URAP

Mina Aganagic - Professor, Mathematics

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

Today’s gold standard for establishing new theoretical results in mathematics is an accompanying formal computer-verification of the main theorems and their proofs (see reference below). Systems known as interactive theorem provers (ITPs), first designed to formally verify computer algorithms, have recently gained significant momentum in many mathematics communities. These...

Lee Bernstein - Professor, Nuclear Engineering

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

The Berkeley Lab Heavy Element Group in the Nuclear Science Division is seeking a highly motivated undergraduate student to join our research team in developing innovative robotic solutions for radiation-intensive tasks. As a research assistant, you will play a key role in training a robot arm to build a...

Jim Bishop - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

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

California Coast is dominated by streams, creeks, and ephemeral surface and groundwater flows that terminate in bar-built estuaries, many of which become seasonally isolated from direct flow to the ocean. Flowing water often seeps directly into the sand and may undergo significant reaction before entering the ocean; furthermore, there...

William Boos - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 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...

William Boos - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 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...

William Boos - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

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

The coupling of rainfall in Earth's tropics with atmospheric fluid dynamics is a vigorous area of research; it is also enormously consequential for many millions of people working in agriculture in Africa and Asia. In this project we will use theoretical atmospheric dynamics, large satellite datasets, and new AI weather...

Francesco Borrelli - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

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

Accurate road geometry prediction is a cornerstone for building reliable world models of the driving environment, which is crucial for autonomous vehicle navigation. This project aims to develop a model to accurately predict key road geometry features, such as road curvature and bank angles, using data from multiple sensors, including...

Francesco Borrelli - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

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

Design and development of a nonplanar vehicle dynamics simulator capable of accurately modeling and analyzing the behavior of vehicles on variable road surface geometries and conditions. The simulator will allow users to customize both the terrain properties and the vehicle configuration. Key features include: 1. Road Surface Customization: Users can...

Francesco Borrelli - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

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

This project builds upon an existing 1/10-scale off-road autonomous vehicle platform to explore and operate in unknown and changing environments, including sandy beaches, gravel, and forests. The control stack must make use of onboard sensors (RGBD camera, IMU) to map the environment and plan feasible and cost-effective...

Francesco Borrelli - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

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

The 1/10-scale Berkeley Autonomous Race Car (BARC) platform is used for demonstrating novel control algorithms and to support the vehicle dynamics course. This project involves building updated versions of the 1/10-scale BARC platform. While building the platforms the design and construction of the platform needs to be documented...

Roland Burgmann - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

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

Earthquakes are influenced by the properties of faults. Our ability to characterize fault zones and determine how they impact earthquakes is limited. The goal of this project is to perform a multiscale analysis of the rock surrounding faults and explore how it may impact how faults slip and generate earthquakes...

Jan Christoph - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Our group studies heart rhythm disorders and cardiac pathophysiology. In our lab, we produce high-resolution imaging data of intact isolated hearts ex vivo. This data shows action potential waves propagating across the ventricular surface of isolated beating hearts. A common pathophysiology, which we simulate in this ex vivo setting...

Bethanie Edwards - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

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

Help develop an improved lipidomic workflow that is optimized for marine compounds, specifically those found in suspended and dissolved organic matter throughout the world’s oceans (0-4000 m deep). Marine lipidomics allows oceanographers to analyze thousands of lipid compounds in a single mass spectrometry run. Lipids serve a multitude of roles...

Bethany Goldblum - Professor, Nuclear Engineering

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

Organic scintillators are materials that emit light when excited by ionizing radiation. They are particularly attractive for fast neutron detection with applications in fusion diagnostics, nuclear security and proliferation detection technologies, and curiosity-driven science. Our group works on a wide range of aspects of scintillator science and engineering, from...

Bethany Goldblum - Professor, Nuclear Engineering

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

Scintillators emit light when excited by ionizing radiation. They are used in a variety of applications including basic science measurements, medical imaging, nuclear security and proliferation detection technologies, fusion-energy system diagnostics, etc. A database of scintillator properties is hosted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (scintillator.lbl.gov) containing a variety of...

Bethany Goldblum - Professor, Nuclear Engineering

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

As new technologies rapidly evolve, they introduce novel challenges and vulnerabilities for international nuclear security. This project brings together students from the technical and social sciences to explore issues at the intersection of technology, nuclear risk, and policy with the aim of informing the development of effective policy frameworks...

Venkatesan Guruswami - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Computer-assisted and automated theorem proving has been a longstanding goal of artificial intelligence and has gained increasing importance in recent years. Despite notable advancements, such as AlphaProof from Google DeepMind, which achieves silver-medal standard in solving International Mathematical Olympiad problems, challenges persist in obtaining machine-verifiable theorems and...

