URAP

Dor Abrahamson - Professor, Education

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

We present an innovative educational design for basic arithmetic that responds to students’ documented difficulties with adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. The design utilizes MOVES, a technological architecture that combines floor- and screen-projected interactive interfaces. Students enact arithmetic operations, e.g., “3 - (-2)” by walking along a projected (more...)

Alice Agogino - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Description: Squishy robots are rapidly deployable mobile sensing robots for disaster rescue, remote monitoring and space exploration. Our emergent technologies are at the fusion of robotics, mobile sensing, machine learning, big data fusion and smart IoT (Internet of Things). Our first target market is the HazMat and CBRNE (Chemical, biological (more...)

Alice Agogino - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Squishy robots are rapidly deployable mobile sensing robots for disaster rescue, remote monitoring and space exploration. Our emergent technologies are at the fusion of robotics, mobile sensing, machine learning, big data fusion and smart IoT (Internet of Things). This semester we will focus on smart sensor robots for early detection (more...)

Alice Agogino - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Project #1. theDesignExchange.org: (1) theDesignExchange: We are in the process of designing and developing the DesignExchange, an interactive web portal for the design and design strategy community. The DesignExchange aims to meet three needs: consolidate and organize the many design and design research methods used, develop a community of practitioners (more...)

Alice Agogino - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

This research project originated from a longstanding relationship between the Pinoleville Pomo Nation from Northern California and an interdisciplinary research group from UC Berkeley. After conversations with the Tribal Council and researchers’ participation in tribal gatherings, issues around well-being, and education were identified as areas of common interest. One (more...)

Ahmed Alaa - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Self-supervised learning (SSL) is a crucial driver of much of the recent progress in vision and language modeling. In the SSL paradigm, a model is pre-trained through a pretext task that only involves unlabeled data—the pre-trained representation is then fine-tuned on downstream tasks of interest (more...)

Ahmed Alaa - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

In Self-supervised learning (SSL), a model is pre-trained through a pretext task that only involves unlabeled data—the pre-trained representation is then fine-tuned on downstream tasks of interest where only a small number of labeled examples may be available. In this project, we will explore novel (more...)

Ahmed Alaa - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Large language models (LLMs) pre-trained on large corpora of text have demonstrated incredible capabilities across with zero- or few-shot performance in new tasks that differ from their pre-training objectives. In this projects, we will study the zero- and few-shot performance of LLMs repurposed to issue predictions (more...)

Ahmed Alaa - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Institutional constraints and concerns over patient privacy impedes sharing of clinical data among researchers. High-fidelity synthetic data that mimics the real data distribution without revealing real data for individual patients can help empower and democratize research applying machine learning models to clinical problems. In this project, we will use (more...)

Reza Alam - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

We are looking for motivated students who want to develop their experimental, theoretical, and computational analysis abilities. The goal of this research is to discover new theories that will be applied to ocean wave energy converter and off-shore structures. You will have the opportunity to design and conduct scientific (more...)

Reza Alam - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Ships spend $45B/year extra fuel because of encountering ocean waves en route, which translates to 1% of the world’s total Green House Gas (GHG) emission. If waves that a ship will encounter can be predicted, then through a smart routing algorithm a significant (>20%) improvement in the performance (more...)

Reza Alam - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

We have a few experimental research projects in the area of fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, aerospace engineering, and ocean engineering. These are serious research projects that potentially can be done by undergraduate students. By serious it means that there is a potential for publication or presenting your results in national and (more...)

Reza Alam - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Two positions available: 1) Design and fabrication, 2) Modeling and Controller Design Field Oriented Control (FOC) is an advanced commutation and current control technique that allows Brushless DC (BLDC) motors to run more efficiently, with a higher power factor, with smoother motion (less torque ripple), and with no compromise in (more...)

David Bamman - Professor, Information, School of

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

LitBank an annotated dataset of fiction to support tasks in natural language processing and the computational humanities. While it currently exists for English, we'll be branching out to create similar resources for other language as well. The primary research will involve carrying out linguistic annotations (e.g., reading novels and marking (more...)

David Bamman - Professor, Information, School of

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

Many computational studies on people in text focus on gender. We are interested in broadening the dimensions of identity labels analyzed in natural language processing and cultural analytics. In particular, we hope to carefully curate resources and datasets for investigating the representation of race in fiction, especially in literature used (more...)

David Bamman - Professor, Information, School of

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

There are several research opportunities available for undergraduates for expanding BookNLP (https://github.com/booknlp/booknlp), a natural language processing pipeline for books and other long documents. We'll be focusing on developing BookNLP for Python, and expanding its capacity to the languages of Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and German. This work will (more...)

Brian A. Barsky - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

This project is investigating algorithmic vision correction for the user of a display based on his or her spectacles prescription in simple cases or based on measurements of the optical aberrations of his or her vision in more complex cases. Our approach is to compute an altered display that when (more...)

