Dvir Reif

I have been working in the Nogales lab since Summer 2016 through this academic year through URAP, working with a postdoctoral fellow (Vignesh Kasinath) and another undergraduate (Ashlee Feng) in the Nogales lab. My work in the Nogales lab is focused on understanding the structure and function of Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2). So far we have been successful not just in the biochemical characterization which involves molecular cloning and protein purification, but also in preliminary electron microscopy studies (Negative stain and Cryo-EM). We have found conclusive evidence for the […]

Samuel Bright-Thonney

Prof. Shapiro is an experimental particle physicist and a leader of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory affiliated collider experiment known as: ATLAS collaboration at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). One of the most important pieces of the ATLAS research program is to search for new phenomena and interactions never before observed at the most basic level of nature. One class of theory that predicts such interactions is “Supersymmetry.” Samuel is working on the search for Supersymmetry in a special class of models where some of the Supersymmetric particles can […]

Shannon Zheng

As an undergraduate research apprentice, I transcribe interviews in a qualitative Sociological study. After transcribing, I help code and organize data. Given my exposure to the data, I then have the opportunity to author analytic memos, seeking relationships between past scholarship and current data.

Vivek Raghuram

Prof. Feldman is leading the ECG2 project, a “Natural Language Understanding” system. Vivek is currently working with him on two projects, one to apply the natural language understanding system to control strategy video gaming, and another to build a healthcare-related question and answer system. This summer, Vivek wrote and submitted a paper to a conference about strategy video game control. He also made progress setting up the system for the healthcare project.

Nikhil Athreya

The project involved convex optimization and GPU programming to speed up neuronal simulations. Essentially, given the description of a neuron and/or a neuronal network, the project aims to translate this high level description into something that can be run on a GPU. GPU-bound simulations are on the order of 1000’s of times faster than CPU-bound simulations. This summer, I worked on porting these simulations to Python, where they can be more easily accessed by programmers and streamlining the efficiency of the modeling program.

Christian Ramiro

Our project’s overarching focus is to detect changes in how we use our lexicon to convey meaning. A previous project touched heavily on how meaning “evolves” for a word over the whole course of its existence (up to Old English!). This summer we are looking into how word meaning changes or transfers during the development of children.

Yuxiao Yu

Autism spectrum disorder has a strong genetic basis. My research contributes to understanding the functions of the genes that are highly associated with autism. Main techniques employed include cloning, CRIPSR-Cas9 system to introduce gene mutation, phenotypical analysis using immunofluorescence and in situ hybridization.

Simon Zhen

The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) of the eye refers to a monolayer of cells that are critical for maintaining the health of the photo-receptor cells located in the back of the eye. This summer, my work is focused on performing primary culture of RPE cells. These cells will then be subjected to further studies, including staining (to identify the contents of the cells), etc.

Ruby Sapia

By evaluating what counts as “food movement” activity, we are able to identify organizations and events engaging with its themes. Additionally, it gives us a framework through which to evaluate in what ways and to what extent farmers and ranchers adhere to similar themes, and whether they use the same language, occupy the same social spaces, or participate in the same dialogues as food movement actors who engage from urban/consumer/intellectual domains. This summer I am primarily focusing on interviewing food movement organizers and thought leaders to explore their perceptions of […]

Arthur Tran

For the summer, I’ve been working on the synthesis of a molecular linker that connects two different drug known as a PROTAC, or proteolysis targeting chimera. One drug at the end of this linker is a thalidomide derivative, which can bind to the E3 ubiquitin ligase cereblon (a protein in the cell that can mark other proteins for degradation). The other drug is a known suppressor of the YAP-TEAD complex in the cell, which is associated with hepatomegaly and tumorigenesis.