Jamie Shiah

The endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) complexes encompass an evolutionarily conserved, multi-subunit machinery that mediates unique membrane remodeling and scission away from the cytoplasm. This requires stabilization of negative membrane curvature, as induced by the ESCRT complexes. Now, studies have shown that ESCRTs can also direct membrane budding of the opposite topology, akin to that of clathrin-mediated endocytosis by dynamin. Human ESCRT-III subunits, charged multivesicular body protein (CHMP1B) and increased sodium tolerance 1 (IST1), co-polymerize to form spirals coating the outside of membrane tubules to facilitate positive membrane […]

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 […]

Evelyn Li

Language is a crowning achievement of human civilization and a defining characteristic of human intelligence. There are over 5000 languages spoken in the world. Most people speak only a handful of languages, so translation is critical to overcoming barriers in communication. Unfortunately, translation is laborious and challenging, and cannot be done manually at scale. As a result, machine translation (MT) has been an active area of research in artificial intelligence. This research focuses on methods to improve MT. It incorporates the idea of neural machine translation, which builds a neural […]

Hannah Tak

The lateral parabrachial nucleus (LPB) is a region in the mammalian brain that is involved in regulating diverse behaviors associated with pain and aversion as well as feeding behaviors. Many neurons in the LPB are glutamatergic and project to widespread brain areas including the amygdala, periaqueductal gray, ventral tegmental area (VTA) and substantia nigra (SN). However, it is currently unknown whether subpopulations of LPB neurons, defined by their projection target, can be linked to specific behaviors. As an important step to gain knowledge of the functional heterogeneity of LPB cell […]

Connor William Brown

Movement preparation and execution are central to our everyday experience, yet we do not yet understand how the complex motor computations required for these actions are performed. In an attempt to understand how movements are prepared, many models have been created–using brain activity to predict someones intended movement before it is executed–with limited efficacy. A recent breakthrough in primate research provides a potential framework for exploring these preparatory computations further, but due to technical and ethical constraints the development and evaluation of this model has been limited to research involving […]