Brian A. Barsky - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

This project is concerned with assistive technology that enables users with fine motor control difficulties to navigate, select, point, and click without physically manipulating a mouse. The idea is to use a camera to capture the user’s hand movements. There are many individuals who do not have the ability to (more...)

Gasper Begus - Professor, Linguistics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

This project models spoken language from raw audio using deep generative neural networks (GANs). We use audio, neural, and behavioral data in spoken language to better understand and interpret deep learning models (more...)

Jeff Belkora - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

STUDENT TESTIMONIALS “This apprenticeship has been the highlight of my time at Berkeley. It has given me a chance to help patients in difficult medical situations, and as a pre-health undergraduate, this is important to me.” “It is a great opportunity to get clinical experience and work with like (more...)

Carl Boettiger - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Become familiar with the mathematical, statistical, and computational tools used in the group and learn how to apply these methods to answer questions in ecological research and conservation decision making. Emphasis on the use of deep reinforcement learning and best practices in data science software development (more...)

Carl Boettiger - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Develop, test, and visualize methods for forecasting ecological variables such as carbon flux, beetle abundance, or indicators of aquatic ecosystem health (more...)

William Boos - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

The North American monsoon is a band of intense rainfall that stretches more than 1,000 km along Mexico's west coast and into the southwestern US, delivering crucial water supply to the semi-arid regions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. This monsoon is a continental-scale atmospheric circulation that driven (more...)

William Boos - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     

This project will use satellite data and a new network of hundreds of on-the-ground instrument stations to generate a risk dataset for farmers in equatorial Africa. Our research group studies the fluid dynamics of Earth's tropical atmosphere, focusing on the atmospheric waves and vortices that produce extreme rainfall (more...)

Francesco Borrelli - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

In this project, we aim to improve the energy performance of connected automated vehicles in real-world scenarios. The energy savings can be obtained by harnessing technologies such as (i) remote computations, (ii) forecasts, (iii) historical data, (iv) automation, and (v) coordination with other vehicles and infrastructure. We have the (more...)

Francesco Borrelli - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project involves work on the perception, prediction, and control stacks of the 1/10th scale Berkeley Autonomous Race Car (BARC) platform. The goal is to perform multi-agent racing on an indoor track with onboard sensing and computation. Students can expect to learn about advanced modeling, planning, and control techniques (more...)

Steven Brenner - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

RNA-seq has been widely used in biological and medical research because of its capability to quantify transcriptome changes. Researchers usually use their impressions and experience to choose whether to analyze transcriptome changes in gene expression or alternative splicing levels. A more systematic way to determine whether to focus on (more...)

Steven Brenner - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Genome sequencing identifies a vast number of genetic variants. Predicting these variants’ molecular and clinical effects is one of the preeminent challenges in genetics. Accurate prediction of the impact of genetic variants improves our understanding of how genetic information yields molecular and cellular functions and is an essential step toward (more...)

Steven Brenner - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Proteins often fold into compact structural units, called domains. Protein domains are basic units of protein function and evolution. Delineating domain boundaries is a prerequisite for further analyses of protein structures. However, this process is largely a manual process and the accuracy of these computer programs is still not satisfactory (more...)

Steven Brenner - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

The field of genome interpretation is essential for our understanding of human biology and the advancement of personalized medicine. However, the rapid accumulation of genomic data far exceeds our capacity for reliable interpretation. Consequently, the majority of variation discovered by next generation sequencing technologies is of unknown significance. These variants (more...)

Jennifer Bussell - Professor, Political Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project will evaluate the relationship between the responsiveness of politicians to individual requests for assistance and their future political performance. Specifically, we will merge previously collected experimental data on the response, or lack thereof, of politicians in India to requests for help accessing government services, with subsequent data on (more...)

Jennifer Bussell - Professor, Political Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project examines the character of global clothing production and (re)use. At this stage of the project we will be collecting descriptive qualitative and quantitative data on (1) the political economy of clothing production and distribution, with an emphasis on fast fashion; (2) patterns of secondhand clothing trade, (3 (more...)

Jennifer Bussell - Professor, Political Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project seeks to understand the dynamics of the textiles industry in India, with special attention to the political economy of production. In this stage of the research, we will be focused on collecting background materials about the industry, including statistics on both small-and large-scale production, documentation of (more...)

Jan Christoph - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: Off Campus

It is an exciting time in cardiovascular research: the combination of 3D imaging, deep learning, numerical modeling and high-performance computing opens doors to novel diagnostic capabilities. Our group develops computational and experimental methods for the imaging of the heart. We produce imaging data using fluorescence and 4D ultrasound imaging (more...)

