Cory Berger

Discovering how traits evolve or are lost is key to understanding the processes underlying biodiversity. Web-building is an ancestral trait in orb-weaving spiders, but several taxa have secondarily lost the ability to build webs. Among the long-jawed spiders of the genus Tetragnatha, there are species that exhibit a range of web-building phenotypes, including the total loss of web-building and the construction of reduced webs. My research will use Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to investigate the silk organs of these species, which will provide a clear picture of the morphologies associated […]

Shannon Wu

Telomere maintenance and protection is performed by the six-protein complex called shelterin. Shelterin defects may lead to telomeropathies like Dyskeratosis Congenita (DC), a rare but severe disease with poor clinical outcomes. Recently, whole exome sequencing studies of DC patients have identified mutations in the gene locus of the shelterin component, TIN2. By establishing a disease model for DC using CRISPR/Cas9-gene edited isogenic human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines, I aim to investigate how TIN2-DC mutations give rise to disrupted telomere maintenance and DC phenotypes. Specifically, I will elucidate the genetic […]

Danny Hutto

In the spring of 1932, while attending Long Beach Junior College (LBJC), John Fante published his short story Eleven-Thirty in the campus literary journal, Edda. The story, bursting with cliches, depicts a young man, disappointed in love, at the brink of suicide. Critic David L. Ulin dismisses it as pure juvenilia and mostly overwrought. A few months later The American Mercury published Fantes story, Altar Boy. Aside from sharing Fante as the author, the two stories hardly resembled one another. The variation in the quality of the two stories suggests […]

Julia Lipson

Imagine a person plays two games, Game A and Game B, each with a higher probability of losing than winning, in some sequence. A possible sequence might be Game A, followed by Game B, followed by Game A, etc. Surely, playing any sequence of these two games will result in an overall loss. Against intuition, this turns out not to be the case. In fact, by playing these games in certain sequences, over time a player will experience an overall increase in capital. This phenomenon is called Parrondos Paradox, a […]

Yena Lee

The past two years have been a time of painful awakening for Korea as the country witnessed a deeply polemic gender war previously unprecedented in Korean society. Within K-pop fandom, a series of fan-initiated hashtags such as #WeWantBTSFeedback has started publicizing and demanding feedback for issues of misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia in K-pop industry, specifically in the star text of different idols and idol groups. In this research, I will explore how the recent feminism revival in Korea has fostered a discourse on identity politics within K-pop fandom by examining […]

Katherine Latimer

Hi! My name is Katie and I’m majoring in Physics and Chemistry here at Cal. I am really excited about my research this summer because it combines those two subjects, which I love, as well as some math and computer science, which are also fun. My work falls under the scope of the Materials Project, a collaboration at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that runs quantum mechanical simulations of many different materials on remote supercomputers and publishes the resulting data online and free to the public. By calculating just a few […]

Lauren Kelly

My research project reimagines the overland journeys of pioneers in the 19th century United States. In our cultural memory, Western Expansion is often remembered as brave pioneers striking out West for adventure or livelihood; however, this view pushes Native Americans to the margins of the story. As pioneer families traveled and settled in the American West, they instigated settler colonialism, displacing and murdering Native American tribes around them. My research will inspect the colonial ethos carried by white settlers, and investigate how they enacted this destructive colonialism on the Native […]

Dylan Bush

Woven into the intricate fabric of Oaklands Latinx population is a community of Maya immigrants. Many arrived as refugees, escaping genocide during the Guatemalan Civil War, and in part because of this traumatic history and their indigenous identity, Maya individuals face unique challenges in accessing health care. While both Latinx and Mayan populations may perceive a lack of access, no existing research analyzes how these perceptions differ, allowing for the assumption that both groups face the same challenges. My research investigates the distinct challenges that the Maya perceive in accessing […]

Kevin Milyavskiy

This study explores the form and purpose of a political apology. It includes analyses of French presidential speeches regarding crimes the French state committed throughout its history both domestically and internationally, and how the presidents speak of them. The speech former French president Franois Hollande gave during his visit to Algeria in 2012 is one of the case studies. Hollandes visit received international attention because many anticipated that he would, on behalf of France, finally apologize to Algeria for 132 years of colonial rule and the 1954 Algerian War of […]

Tong Zhang

DNA transposable elements are mobile genetic elements that can move through out a host genome by the action of an encoded DNA transposase. The activity of several DNA transposases is significantly stimulated by DNA bending proteins, presumably promoting correct assembly of the transposase upon the DNA transposon ends (i.e. Mu transposase , RAG1/2, etc). While Drosophila P element transposase is well characterized, stimulation of the transposition reaction by DNA bending proteins has not been investigated. Here, I would like to investigate two Drosophila DNA bending proteins, HMGD and HMGZ, on […]