URAP

Peter Oboyski - Sr. Museum Scientist, Essig Museum of Entomology

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

The Essig Museum, in collaboration with several other California institutions, is building a DNA barcode reference library for all species of insects in the state. This includes extracting DNA from identified museum specimens as well as collecting fresh specimens from around the state. The end goal is to develop a...

Peter Oboyski - Sr. Museum Scientist, Essig Museum of Entomology

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

Natural History Museums are repositories for biodiversity research, documentation of the impacts of global change, and a resource for new and innovative science. Managing these collections requires expertise in many disparate disciplines such as library science, anatomy & morphology, taxonomy, and data management. The Essig Museum houses over 5 million specimens...

Daniel Okamoto - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Climate change is dramatically altering the oceans. These changes include increases in sea surface temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and primary productivity. We use experiments and field data to assess how these changes affect the physiology, growth, reproduction, and behavior of marine animals. We have numerous samples from past experiments and...

Victor Ortega Jimenez - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Marangoni effect is used by water striders (Veliidae) and rove beetles (Staphylinidae) to induce an ultrafast escape response against inter- or intra-specific predators. However, it is unclear if the surfactants secreted by these insects, that reduce surface tension of water, can also affect predator’s locomotion during the chasing...

Emily Ozer - Professor, Public Health

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

Youth should be meaningfully included and engaged in conversations about policies that directly affect them. Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is a social justice-focused approach for promoting social change and positive youth development in which youth conduct systematic research and actions to improve their schools and communities (Ozer...

Emily Ozer - Professor, Public Health

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

This project is conducting systematic review of the literature to describe the state of the youth participatory action research (YPAR) literature and synthesizing findings of the youth outcomes reported in these studies. YPAR is an approach that engages young people as researchers to study and address social problems within their...

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This project will involve two different mini-projects: (1) HOMES Survey:(LGBTQ+/SGL) Housing, Health, and Services for Older Adults. HOMES is a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project with LGBTQ+ / same-gender-loving older adults. It uses survey data from LGBTQ+ older adults and information from community partners from...

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This community-engaged multi-faceted project applies an emerging theoretical and conceptual framework (equitable aging), which centers justice and power in understanding and examining aging programs, services, and policies. This project involves qualitative data collection (e.g., focus groups, interviews, ethnographic documents, virtual ethnography), qualitative data analysis, and dissemination. For one...

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This project will provide opportunities for students with a strong foundation in quantitative research to help design a research project that collects survey data from CareYaya’s program participants. Students will also assist with survey data analysis and potentially dissemination. CareYaya is a technology-enabled caregiving platform that connects families who...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

The Pickering Lab at UC Berkeley is currently developing SOIL-SEQ, a hands-on education module for local high school classrooms designed to engage students in a crowdsourcing effort to provide data to better understand the spread of bacterial antibiotic resistance through the environment. We are using cutting-edge, portable...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) cause a neglected tropical disease inextricably linked to poverty, inadequate sanitation, and unhygienic conditions. STH account for over five million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and infect around 1.5 billion people, representing the most prevalent parasitic infections worldwide. Classical microscopy-based surveillance strategies are suboptimal and...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) has become widespread in recent years for community-level surveillance of SARS-CoV-2, and it is currently being applied to many other diseases and public health issues. WBS presents an opportunity for studying and tracking antibiotic-resistant bacteria at the population level. We are working...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Contaminated water supplies in health facilities place patients at risk for antibiotic resistant infections, leading to poor health outcomes. Globally, more than 20% of health facilities lack even basic water services. To provide low-cost water treatment, the Pickering Lab has been developing a passive in-line chlorination technology, known...

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC) Co-pilot project is an innovative research initiative aimed at revolutionizing the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases (NDD), such as Alzheimer's disease and Frontotemporal dementia, through the integration of advanced Large Language Models (LLMs). This project is particularly significant due to the high prevalence...

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias are neurodegenerative diseases with numbers rapidly increasing and currently no cure. To accurately identify the earliest signs of clinical dementia, there is a critical need for sensitive, low-cost, and high-access cognitive markers in the preclinical phase. Novel cognitive markers can complement biomarker information...

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Semantic dementia (SD) presents as a unique neurodegenerative disorder with focal atrophy of the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs). It is comprised of a primarily left-lateralized language syndrome and a right-lateralized behavioral disorder. One current challenge in this disease is in accurately identifying the distant brain regions that are...