Christine Hastorf - Professor, Anthropology

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

This URAP project will be working with Professor Hastorf on plant material from the Bolivian highlands that will be processed for stable isotope analysis in order to identify and model the impact of fertilizer on Zea mays, maize, that can be applied on archaeobotanical material...

Christine Hastorf - Professor, Anthropology

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

UC Berkeley's McCown archaeobotany laboratory completes a range of archaeological analyses and research. This project will focus organizing and editing plant type collections in order to clarify the digital file, prepare them for herbaria or dispose of them...

Christine Hastorf - Professor, Anthropology

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

Plotting archaeological architectural remains in 3D from a prehistoric archaeological project located in the Altiplano of Bolivia. The goal is to create a 3D map of the excavated architecture and samples collected from a GIS data base of excavated material, so that the distribution and location of artifacts and ecofacts...

Amin Jazaeri - Director of Instructional Support, Mechanical Engineering

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

Students will design experiments that can be controlled remotely through the internet...

Asir Intisar Khan - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Modern AI and data-intensive technologies demand faster, smaller, and far more energy-efficient electronic devices. However, as today’s electronics continue to shrink, traditional materials, such as metals, are approaching fundamental limits. When metals become thin, their electrical resistivity increases sharply due to electron scattering at their surfaces. This leads...

Asir Intisar Khan - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Data-centric applications face growing latency and energy challenges due to the separation of logic and memory components in traditional computing architecture. Neuro-inspired computing, modeled on the brain’s energy-efficient neural networks, offers a promising solution by reducing off-chip memory access. However, existing memory technologies struggle to achieve...

Asir Intisar Khan - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

As nanoelectronics evolves, managing heat becomes critical, particularly in high-density 3D chips for AI workloads. Uneven power dissipation leads to localized ‘hot spots’ that compromise device reliability and safety. Current thermal management approaches, such as using high thermal conductivity materials, optimizing through-silicon vias, and passive cooling, often overlook...

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

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

Mu2e is a medium-scale Particle Physics experiment currently under construction at Fermi National Lab, with UCB and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as collaborating institutions. Mu2e will search for the ultra-rare process whereby a muon particle converts directly into an electron, without the emission of any neutrinos. Though not...

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

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

Mu2e is a medium-scale Particle Physics experiment currently under construction at Fermi National Lab, with UCB and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as collaborating institutions. Mu2e will search for the ultra-rare process whereby a muon particle converts directly into an electron, without the emission of any neutrinos. Though not...

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

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

Mu2e is a medium-scale Particle Physics experiment currently under construction at Fermi National Lab, with UCB and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab as collaborating institutions. Mu2e will search for the ultra-rare process whereby a muon particle converts directly into an electron, without the emission of any neutrinos. Though not...

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

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

Superconducting sensors, such as Transition-edge sensors (TESs) coupled with superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), are used in many applications, from quantum computing to astrophysics to particle physics. For rare-events search experiments, such as neutrinoless double beta decay, a multiplexed readout is necessary for low-temperature experiments which operate...

Thibault Laplace - Research Scientist, Nuclear Engineering

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

Photon strength functions (PSFs) quantify the probability of γ‐ray emission and absorption in atomic nuclei as a function of energy, and they play a critical role in determining radiative neutron‐capture rates that drive the production of elements in stars. In particular, low‐lying resonances in PSFs can significantly...

Laurel Larsen - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

The Okavango Delta in Botswana is one of the world’s largest and most significant wetlands. Land-use changes in its headwaters and climate change are altering its patterns of inundation, with potential consequences for wildlife and human livelihoods. Due to the vastness and remoteness of the Okavango, however, its changing...

Laurel Larsen - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

California supplies water to nearly 40 million people, sustains the most productive agricultural region in the US, and supports a rich diversity of freshwater species. However, persistent drought, extreme floods, and widespread environmental degradation are exposing significant vulnerabilities in the state’s water management system. Furthermore, decisions over how water is...

Laurel Larsen - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

River flow forecasting is essential for planning reservoir operations, defense strategies against flooding, and fluvial ecosystems management plans. However, flow forecasting is a highly uncertain science. One of the biggest uncertainties lies in resolving the timescales over which water is stored in the subsurface and time lags between perturbations in...

Laurel Larsen - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

The Environmental Systems Dynamics Laboratory (ESDL) focuses on the interplay between biological, physical, and human aspects of the environment using a combination of physically-based and data-driven models. This internship aims to expand on our current work exploring the use of deep learning for environmental predictions. The Environmental Systems...

