Abel Fernando Vallejo Galindo

My project utilizes both qualitative and archival methods to assess and interpret how undocumented people challenge the criminal injustice and immigration system. The devaluing of undocumented people has increased the uncertainty associated with their social value. Specifically, by engaging with scholars, professionals, and community members, this project amplifies their critical insight regarding future social and political integration. Moreover, public discourse is increasingly creating awareness and assessing the policing of criminalized populations, specifically as it relates to the carceral apparatus. In my research, I present the carceral apparatus as including multiple […]

Iris Wu

Several age-related neurodegenerative diseases are a result of a decline in protein homeostasis as organisms age. Mitochondria, a vital organelle in the cell, is especially susceptible and thought to be a sensor of proteotoxic stress. Understanding how mitochondria communicate stress and recover homeostasis is therefore fundamental in developing novel treatments for age-onset human diseases. One way that mitochondria communicate stress is through the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPRmt). Important work has shown that stress can be communicated between tissues, such as from neurons to intestinal cells, called the cell-non-autonomous UPRmt. […]

Mounika Gopi

Meiosis, the method by which diploid cells produce haploid gametes, is a dramatic cellular remodeling event. This process is regulated by many transcriptional and translational changes, including the expression of longer, meiosis-specific mRNA isoforms. Superoxide dismutase 1 is a highly conserved and vital enzyme that fights against oxidative stress. During meiosis, budding yeast cells (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) produce a non-canonical mRNA isoform of SOD1 that is four times as long as the canonical mitotic mRNA, one of the largest differences in isoforms observed. The expression of the longform mRNA also correlates […]

Zoe Elina Ferguson

Humans are cognitively cheap. To preserve precious cognitive resources, we take cognitive shortcuts, one example being the detrimental use of stereotypes. Simply, we prefer to mentally process information about people when that information is consistent with our stereotypes about them. So what happens when someones identity contradicts the stereotypes that society has about them? Because relations between Black and White communities remains one of the most problematic racial issues in America, I have narrowed my research question to focus on this inter-group context. I hypothesize that White Americans prefer to […]

Zoe Lung

Meiosis is an essential cell division process that involves the reduction of chromosome number, thus creating haploid cells from diploid cells. Since mistakes in this process can lead to aneuploidy and many genetic defects such as cancer, this division is highly regulated and consists of many regulatory checkpoints. One such checkpoint, referred to as the synaptic checkpoint, is necessary during the early stages of meiosis when chromosomes are paired with homologous partners prior to segregation. The specific mechanisms that are involved in regulating this particular checkpoint still remain unknown. Recently, […]

Kendall Fitzgerald

One of the most ambitious expeditions in the history of UC Berkeley has yet to be completed. In 1947, the University of California Africa Expedition, led by researchers from the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology, set out for southern Africa to collect fossils from early hominid sites. However, upon their return, many of the micro-mammal fossils were stored away without being properly examined or categorized. My project will focus on a subset of this wealth of Plio-Pleistocene fossils: the shrew fossils (family Soricidae). Though sometimes overlooked, these small mammals have […]

Peter Ren

The AAA+ proteins (ATPases Associated with a variety of cellular Activities) are a highly diverse and ancient protein superfamily present in all organisms and are involved in such processes such as DNA replication, protein degradation, and metal insertion in protein synthesis. AAA+ proteins have some conserved features, including an oligomeric ring structure that exhibits inter-protomer cooperativitythat is to say, the hydrolysis of ATP in one subunit causes the preferential hydrolysis of ATP in the other subunits, making for a more efficient channeling of energy from ATP when switching states. While […]

Zoe Kiely

Much of modern life has become intertwined with disclosing personal information to third parties. Email, social media, GPS, search history, etc., all contain intimate parts of ourselves, but this information is under third-party control. Traditional Fourth Amendment guarantees of persons, houses, papers, and effects are increasingly more difficult to protect when the boundaries of self have evolved beyond our own individual body and belongings and into a digital space controlled by third parties. With this friction between between the limits of identity and third-party controlled personal information, individual privacy has […]

Namrata Ramesh

Superlattices of colloidal nanocrystals are a new class of materials that have been made to self-assemble from a liquid suspension. Their high compositional tunability results in a range of electronic, optical, and mechanical properties. Strong coupling of nanocrystals in the superlattice – a very recent advance – leads to dramatic changes in their energy levels and, consequently, their optical properties. Particularly in semiconductor nanocrystal superlattices, understanding how the coupling of nanocrystals affects the optical gap will fine-tune these already promising optoelectronic materials for many applications. This, along with the comparatively […]

Rimjhim Agarwal

Dengue virus (DENV) is the leading cause of death in dengue-endemic areas. An infection resulting from DENV can manifest as serious human disease, such as Dengue hemorrhagic fever or Dengue shock syndrome. Currently there is no effective vaccine to prevent the infection. My project seeks to understand critical host-virus interactions between DENV and multi-protein innate immune cytosolic complexes called inflammasomes, which initiate downstream proinflammatory signaling. Inflammasomes are typically thought to detect pathogen-encoded ligands. In contrast, NLRP1the focus of this proposaldetects protease activity. I will be focusing on the molecular determinants […]