Cecelia Di Mino
Indigenous language revitalization (LR) work comes from the heart. Whether done by a documentary linguist or an indigenous community member, LR is a labor of love, usually done in someones spare time, with little to no financial compensation. While their linguistic and/or cultural knowledge may be vast, such individuals usually lack pedagogy training and experience. As the nature of LR work is already immense and taxing, providing its practitioners with a structured but adaptable program detailing how best to implement the pedagogical aspects of LR would be a major innovation. […]
Ariel Renner
Nature has so often been used as a vehicle to express femininity, sexuality, and eroticism throughout literary history. However, when we speak of nature, there is often an overlooked ambiguity to the term that necessitates further explanation as to the sort of nature a given work focuses on. My research pays close attention to this ambiguity, as I will use a selection of Rochesters poetry, placing particular emphasis on A Ramble in St. James Park, to look at the way that Rochester both furthers this literary tradition and subverts it. […]
Sarah Elisabeth Coduto
My research project is an analysis of queer childhoods. Taking as a starting-point Lee Edelmans notion of reproductive futurism, a term coined to refer to a cultural, political, and psychic investment in the figure of the Child who “remains the perpetual horizon of every acknowledged politics as the emblem of futuritys unquestioned value (No Future 3-4), I would like to consider representations of children who refuse the future we invest in them. Broadly, I am preoccupied with violent children those who spit in the face of the exhortation, Think of […]
Jiahan Du
The rich theory of algebraic computational complexity aims to study the complexity of objects with an intrinsic mathematical structure. In particular, for each n, matrix multiplication of two n n matrices can be expressed as a bilinear map, which corresponds to a tensor via a well-known isomorphism. The rank of this tensor controls the asymptotic complexity of matrix multiplication of a particular dimensionality. Despite this powerful relationship, much is still unsettled; for instance, the rank of the tensor corresponding to n = 3 is not even known. But to date, […]
Taylor Follett
Upon first reading Ulysses by James Joyce, I developed a question: why does one of the most significant novels of the modernist canon, a literary movement associated with hyper-masculine authors, contain such a prominent focus on the feminine and end with a female narrator? Throughout Ulysses, Joyce investigates the trappings of normative gender, especially through Molly and Leopold Bloom. My research engages with this investigation and my original question, pursuing critical conversations surrounding Ulysses while also examining texts from queer theory and novelistic theory in order to interrogate the precise […]
Liona Muchenje
The uses of social media in developing countries particularly in Africa are generally under-researched. The few studies that have been conducted emphasized the impact of such digital tools on democracy, civic participation and other largely socio-political implications, leaving out the economic implications. After identifying this information gap, I formulated my research to study the emergent ways in which social media use and the informal economy intersect particularly in Zimbabwe, a country which has been struggling with rampant unemployment and consequently an increasing informal sector made up of self-entrepreneurial street vendors. […]
Kyler Natividad
Electromigration is a phenomenon in which an electric current induces the gradual motion of atoms in a conductor. While electromigration has been observed at the macroscopic scale, its fundamental mechanisms are not well-understood at the atomic scale. The goal of my research project is to investigate the interaction between the electric current and conductor-supported atoms that gives rise to electromigration. Electromigration has important effects on the reliability of electronic components, and has many proposed applications, including uses in nanomachine actuation, chemical transport, and as a method for the nanoscale mixing […]
Lotus Lum
One million Americans suffer from Parkinson’s Disease (PD), a fatal neurodegenerative disorder characterized by neuronal death and motor symptoms such as bradykinesia and tremors. Unfortunately, there is no treatment that prevents, reverses or even delays PD. My research focuses on the protein called the Leucine Rich Repeat Kinase 2 (LRRK2), which is the most common site for mutations in PD. However, the mechanism by which LRRK2 causes PD is unknown. With the help of my lab at UCSF, I have uncovered that a sizable amount of intracellular LRRK2 is processed […]
Spencer Doyle
Transition metal dichalcogenides make up a class of 2D semiconductors that are of high interest in the field of condensed matter currently. I plan on synthesizing two primary intercalated versions of these compounds: Fe(1/3)NbS2 and Fe(1/3)TaS2. These two compounds have competing magnetic orderings (antiferromagnetism and ferromagnetism respectively), so what happens in a hybrid material where both Nb and Ta are present? The Fe sites in Fe(1/3)NbS2 already host frustrated moments, but by incorporating some ferromagnetic ordering from the Ta compound, the frustration can be tweaked. Frustration is one of the […]
Maria Ji
Vocal learning is the ability to produce vocalizations using auditory feedback to guide learning. Vocal learning has been explored extensively in songbirds and humans, but never within a tractable mammalian model species. By using two approaches, mapping vocal motor pathways and identifying auditory networks, I aim to investigate the neural circuitry of vocal learning in Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus). From a systems neuroscience perspective, my research will reveal mammalian neuroanatomical underpinnings and build the foundations for a mammalian model system of vocal learning. My findings will elucidate the mechanisms […]