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 […]

Nikhil Sharma

Matrix multiplication is one of the most fundamental operations in mathematics, and its usage is extensively pervasive in modern-day computer systems; innumerable algorithms employ techniques from linear algebra in their implementation. As a result, it’s critical to perform matrix multiplication as quickly as possible to ensure the smooth and efficient performance of everyday computer applications. It’s been shown in existing literature that there is an intrinsic relationship between properties of matrix multiplication and a special geometric object known as a tensor. To date, an extensive exploration observing this relationship in […]

Gregory Devine

Musics ability to evoke and communicate emotion seems intuitive and universal, but the cognitive and psychological processes that underlie musics emotive inductance still remain largely a mystery. Investigating how people perceive and engage with music ultimately reveals the complexities of emotion regulation. In this study, I compose music that targets various emotions and have participants evaluate changes in their mood state upon listening. By targeting and inducing emotions such as happiness, sadness, or anger in a lab setting, I can assess how effectively music either augments or diminishes the experience […]

Kendall E. Lee

Dengue virus (DENV) is the most prevalent mosquito-borne virus worldwide, causing ~390 million infections annually. Disease ranges from inapparent infection to classic dengue fever to severe dengue, characterized by vascular leak that can lead to systemic shock, organ failure, and death. Non-structural protein 1 (NS1) is the only protein secreted from DENV-infected cells and plays a role in pathogenesis through induction of barrier dysfunction of human endothelial cells. However, the receptor for NS1 on endothelial cells and the molecular determinants of pathogenesis on NS1 remain unknown. In my research, I […]

Jeremy Wayland

The central engine of an active galaxy is a mysterious place. Simulations and physical theories have melded general relativity, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism to hypothesize the prescription of particle acceleration and jet accretion in active galactic nuclei (AGN). These complex environments surrounding the black hole may launch relativistic jets that radiate the greatest energy output of any known astrophysical source. Their influence on galaxy and star formation is undeniable, and yet these systems are not yet well understood. There remains a gap between theory and observation. My project attempts […]