Alison Post - Professor, Political Science

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

When do voters elect medical doctors for office? Scholars focused on symbolic and substantive representation typically concentrate on race, gender, religion, or some combination thereof. However, historically, political science scholars have been interested in occupation as a salient category, particularly lawyers. With the decline of the politician-lawyer in Congress...

Alison Post - Professor, Political Science

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

What are the main types of concerns that citizens bring to mayors and city councilors in Latin America? What sorts of incentives do public officials have to address these concerns? And how do these dynamics vary between cities of different sizes? In this project, we will investigate local-level politics...

Matthew Potts - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Project Overview: California faces dual challenges of ambitious climate commitments and a severe affordable housing crisis. This project aims to address these challenges by developing and scaling the use of Engineered Living Materials (ELM)—advanced biomaterials that integrate living cells with synthetic scaffolds. These materials can sense, respond to, and...

Matthew Potts - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Overview: Public debates and policies are increasingly shifting to include nature and nature-related risks and mitigations in climate discourse. Chief among nature-related risks are issues centered on biodiversity. These frameshifts are evidenced by multilateral agreements such as the Global Biodiversity Framework and a suite of regulations coming out...

Ndola Prata - Professor, Public Health

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

This research project is focused on improving the lives of Black Birthing people in California. The postpartum period, or care after birth is one of the most important periods during the birthing cycle, yet there are limited resources during that time. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

Ndola Prata - Professor, Public Health

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

IUD’s are one of the most effective contraceptives to prevent unintended pregnancies. However, pain remains to be a significant barrier for access. Our qualitative study aims to investigate providers’ perceptions, beliefs, and practices to manage pain during IUD insertions...

Ndola Prata - Professor, Public Health

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

Suicide is a serious public health problem globally. There are about 800,000 deaths by suicide globally. Of these, 77% are in low-and-middle income countries. For each suicide, 35 - 140 people are affected, but very few seek care. Individuals bereaved by suicide also experience stigma and therefore are reluctant...

Elizabeth Purdom - Professor, Statistics

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

This project involves developing statistical methodologies to analyze data from single-cell sequencing of individual patients. Single-cell sequencing of mRNA measures the amount of mRNA of each gene found in individual cells. It measures the diversity of mRNA within cells, and when performed on many individuals can allow us...

Eva Raphael - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common bacterial infections worldwide, particularly among urban-dwelling women. UTIs are primarily caused by Escherichia coli (E. coli). UTIs may cause a range of complications from mild discomfort to severe kidney infections. As antibiotic resistance increases, treatment strategies for UTIs become ineffective...

Justin Remais - Professor, Public Health

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

ALL OPPORTUNITIES WITH THE GROUP ARE EXPECTED TO BE IN-PERSON The Remais Lab is currently seeking a URAP apprentice(s) to collaborate on multiple domestic and global research projects on infectious disease and environmental change. Environmental, ecological and social dynamics are central to the epidemiology of infectious diseases caused...

Justin Remais - Professor, Public Health

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

The Remais Lab is currently seeking a URAP apprentice(s) interested in gaining primary research experience to collaborate on a recently funded NIH project investigating the effects of expanding agriculture on infectious disease transmission. The projects seeks to investigate the effects of agrochemicals on parasite transmission using a combination of...

Filipa Rijo-Ferreira - Professor, Public Health

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

Earth rotation was an evolutionary pressure for organisms to evolve circadian rhythms in order to be able to anticipate the rhythmic day/night cycles. These circadian clocks regulate physiological properties such as sleep, immune response and metabolism. Our lab studies circadian clocks in parasites. This project focus on performing bioinformatics...

Filipa Rijo-Ferreira - Professor, Public Health

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

Parasitic diseases cause major health burden worldwide, with over 1 million deaths each year. Despite having the genome of many parasites sequenced, almost half of their genes are of unknown function. There are still major gaps in our understanding of host-parasite interactions and disease transmission by vectors. Our research...

Filipa Rijo-Ferreira - Professor, Public Health

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

The rotation of the Earth has exerted evolutionary pressure on organisms to develop circadian rhythms, enabling them to anticipate day/night cycles. These daily rhythms are observed across all life forms, regulating physiological functions such as sleep, immune response, and metabolism. Our lab focuses on studying circadian clocks in parasites...

George Roderick - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

This project is focused on the residential urban gardens of the East Bay and how those gardens impact butterfly communities with a focus on the Western Monarch butterfly. The project covers topics of native and non-native plants, invasive arthropods, urban gardens, and changes in species interactions. This project is...