Jan Christoph - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

It is an exciting time in cardiovascular research: the combination of 3D imaging technology, deep learning, numerical modeling and high-performance computing opens doors to novel diagnostic capabilities. Our group develops computational and experimental methods for the imaging of the heart. We produce imaging data using fluorescence imaging and 4D (more...)

Jan Christoph - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: Off Campus

It is an exciting time in cardiovascular research: the combination of 3D imaging technology, deep learning, numerical modeling and high-performance computing opens doors to novel diagnostic capabilities. Our group develops computational and experimental methods for the imaging of the heart. We produce imaging data using fluorescence imaging, catheter-based (more...)

Iain Clark - Professor, Bioengineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project aims to hack an Illumina HiSeqX to create an open-source sequencing platform for spatial analysis of single cells (RNA-seq, DNA-seq, etc on tissue). The HiSeqX contains advanced fluidics and optics made for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). A community of hackers is working to repurpose these (more...)

Iain Clark - Professor, Bioengineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

You will assist a PhD student mentor in developing a technology to isolate cells based on DNA markers of HIV. This technique builds off of Clark et al.’s 2023 publication “HIV silencing and cell survival signatures in infected T cell reservoirs.” This project will involve microfluidics, flow cytometry, and (more...)

Iain Clark - Professor, Bioengineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

We recently developed a molecular method that categorizes the cellular connections and transcriptional profiles of glial cells in the mouse brain. The data from this technique can be represented as a highly connected network. The goal of this project is to discover ligand-receptor interactions that promote inflammation in the (more...)

Iain Clark - Professor, Bioengineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

We recently developed a molecular method that categorizes the cellular connections and transcriptional profiles of glial cells in the mouse brain. The data from this technique can be represented as a highly connected network. The goal of this project is to discover ligand-receptor interactions that promote inflammation in the (more...)

Michael F. Crommie - Professor, Physics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

The electrical conductance of 2D materials strongly depends on the presence of atomic defects and so understanding how defects scatter electrons is crucial for engineering the properties of 2D devices. Up to now, most studies of the influence of defects on device behavior have focused solely on transport measurements where (more...)

Michael F. Crommie - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Moiré materials are a class of materials prepared by twisting two atomic materials on top of each other. These classes of materials have become a preferred platform for studying correlated phases due to their tunability of correlation through the moiré period. For example, non-conventional superconductivity, correlated insulating states, quantum (more...)

Michael F. Crommie - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Air sensitive transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) is a class of material hosting interesting quantum phenomena, such as quantum spin liquid, Mott insulator, quantum spin hall insulator etc. To reach different quantum phases of materials, one important tuning parameter is the carrier concentrations inside the material which can be controlled by (more...)

Ernesto Dal Bó - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The conventional wisdom on the source of economic growth emphasizes inclusive institutions: constraints on state elites, which allow open access to political and economic power. Yet, in many contexts where economic growth has emerged, we see the partnership of powerful, coercive (often nondemocratic) states and private enterprise: from Industrial Revolution (more...)

Ernesto Dal Bó - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Who gets patronage jobs in the public sector? Do patronage employees reciprocate by mobilizing votes for their patrons? We study these questions in the context of the archetypical patronage organization in US history: New York City’s Tammany Hall. We are digitizing and linking newly collected archival records on the organization’s (more...)

Emma Fraser - Professor, New Media, Center for

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

OSKI Tech is a program that introduces new technology to a range of students. It is designed to work as a portable technology instruction lab, with a focus on expanding participation in technology for students in media studies, new media, arts and social sciences. The core of OSKI Tech is (more...)

Massimiliano Fratoni - Professor, Nuclear Engineering

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Pebble bed reactors (PBRs) use small spherical fuel elements that are piled in a cylindric core to achieve critical mass and energy production. The pebbles are circulated in and out of the core until the inner fuel is exhausted and at that point they are replaced with new pebbles. Such (more...)

Liz Galvez - Professor, Architecture

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

American desert cities designed and built at the turn of the century, in collaboration with the advent of air-conditioning technologies, have been able to house millions of Americans by relying primarily on fossil-fuels to supply relief from extreme hot weather. The Phoenix Metro Area, or The Valley of (more...)

Liz Galvez - Professor, Architecture

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

To address the phenomenon of extreme weather conditions in relationship with the increase in energy instability, I have tested a series of experimental ideas for managing interior environments through pavilions, installations, exhibitions and essays. These tests put forth architectures that engage environmental management through design tactics and with reduced reliance (more...)

Paul Gertler - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Project 1: Hard and Soft Entrepreneurship Skills for youth in Uganda, Two RCTs *** We study the medium and long term impacts (4y and 9y) of two exciting youth entrepreneurship programs. and innovative youth skill-development and entrepreneurship interventions (Skills for Effective Entrepreneurship Development, SEED, and the Educate! Experience) were implemented (more...)