Haiyue (Heidi) Jin

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a multifaceted disorder affecting about 8.0% of the general population. PTSD patients exhibit comorbid symptoms of severe compulsive behaviors, including compulsive checking and sexual behaviors, illness concerns, and mental rituals, which all hinder patients’ daily life functioning. Currently, the main treatments administered are antidepressants, but they have limited effect. Alternatively, psychedelics like 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI) show promising therapeutic effects on reducing anxiety and fear expression in preclinical mice, but their effects on compulsivity are unknown. Psychedelics act through serotonin and such a mechanism could regulate compulsivity. […]

Neha Jag

Up to 40% of annual crop yields are lost to plant pathogens, costing the global economy upwards of $220 billion dollars yearly and exacerbating our global food crisis. Crucial proteins in the plant immune system are Nucleotide Binding Leucine Rich Repeat receptor proteins (NLRs,) which detect pathogenic secretions and trigger immune responses. To prevent autoimmunity, NLR’s are tightly regulated, however many key details of their function in immune signaling pathways remain undiscovered. The Gu Lab at UC Berkeley has recently identified a nuclear transport protein, KA120, that negatively regulates plant […]

Anthony Hon

Young children trapped in a car without adult supervision may suffer life-threatening complications such as hyperthermia and heat stroke from extreme temperatures—which may rise to 130 °F in some cases. Our research aims to ascertain child presence within two to three minutes of unsupervised activity by probing increases in the levels of carbon dioxide emitted during human exhalation. Non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) sensors are employed to measure car carbon dioxide concentrations every two seconds. Specific numerical metrics are then derived from the data, and the presence of a child can be […]

Emily Ho

Current protein therapeutic methods can only target less than 15% of human proteins, leaving many disease-causing proteins untouched. Natural products produced by plants and fungi are complex small molecules that have the potential to bind to these proteins and be repurposed as drug scaffolds. The gymnastatin family of natural products produced by the fungus Gymnascella dankaliensis has antiproliferative effects on triple-negative breast cancer cells. Dankastatin B, the most potent gymnastatin against cancer cell viability, selectively binds to the mitochondrial membrane proteins VDAC3 and VDAC2, and causes cancer cells to die […]

Zoe Haynes

Socioeconomic status is a key indicator of the likelihood to experience detrimental health effects when exposed to environmental pollution. Low-income communities have higher rates of pre-existing health conditions and lower rates of protection measures from pollution in their environments, causing them to be at a higher risk of new or worsening of existing diseases related to air quality 3. Accessible, personalized support to mitigate one’s risk of exposure to contaminated air is proposed here as a solution. This project will analyze the difference in changes in behavior between residents of […]

Anna Hatzakis

The western bumble bee used to be the most common bumble bee in the west, but their numbers have declined drastically over the past couple decades – particularly in the southern half of their range. While populations have been able to survive somewhat more so in Washington, very few colonies remain in Oregon, California, and Arizona. I will be examining and identifying the pollen from a century’s worth of museum specimens collected across their range in order to describe their pollen preferences. Once we know their pollen preferences, we can […]

Dimple Amitha Garuadapuri

With the rise of antibacterial resistance and high prevalence of infectious diseases around the world, the ability to quickly and accurately diagnose these infections is very critical. Yet, there are many challenges with regard to identifying bacterial infections with high specificity (ruling out other diseases) and sensitivity (sensing infections when they are still small-scale). Imaging bacterial infections through PET scans is a potential solution to this issue, however many of the imaging tracers developed to do so lack the specificity to rule out cancer and inflammation, and lack the sensitivity […]

Selin Flor

An important problem in the medical field today is the limited number of transplanted livers which are necessary to treat end-stage liver disease. One potential solution to the finite number of liver donations is the generation of liver organoids from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Advanced three-dimensional (3D) cell culture techniques, such as organoid formation, may overcome any inherent differences between iPSC cell line differentiation efficiency, thus consistently promote development of highly functional mature cells. My project aims to determine the differentiation efficiency of three different iPSC lines into mature […]

Alder Ensberg

Fe(II)/ɑ-ketoglutarate (FeII/αKG) dependent halogenases are a class of enzymes that stand out in their ability to add halogens to otherwise hard-to-distinguish C-H bonds in organic compounds. This provides potential for widespread utility in many contexts, such as agriculture, medicine, and industry. However, these enzymes tend to act on only a few specific amino acids, limiting their utility. The Chang Group has previously identified a hydroxylase from the bacteria Streptomyces bunogensis known as MN3 and shown it to accept the amino acid arginine, setting it apart from other enzymes in the […]

Jenny Chen

Quantum computers promise vast computing power and exponential speedup, but as we remain in the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum) Era this remains a promise rather than a reality. Currently superconducting qubits are the leading platform for realizing scalable quantum processors, already displaying capabilities of quantum advantage. Despite such progress, they are still limited by errors stemming from their imperfect control and manipulation.   My project hopes to control error and improve gate fidelities in superconducting qubits by focusing on the question: How can we develop better characterization and calibration procedures to […]