deep in the medulla, contains cardioinhibitory cholinergic neurons. Activating Amb neurons decreases the heart rate. Mohammad will identify the sleep neurons that activate Amb cholinergic neurons using virus-mediated retrograde tracing. He will also […]
Celene Bolaños
The recent economic recession and political turmoil in Brazil has driven over half of Brazil’s Haitian migrant population northbound towards the United States. This wave of over 50,000 Haitians has been met by tightening immigration policies from both the United States and Mexico, making the journey more difficult and dangerous and transforming Mexico into a country of destination. This flow of Haitian refugees is overwhelmingly male, despite the fact that women account for nearly half of the global migrant and refugee population. I hypothesize that gender and race are fundamental […]
Nancy Guadalupe Rubio
Nancys project will address the silences of rural Latina narratives about intrapersonal and structural violence. She will explore what happens when writing coalitions are built between incarcerated women and rural Latinas who are system impacted and at risk of incarceration. Over the summer, Nancy will interview prison writing project activists and formerly incarcerated people to learn about the effects of these projects. She will analyze writings by incarcerated women, emphasizing themes related to autonomy, resilience, and self-narration. In the fall, she will facilitate writing workshops with system impacted Latinas at […]
Grace Allison
Current Bio: Grace is a full-time research assistant at Columbia University. Haas Scholars Project: Emotion regulation is the process by which individuals manage their emotions. A robust set of findings suggests that certain emotion regulation strategies promote well-being whereas others undermine well-being. This project will utilize romantic relationships as the social context in which to examine the effects of various emotion regulation strategies. Work related to this topic has either not considered partner perceptions or has relied on experimental paradigms that have low ecological validity. To address these limitations, Grace […]
Nicholas Rapidis
While the Standard Model of Particle Physics has been a nearly perfect model for explaining particle interactions, it has two major flaws: its inability to fix the Strong CP Problem and its failure to explain the existence of Dark Matter. To address these issues simultaneously, a new particle, the axion, has been theorized. Experimental efforts to detect this particle have already begun but since the axions mass is unknown, experimentalists are forced to search for it over several orders of magnitude in mass. Nicholas will utilize new theoretical results to […]
Andrea Ramirez
Previous scholarship on the topic of ethnic studies programs implementation in K-12 institutions has shown that theres been educational benefits for students who participate in the courses.In San Francisco, the implementation of ethnic studies courses in the high schools resulted in documented grade improvement, and higher education retention rates. For my research project, I will focus on George Washington High in San Francisco to better understand the processes that allowed for students to obtain higher grades, and how the curriculum influences the students relationship to academics. By 2019, all CA […]
Lulu Matute
Hundreds of environmental activists have been killed for defending land and natural resources in Honduras. Although Berta Cceres was one of many slain activists, she is the most renowned globally. This is largely due to her transnational coalition-building efforts and Goldman Environmental Prize recognition. Berta was an outspoken Indigenous Lenca leader and a feminist who advocated for indigenous land tenure. She spoke out against government corruption, the 2009 military coup d’tat, and U.S. interests in the country. Lulu will conduct ethnographic interviews with Honduran women living in the Bay Area […]
Mathew Madain
The centennial anniversary of World War I has generated much scholarship on large-scale atrocities against religious minority communities of the Ottoman Empire. However, historiography on the period has neglected to discuss smaller-scale religious violence that also occurred in Ottoman provinces, most notably against the Christian communities of Transjordan (1914-1916). Mathew will travel to modern-day Jordan to conduct archival research and to gather oral histories, in order to produce a narrative of the traumatic events experienced by the Christian communities of Ottoman Transjordan during the Great War. This project will further […]