Jordan Serrano-Guedea

First-generation college students (FGCS) experience many unique familial, cultural, social, and academic challenges as the first in the family to pursue a four-year degree. Previous research has found that these extra stressors may place FGCS at higher risk for mental health problems, lower retention rates, and lower graduation rates (House and Kolb, 2020). Yet, findings in the literature on the impacts of first-generation status on FGCS mental health are mixed, and no systematic review exists on this topic to reconcile the varied findings. This summer, I will expand upon this […]

Sydney Roberts

This summer, my mentor, Caleb Dawson, and I will explore what Black students and staff members at UC Berkeley hope to gain from their pursuit of higher education or career in higher education. Over the course of eight weeks, I’ll be interviewing various students and faculty members to develop an understanding of what a quality education means to them. We’ll be exploring why Black students come to Cal and assume the responsibility of improving the student experience for other Black students. Additionally, well inquire if they would recommend Cal to […]

Tiger Schenkman

What can be said of love created under duress and continued into freedom? This question will guide my research into interracial couples who began seeing each other under slavery and continued through Abolition in Louisiana. My research will straddle the two periods immediately preceding and following Abolition, in order to pinpoint couples who weathered unsteady sociocultural and legal realities out of a commitment to their love. This project will therefore fill a lacuna of ambiguity in the study of interracial love during slavery; rather than focusing on legal history, I […]

Katrina White

  Psychedelics have been used medicinally for thousands of years by Native Americans, but research into their clinical effects and mechanisms was prematurely halted in the 1960s. Exploration of the effects of psychedelics is long overdue. Recent studies have found that single doses of psychedelics can have positive, long-lasting effects, but very few studies examine psychedelic effects on behavior. My project aims to discover how psychedelics influence associative learning behavior. Associative learning involves learning the association between a cue and an outcome. I hypothesize that mice treated with psychedelics will […]

Tiffany Tian

Up to half of Wilsons disease patients suffer from sleep disorders, including poor sleep quality, REM behavioral disorders (RBD), and cataplexy. However, the neural basis of these symptoms is poorly understood. My project this summer is to determine whether the ATP7B-/- knockout mouse is a good model system for studying the sleep disorders manifested in Wilsons disease, especially in the context of neural pathways involving copper homeostasis. Using automated sleep scoring methods, we will quantify sleep signatures in ATP7B-/- knockout and wildtype control mice. The brain copper changes in recorded […]

Caitlin Keller

While many know the wicked sea witch Ursula from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, few understand that she was based on the drag queen Divine. Ursula is only one of a myriad of representations of queerness in children’s media. My project explores the evolution of queer representation in children’s media and the role it plays in transforming mainstream cultural norms, working as a tool to socialize children. From the demonization of queer characteristics resulting in queer-coded villains to same-sex kisses on animated television shows of the 21st century, queer representation in […]

Rachel Kui

As NASA prepares to send astronauts on long-duration space flight missions, it is critical that protocols are developed to mitigate the damaging effects of spaceflight on the human body. One area in need of development is spine health, as astronauts are three- to four-times more likely to experience a herniated disc than the general population. Using spaceflight and ground-based mice from the Rodent Research-10 spaceflight mission, this research project will investigate the multiscale effects of spaceflight on the intervertebral disc. Over the course of the project, skills will be practiced […]

Yassin Oulad Daoud

From the 15th century onward, painters and architects produced views of real urban spaces like city squares using linear perspective. While it is universally accepted that linear perspective allowed these artists to imitate reality to a high degree, scholarship has largely overlooked the fact that these views artificially rectified the often irregular layout of the urban spaces they depict. My project seeks to discover whether there is a systematic difference between real urban spaces and the way in which they were depicted in the age of linear perspective drawing. With […]

Marissa Lee

With extreme wildfires plaguing California, examining Indigenous interactions with the environment over the past two thousand years is crucial for current land management and preparation for the future of the landscape and its residents. This summer, I will work with my mentor, Alec Apodaca, as part of an integrative historical ecology and archaeology project along the central California coast (Laguna Creek, Hastings Natural History Reserve, and San Vicente Redwoods). Through hands-on fieldwork, I will develop my skills in landscape surveying, data collection, and laboratory analytics of organic eco-archaeological remains. I […]

Ria Khera

Memories in the brain are encoded in specialized neurons called “engram cells,” which are active during an initial event and the recall of that event. Little is known about how these cells form, but exposure to traumatic stress has previously been linked to an increase in the number of engram cells. The goal of my research is to examine the formation of engram cells in multiple areas of the brain after exposure to stress and determine if the increased presence of these cells results in PTSD-like behavior in mice. Understanding […]