Vivek Narayan

Within the last decade, research on the microbiota has begun to shed light on the immense contribution of gut microbes to host health, metabolism, immunity, and reproduction. Even more recently, studies have identified systems in which animals that are exposed to a toxin have acquired gut bacteria that confer resistance to the animal host. I am particularly interested in ammonia, a chemical that is toxic in high concentrations to most animals. All life on earth requires nitrogen, yet the multi-step nitrogen cycle relies primarily on bacteria to carry out steps […]

Keren Lev

We propose to conduct research exploring potential cognitive adaptations in children who come from less wealthy and/or educated homes (low socioeconomic status, SES). Previous research indicates that lower-SES environments expose children to stressors including neighborhood crime and loud, crowded home environments. Such stress has been associated with academic struggles and poor health. We explore whether children coming from low SES households may, in fact, have particular strengths; specifically, adaptive auditory abilities allowing them to learn from multiple stimuli at once. In the study, we will have both low- and high-SES […]

Dae Woong Ham

The current theory we are interested that is applicable in radiobiology uses a mathematically lacking model for specifically modelling dose and effect relationship. This lacking model is especially inappropriate for settings where the dose effect relations are highly curvilinear, which will seriously hinder many researchers from developing synergy theory, a concept of interest to many radiobiologists. We propose a better and more appropriate model to do synergy theory and modelling. My SURF research, which will build from the research I have already been doing with my mentor, will continue to […]

Celine Liao

Tongqi, the abbreviation of gay man (tong)s wife (qi), is a term used in China to describe a self-identified straight woman who married to a self-identified gay man that both partners assume to maintain a heterosexual marriage. Chinas interactions with its ancestral-familial ethics stressing on offspring, reactionary attitude toward the Western knowledge/power on gender and sexuality, and the rigid legal status against same-sex marriage, complicated the struggles faced by the women in the mixed-orientation marriages. This research conducts participant observation and interviews in the tongqi online mutual-support group and related […]

Verity Pinter

Intuitive theories that young children have about others behavior develop through exposure to patterns of covariation the degree to which two variables change together across time and situations as a child develops, incorporating new empirical evidence with prior knowledge. Over time and cultural exposure, children’s causal theories about other people’s behavior becomes biased toward culturally valued or relevant interpretations, resulting in culture-specific assumptions about patterns of behavior. Childrens understanding of and reliance on gender stereotypes influences their own sense of identity and social development. According to ever-present conventional gender stereotypes […]

Noah Stevenson

Theoretical and experimental evidence suggests harnessing quantum mechanics to execute algorithms on qubit-based quantum hardware may allow us to calculate answers to intractable mathematical problems and process data exponentially faster than is possible with classical computers. Characterizing how qubit states evolve in time is imperative for benchmarking quantum hardware, however has been difficult due to the inability to fully measure a quantum state without disrupting it. A solution is weak measurement, which recent work has improved for a single qubit by leveraging the data-processing power of a recurrent neural network […]