Seth Zhao

Privacy is one of the central issues of our time. All things being equal, we assume that most people prefer privacy; it is a foundational right enshrined in the penumbras of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 14th amendments of the U.S. constitution as well as in several state constitutions (including those of California, Massachusetts, and Washington) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Despite our appreciation of privacy, police officers wear body cameras, customer loyalty programs track purchases, and the Transportation Safety Administration performs full body scans. This […]

Jesse Clements

New technologies such as police body cameras and deepfake algorithms have recently put questions of photographys value as evidence in the spotlight. However, photographic technologies have been part of the courtroom since the mid-nineteenth century. This project turns to the emergence of photography and cinema as evidentiary tools in the courtroom in an attempt to uncover the preconditions of our current moment of mediated justice. I will assist my graduate student mentor in advancing the larger project by constructing a newspaper archive for significant early court cases involving moving-image evidence, […]

Nicholas Fujii

One crucial topic in ecology is understanding how animals respond to environmental pressures. My research aims to study the behavioral ecology of animal defenses in an evolutionary biology framework. Specifically, this project focuses on voluntary release of legs by arachnids. Although beneficial in the short term, this behavior can carry important negative consequences in the locomotion, physiology, and behavior of animals. Daddy long-legs are ideal for this research because of their unique morphology and behavior. Their accessibility also offers the possibility of performing extensive fieldwork and laboratory experiments in the […]

Kevin Yu

This project involves constructing an online database of metaphors in Akkadian, one of the main languages of ancient Mesopotamia. The work is part of my graduate student mentors thesis, which looks at distinctive literary features of Akkadian literature. We will both analyze the internal structure of these metaphors and their distribution within a corpus of cuneiform texts. The theoretical analysis of the metaphors will be based on George Lakoffs Conceptual Metaphor Theory, while the distributional analysis will use a data visualization program called Gephi. Our online database will be based […]

Danielle Diaz

The ability to measure vibrations is a vital engineering problem. From measuring pulse for health diagnostics to sensing pressure on a touch screen for a smart phone, the applications vary far and wide. In our group we study the use of polymer-based devices called piezoelectrets to measure pressure signals for a variety of applications. Our microfabricated polymer approach yields superior flexibility, piezoelectric coefficients, and costeffectiveness when compared to traditional ceramic material competitors. The devices themselves also vary in material composition and geometry depending on the application. In this project we […]

Soumil Jain

What makes a smart building smart? Does a smart building or space trigger behavioural changes in users and their interactions with the space? Transformation in health and medicine calls for innovation and integration of information science and engineering approaches to revolutionize healthcare delivery systems, including high-performance wireless communication and sensing technologies. This study is part of an NSF-funded project and will focus on developing event-based behavioural models to simulate building-user interactions in hospital settings, to predict human behaviour in a hospital and optimize design.

Colette Cosyn-Kang

Pesticide use trends in California have shifted drastically in recent decades. As neurotoxic pesticides-such as organophosphates and carbamates- have been phased out of agricultural use, they have been replaced by other pesticides such as pyrethroids, neonicotinoids, and glyphosate (the active ingredient in RoundUp). However, little is known about the relative toxicity of the pesticides that are currently being used most heavily in agriculture. No previous studies have evaluated total pesticide toxicity over time, including whether cumulative toxicity has shifted in conjunction with changes in the types of pesticides being applied. […]

Nancy Jauregui

The aim of this project is to develop, implement, and assess a new model for undergraduate involvement in research, targeting first and near-first generation to college STEM majors who attend community colleges. First-generation college students are only slightly underrepresented in terms of initial STEM enrollment, but much less likely to complete their degree. Near-first generation students are those who have a parent with a four-year degree, but who have little to no knowledge about success in higher education in the U.S. (e.g., foster children, children of immigrants). Students from both […]

Wendy (Fanghui) Wan

Superconductors are materials where quantum mechanical interactions between the constituent electrons induce a state with zero electrical resistance. They are often used in MRI machines and precision magnetometers. However, their applicability is hindered by the requisite cryogenic temperatures. Therefore, the discovery of novel superconductors that operate at higher temperatures is of tremendous fundamental and practical interest. This project focuses on inducing superconductivity in a class of materials called the delafossites, some of which have been theoretically predicted to host superconductivity under certain conditions. I will work closely with my graduate […]

Danielle Yang

This research seeks to understand the morphological relationship between the bony and keratinous portions of the turtle feeding apparatus, as well as their relationship to diet and habitat. I will focus on a subset of these turtles to test hypotheses at a finer taxonomic level with the goal of exploring the morphological variation within this taxon. To identify variation in skull shape, I will select appropriate specimens from institutions across the Bay Area, such as the UC Museums of Paleontology and Vertebrate Zoology and the California Academy of Sciences, and […]