Lindsey Parnas

Using secondary materials, online sources, encyclopedias, and other reference material, I will continue my research of the past year investigating when particular paramilitary forces came into existence and ceased to exist, the size of these forces, and which ministries commanded the forces. I will write brief summaries of their insights that will form the backbone of the data coding for our project supported by the Department of Defense. This project collects force information for 102 developing countries, and I focus especially on the Middle East and North Africa region.

Casey Vo

In the Experimental Astrophysics Group at the Space Sciences Laboratory, I work on the testing and characterization of michrochannel plates for their use in NASA sub-orbital and satellite instruments. The MCPs are thin plates made of highly resistive materials with a honeycomb pattern of slant mircochannels. Photons are sent through the channels and bounce against the channel walls until electrons are emitted and yield a cloud of several thousand electrons. My work this summer will focus on further studying and testing these plates for use in future NASA instruments.

Jeff Li

Dengue virus is one of the most increasingly concerning mosquito-borne diseases that infects almost 400 million individuals annually at tremendous cost to not just afflicted patients but entire healthcare infrastructure systems. My research this coming Summer is a continuation of my work in the Harris lab since Fall 2017 where I have been investigating the role of dengue virus non-structural protein (NS1) on the pathogenesis of the disease. Specifically, my research scope focuses on if NS1-induced vascular leak (one of the main clinical indicators of disease) can be inhibited by […]

Simon Sällström

As climate change is endangering the prosperity of future generations and the fruits of economic growth is no longer widely shared, we need new ways to understand what our goals are. Simply pursuing economic growth was a simple and informative proxy for how well a country was doing. As countries grow richer, the policies they choose to pursue becomes increasingly important for the quality of life of its citizens rather than the aggregate wealth. Measuring something is the first step of recognizing its importance. Thus, the purpose of the Sustainable […]

Melanie Hamaguchi

Even in the face of overwhelming digital documentation, the majority of audio in the historical record is still stored on physical sources. The Project IRENE team is working to save these valuable recordings using non-contact digital imaging and analysis. Wax cylinder recordings, produced between 1888-1902, were the first commercially viable recordings and often used to record inventors, scientists, linguists, and early musical recordings. This process of transcribing audio is exact and delicate, which has made the preservation of these mediums a difficult challenge. Wax cylinders are of particular interest for […]

Kathryn Field

This summer I will be working on various projects in the California Archaeology Lab. The Cal Lab performs research on archaeological materials from various sites, predominantly in California. This past year I have been working on projects from sites in the Oregon Great Basin and on the Santa Cruz coastline under the guidance of PhD students Gabriel Sanchez and Michael Grone. This summer, I will continue working on the Santa Cruz projects in the lab and there is also prospect of working out in the field performing survey and excavation […]