Daniela Muoz Lopez

Previous research has identified reinforcement learning (RL) as a cognitive process that uses rewards to help us learn which actions will yield better results over time. This process is influenced by decision making which allows us to maximize our rewards and minimize our punishments. The neural aspects of RL are well studied and can be linked to various brain regions such as the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex. Currently, it is unknown whether RL is impacted by impulsivity. Impulsivity plays a major role in the understanding of personality traits and refers […]

Victoria Venardi

This summer, I will be working on developing highly efficient and stable catalysts for the production of propylene oxide (PO), a chemical used in construction, upholstery, and automobiles. The instability of the current industrial amorphous catalyst causes numerous shutdowns per year during production and creates unnecessary waste, including 750 thousand tons of carbon dioxide, and costs $930 million dollars to manufacturers per year. In my research, I will modify current crystalline catalysts to become more stable by avoiding polymerization side reactions that are initiated by small amounts of water on […]

Alex Ripperton

Populations of Mimulus guttatus commonly known as yellow monkeyflower, have rapidly adapted to grow on soils contaminated with high levels of copper in regions of Northern California. Im interested in better understanding the evolutionary mechanism that allowed this organism to adapt so quickly to these extreme conditions at a genetic level. Using RNA sequencing data from copper tolerant and non tolerant lines of M. guttatus I will be able to look for genes that are differentially expressed between the two different lines of plants in order to get a better […]

Abby Jackson-Gain

I am interested in the relationship between hybridization in plants and preferences those plants have for specific environments. When two plants hybridize, creating a new hybrid species, we often observe those new hybrids occupying broader ranges and being able to tolerate a wider array of environmental conditions. I am interested in how widespread this pattern is and will be creating species distribution models for hybrid plants and their parent species. I plan to do this with as many different species as possible to better characterize the relationship between ecological niche […]

Lexi Zhou

The Striatum plays a critical role in decision making and action outcome evaluation. It is primarily composed of two distinct pathwaysdirect and indirect that receive excitatory inputs from the cortex and the thalamus and are differentially modulated by dopamine signals from the midbrain. There has been a wealth of experimental and theoretical work on how the dichotomy of these striatal pathways mediates choice selection. The classic go/no-go model proposes that these pathways play discrete roles in choice selection, with the direct pathway fires to select a rewarding option and the […]

Julia Dunker

Novel traits (i.e. new traits or behaviors that allow organisms to perform a new function) have long fascinated biologists. Their evolutionary origins, however, are poorly understood and may involve changes in multiple behaviors and traits. The effects of these changes do not occur in a vacuum and may have downstream effects on other processessuch as the formation of reproductive barriers between groups. This research investigates the relationship between the evolution of novel traits and the formation of reproductive barriers using the scale-eating pupfish. Scale-eating is an example of a novel […]

Jonathan Kuo

Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) is a critical process in cells that maintains the balance of signaling and receptor molecules on the cellular surface. This balance is critical in the development of the human cerebral cortex, during which neuroepithelial stem cells must choose to divide or differentiate. These cell fate decisions are dependent on the distribution of membrane signaling molecules and receptors, distributions we hypothesize are regulated by CME. However, technical limitations have, until recently, made it nearly impossible to study the dynamics of CME in the highly polarized NECs of a […]

Allison O’Brien

In the radiological sciences, photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) are often used for measuring scintillation, light emitted from certain materials in the presence of radiation. For example, the neutron response of organic scintillating materials is currently being measured at LBNL using photomultiplier tubes. When incident neutron radiation strikes an organic scintillator, the fast neutrons interact with the nuclei present, primarily through elastic scattering. The recoiling nuclei move through the medium causing excitation and ionization of the scintillating molecules. These molecules de-excite through the emission of light and this light can then be […]

Konnor von Emster

The upside-down jellyfish, Cassiopea, is a model organism for sleep despite its decentralized nervous system (DNS). The nervous system consists of radially spaced, interconnected motor control nerve clusters, ganglia, that control Cassipeas pulsing behavior. Preliminary research indicates that a unique subset of these ganglia may command pulsing for days to weeks at a time instead of random command that current literature suggests. My research will be focused around answering the question: what molecular differences cause morphologically identical ganglia to have activity differences? RFamide and Taurine are neuromodulators known to exist […]

Marvin Miller

The primary objective of this research proposal is to examine the effect of aging on the lactate receptor GPR81 and metabolic inflexibility. GPR81 gets activated by lactate among the series of short-chain carboxylic acids and reduces intracellular cAMP levels that influence the inhibition of fatty acid transporter and lipolysis (Ahmed, Kashan, et al., p315). Metabolic flexibility is the cells’ ability to shift from one energy source to the next, for example, glucose to fat. With aging, there is a reduction in the ability to shift energy sources. The inability for […]