Qiuyue Chen
Before genetic information can be exchanged during reproduction, certain regions of DNA—called recombination hotspots—must become accessible within tightly packed chromatin. How these sites are opened is a fundamental question in biology. My project investigates how two proteins, PRDM9 and HELLS, work together to make these regions accessible. PRDM9 acts as a guide, recognizing specific DNA sequences, while HELLS functions as a molecular machine that can reposition DNA packaging structures to expose the underlying genetic code. I aim to understand how PRDM9 activates or regulates HELLS to open chromatin at the […]
Jakob Buehler
Partial differential equations (PDEs) are the mathematical language scientists use to describe a great variety of physical system, from ocean currents to fusion plasmas. Solving them on a computer becomes prohibitively expensive as problems grow in size and dimension, creating a major bottleneck across science and engineering. Tensor networks are a promising new class of methods that can reduce this cost by exploiting hidden structure in PDE solutions, but so far tensor network techniques have mostly been tried on simple box-shaped domains. The main goal of this project is to […]
Evan Wille
Detecting exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, faces many limitations in current work. The primary method, known as “”transit photometry,”” can not measure more than 10% of the total predicted population of exoplanets! In this project, I want to use what scientists have learned about the dynamics between Jupiter and Io to develop an alternative method to find exoplanets. Jupiter and Io have a special relationship: much of Jupiter’s magnetosphere is fueled by Io’s intense volcanism. The constant loading of plasma from Io drives intense aurorae, just like the […]
Rainer Reczek
Quantum computers promise solutions to highly formidable problems in physics, chemistry and mathematics that are intractable on classical computers. However, realization of quantum computers capable of solving these problems is hindered by the issue of preserving quantum information on practical timescales. Qubits, the quantum mechanical analog of a bit and the building block of quantum computers are subject to noise from their environment, quickly losing the information they carry. A promising way to improve the lifetime of a qubit is to detect and correct noise-induced errors, a technique known as […]
Yunhee Jang
This project is a multifaceted Monte Carlo study of jet substructure in heavy-flavor enriched events using Pythia simulations. It explores a diverse set of observables including jet axes, grooming techniques, momentum-sharing variables, N-subjettiness, and angular correlations using various tagging strategies and clustering algorithms. Heavy quarks like charm act as powerful probes of the strong force. Due to their large mass, they fragment and radiate differently than lighter quarks or gluons, encoding rich information about the dynamics of parton showering and hadronization. By analyzing the internal structure of heavy-flavor jets, we […]
Viola Zhao
In general, quantum field theory describes the universe via nonlinear systems of partial differential equations. One current intriguing topic in theoretical physics is the asymptotic behavior of a quantum field theory. However, extracting information about this asymptotic behavior has posed a substantial challenge. Recently, tropical geometry has flourished as a new mathematical tool, which allows one to study the asymptotic behavior of a mathematical object, by translating nonlinear problems into vastly simpler piecewise linear problems at their asymptopia. For this project, the main objective is to construct a tropical notion […]
Tyler Hou
Optimizing programs makes them run faster and consume less resources. However, implementing program optimizers is difficult for people without specialized expertise. In recent years, new declarative techniques have made program optimization more accessible to non-experts. However, these techniques lack support for reasoning about programs “top-down.” Top-down reasoning is required to efficiently implement context-sensitive optimizations that are standard in e.g. optimizing compilers and database query planning. For example, we would like to optimize the program ⟦if (x = 1) x (x / x)⟧ to just ⟦1⟧. This requires reasoning that x […]
Songlin Zhao
Cancer progression arises from tumors developing within dynamic, spatially complex microenvironments where therapies are frequently thwarted by evolving drug resistance. Probabilistic models have served as a cornerstone for understanding evolutionary processes in population genetics, yet conventional approaches often rely on assumptions of static selective pressures and non-spatial conditions. In addition, our research will center around understanding a spatial Moran model with fluctuating selection. Specifically, we will investigate how temporal fluctuations in the selective advantage of a mutation affect its fixation probability in a spatially structured population compared to the constant-selection […]
Ruyu Yan
Earthquakes are a common hazard that impact communities worldwide as they substantially harm human and infrastructure safety. The dynamics of fault slip during large earthquakes are influenced by variations in the frictional properties of fault-zone rocks. Fault zone mineralogy can be impacted by water-rock reactions that induce alteration. This summer, I propose to study mineral alteration along faults activated by the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake, an ideal study area for comparing mineral alteration to earthquake slip. Through X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy analyses of samples from Ridgecrest, I aim to […]
Ronnie Mack
This project aims to develop an advanced hybrid neural system inspired by human sensory perception. It combines attention-driven exploratory learning with physics-informed reasoning to enable artificial intelligence (AI) to move beyond pattern recognition and into true understanding of complex physical environments. The title reflects the system’s journey from perceiving raw data (blind exploration) to refining and validating that data through physical laws (seeing with clarity).