Alexandra Cunningham

Research across artistic disciplines has demonstrated that participation in the arts has a profound positive impact on the life of an individual, and on communities at large. An ecological public health model even enlists access to the arts as a core factor in shaping an individuals response to their social determinants of health. The art form of ballet, however, is working against a 400-year history of exclusionary practices and elitism that challenges the its relevancy and solvency in contemporary society. Increasingly, ballet companies are designing programming to be accessible to […]

Cassandra Branch

Films are cultural timestamps constructed to reflect the interests and beliefs of their audiences. The 1960s revolutionized the United States in more ways than one, and movies were not exempt from these changing tides. Over the course of the decade, sex work became a normalized narrative convention of several films, including Butterfield 8, Breakfast at Tiffany‚Äôs, and Walk on the Wild Side. This research project will seek to contextualize and explain this change in the cultural zeitgeist by examining the sociopolitical policy surrounding sex work at that time, in tandem […]

Agustin Guerrero

The United States has increasingly relied on human confinement and incarceration to manage immigration, despite a large body of evidence showing that it inflicts a wide degree of violence and harms upon our noncitizen community members and their families. How can we challenge this inhumane system? This summer, my mentor and I will try to answer this question. With a focus on the American electorate as a key mechanism for policy change, we will examine the social forces driving mass detention and explore actionable, evidence-based solutions intended to mitigate harm. […]

Joelle Chuang

Redox homeostasis is essential for cell health. It can be perturbed by an overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which leads to oxidative stress. The converse, reductive stress, is caused by mitochondrial inactivation and depletion of ROS. Persistent reductive stress impairs metazoan development and causes cancer, diabetes, and cardiomyopathy. Despite its central role in development and disease, how reductive stress is sensed and alleviated remains poorly understood. The Rape Lab recently identified the first pathway that can counteract reductive stress. Following reductive stress, the E3 ligase CUL2FEM1B marks the FNIP1 […]

Sydney Booth

The Pennsylvanian (323–299 million years ago) is a very unique time interval in Earth’s history. The Pennsylvanian tropics have one of the best plant-fossil records due to coal balls. These are carbonate nodules containing anatomically preserved fossil peat—deposits of partially decomposed plant material (Schopf, 1975). The Phillips Coal Ball Collection (PCBC) is one of the largest paleobotanical datasets in existence, containing 50,000 coal balls and 500,000 coal ball peels—thin, acetate sheets. From the peels, 800,000cm2 of plant material have been microscopically analyzed and identified at a tissue/organ level. While these […]

Valerie Ekko

Children who are facing structural disadvantages such as poverty or racism are often left with few opportunities for change. This may result in consequences that directly impact their lifelong economic mobility and opportunities. Interventions such as cognitive behavioral-therapy (CBT), a form of therapy supporting change in thinking and behavior, are effective; yet, the success of these interventions relies entirely on engagement. For children, CBT may be found to be boring, consisting of homework, and not fun to participate in. By creating a video game as a novel form of intervention […]

Rafa Borisonik

How has Mexican migration changed over time? This project will tackle this question by studying migrant characteristics and flows from specific origins and destinations. It will explore the spatial redistribution of migrant flows and consider the extent to which gender is a defining trait in migration patterns. I will conduct a literature review of social science research on Mexican migration to the U.S., focusing on how migration research treats gender. I will also produce a summary of how migration policies in the U.S. and Mexico have changed over time and […]

Alina Çelik

This project explores the transfer of knowledge within familial systems. In 2014, a traditionalist administration took power in Turkey. This marked a change in the socio-cultural environment and created an opportunity for stories to be altered and values to shift. What stories are shifted or lost in the transfer of knowledge across generations? Queerness has always been present, but how has its existence been impacted by the dominant culture in Turkey? What were queer stories like in Turkey before the political push to an Islamic state, and how have they […]

Malik Alhadi

I am investigating the impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) using African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis). EDCs are chemical contaminants that interfere with hormone synthesis and function. This interference can alter reproductive physiology and reproductive behavior. We have studied the effects of many EDCs in the laboratory in African clawed frogs, an invasive species in California that can therefore also be studied in the wild. I will study differences between frogs that are exposed to chemicals and frogs that are not exposed in the wild, along with the impact of […]

Anisha Chandy

Motor learning – the process of acquiring skilled movements – helps us learn to kick a ball and play piano. Among the many processes that enable motor learning, motor adaptation is of primary importance, enabling us to readily respond to changes in the body (e.g., muscle fatigue) and environment (e.g., a heavy jacket). A large body of work has emphasized how motor adaptation is driven by visual signals; however, the role of proprioception – one’s awareness about the location of the body – has been largely neglected. To fill this […]