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

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

We are working on precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the relic thermal radiation that decoupled from the primordial plasma when the universe was just 0.003% of its current age. Measurements of the CMB have been central to the formation of the modern picture of the universe, and...

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

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

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a unique window to fundamental physics. It can be used to probe primordial gravitational waves, which are a distinct sign that the early universe has experienced an exponentially rapid expansion at its age of ~10^-32 seconds. The CMB photons also probe the properties...

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

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

Our team specializes in the development, production, and evaluation of highly sensitive detectors, antennas, and readout electronics for a diverse range of cosmology experiments. These endeavors capitalize on the extraordinary properties of superconductivity and the principles of microwave engineering. Through the application of these cutting-edge techniques, we are interested...

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

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

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the oldest light in the Universe, and carries invaluable information about the Universe’s history and evolution. The detection of primordial gravitational waves in the CMB polarisation, a smoking gun for cosmic inflation, is one of the biggest challenges in observational cosmology. To achieve the...

Jessica Lu - Professor, Astronomy

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

My research group studies black holes in the Milky Way in two ways: (1) we search for stellar-mass black holes using gravitational microlensing and (2) we study the environment around the supermassive. black hole at the Galactic Center. Interested undergraduates may work in either of these areas. Possible projects...

Jessica Lu - Professor, Astronomy

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

The Moving Universe Lab helps design and build the astronomical instruments needed to find and study black holes, star cluster, and galactic centers. We work on adaptive optics development projects on small and large ground-based telescopes (e.g. Keck Observatory). Adaptive optics systems correct for the blurring effects of the...

Jessica Lu - Professor, Astronomy

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

Model the radial velocities, orbits, and light curves of a sample of ASAS-SN ellipsoidal variable star systems...

Kam-Biu Luk - Professor, Physics

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

Neutrino is a sub-atomic particle that was thought to be massless. Recently, a new phenomenon called neutrino oscillation, a transformation of one type of neutrino to another kind, has been discovered in experiments. These important findings imply that neutrinos have mass and they can mix among themselves. Neutrino oscillations...

Kam-Biu Luk - Professor, Physics

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

This project will focus on applying contrastive learning and anomaly detection techniques to various DUNE prototype simulated and real datasets in order to identify deficiencies in our understanding of how neutrinos interact. The work will involve: preparing inputs from the DUNE simulation and data suitable for ML-libraries; development of...

Qihui Lyu - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

This project aims to improve metal artifacts in Computed Tomography (CT) images. In the presence of highly attenuating objects such as dental fillings, spinal screws/rods, hip prostheses, and gold fiducial markers, CT images are often corrupted by streak artifacts, making these images non-diagnostic and impacting the accuracy of...

Qihui Lyu - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Targeted alpha therapy is a promising treatment technique for late stage cancer patients with metastasis, but its clinical application is limited by the current imaging capabilities. Simultaneous broad-energy imaging is critical, but the current Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) can only image low energy photons with limited energy...

Qihui Lyu - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) is a targeted radiotherapy technique that relies on the preferential accumulation of boron-10 in tumor cells, followed by irradiation with low-energy neutrons to produce high–linear energy transfer alpha particles at the cellular level. Conventional BNCT uses external neutron beams, which results in...

Michael Manga - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

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

The overall goal of this project is to understand how and why volcanoes erupt. This includes what happens when volcanoes erupt under the sea, how changes in sea-level and lake-level affect eruptions, and how eruptions evolve on ocean worlds (e.g., Saturn's moon Enceladus). For the first...

Michael Manga - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

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

Long-Valley caldera is an active magmatic system in California. The goal of this project is to explore seismic attenuation changes with ambient noise seismic interferometry to characterize subsurface hydrothermal fluid/magma movement and surface snow loading deformation process. This project will use over 20-years of seismic data to...

Michael Manga - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

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

Olivine-rich rocks, such as those from the mantle, react with water to form serpentine, other minerals, and release hydrogen. There is a large volume change from this reaction. Stresses from volume changes can create cracks which enable water to enter the rock. This project seeks to unravel the history...

Michael Manga - Professor, Earth and Planetary Science

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

Mono Lake hosts some of the youngest volcanoes in California and one of them is actively sinking into the lake. The goal of this project is to quantify active volcanic deformation in Mono Lake and reveal the mechanisms that are driving it. This project will use InSAR, LiDAR, and geologic...

Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros - Research Scientist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

Much of the high-energy Universe remains an enigma, with some phenomena that have been discovered—like gamma-ray bursts, magnetar flares, and supernovae— still to be studied, analyzed and better understood. With the development of technology in the soft/medium gamma-ray regime, we are able to “see” the...