George Roderick - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

In our lab, we are interested in the ecology and evolutionary history of arthropod (insect and spider) species. We mostly study arthropods from Hawaii and other islands in the Pacific, but also species in California and elsewhere. Some are native species, some are recent invasive species, and some are introduced...

George Roderick - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Are you interested in science news and social media? In our lab, we study the ecological and evolutionary history of arthropod (insect and spider) species--the "little things that run the earth." We mostly study arthropods from Hawaii and other islands in the Pacific. Our current project aims...

George Roderick - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Biodiversity surveys often accumulate many many insect and spider specimens, but it is usually hard to figure out what the species actually are. Many species are not yet described and many are found in an area for the first time, or the species are not yet in DNA databases. In...

Hector Rodriguez - Professor, Public Health

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

The objective of this project is to survey and analyze language access services and infrastructure of 150 safety net primary care practices across California to understand and improve how language access needs are met for patients with Limited English Proficiency (LEP). This project is funded by the California Health Care...

Hector Rodriguez - Professor, Public Health

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

Quality of care disparities between patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) and patients proficient in English have been well documented. Language barriers between patients and providers can lead to medical errors, poor chronic condition management, and undue difficulty accessing care. LEP status is highly correlated with other risk factors for...

Veerle Rottiers - Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

Aging is a process of maturation and decline that affects all organisms. Understanding the conserved mechanisms of aging could lead to new strategies for the prevention of age-associated disease. Sex specific differences in longevity occur throughout the animal kingdom, including in humans. Those differences are proposed to be caused...

Veerle Rottiers - Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     

Aging affects all organisms. Understanding the conserved mechanisms of aging could lead to new strategies for the prevention and treatment of age-associated disease. C. elegans, a small roundworm, is one of the most widely used model organisms to study aging. Worms live for about 3 weeks making it practical...

Albert Ruhi Vidal - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

The flux of leaf litter from the riparian zone is a major energy pathway into streams, and, thus, litter breakdown is a critical ecosystem-level process affecting both the carbon and nutrient cycles as well as stream food webs. Leaf litter decomposition is influenced by litter quantity and quality (i.e...

Albert Ruhi Vidal - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

How could we best manage local water supplies in ways that benefit communities and rivers? Los Angeles County in Southern California imports the majority of its water. After residents use this water, wastewater treatment facilities clean it and then generally discharge it into local streams, such as the Los Angeles...

Albert Ruhi Vidal - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Climate change is shifting the distribution of the Earth’s water resources spatially and temporally. In most of California, multi-year droughts are projected to increase in frequency and magnitude by the end of the century. Predicting the impacts of drought on freshwater ecosystems remains, however, a key challenge. This is...

Daniel Savson - DVM, Integrative Biology, OLAC

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

The role of the veterinarian in the research environment has become increasingly critical in recent years. Not only are lab animal veterinarians involved in research involving animal health, but in research endeavors as they relate to and intersect with human or public health (e.g., nutrition, cancer studies, and infectious disease...

Marieka Schotland - Executive Director, Public Health

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

Innovations for Youth (i4Y) is a cross-disciplinary research-action center that catalyzes on innovative interventions, practices and policies to improve equity and well-being for youth locally and worldwide. Our current portfolio includes work on marginalized youth, youth voice, youth participatory action research, and student mental health and wellbeing...

Youngho Seo - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Keywords: cancer, radiopharmaceutical therapy, targeted alpha therapy, alpha particles, image processing, dosimetry, machine learning, digital autoradiography Radiopharmaceutical therapy with alpha-particle emitters (⍺RPT) is an emerging cancer treatment method that has demonstrated high efficacy in clinical trials for several types of cancer. Improvement of these drugs requires thorough pre-clinical...

Youngho Seo - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Molecular imaging is a powerful method of interrogating biochemical properties of imaging subjects. Particularly in research, we use small animal positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), which are combined with x-ray computed tomography (CT). More commonly, these imaging modalities are known as microPET/CT...

Youngho Seo - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Radiotherapy with alpha-emitting nuclides is an extremely promising technique in cancer therapy. The very short range of alpha particles compared to beta particles allows to deliver a much higher therapeutical dose to the lesion, sparing healthy tissue. A fundamental problem with this technique is the inability of current radiation...

Youngho Seo - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Keywords: deep learning, artificial intelligence, prediction, Alzheimer's disease, positron emission tomography, PET, image processing, FDG, glucose metabolism, amyloid Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia, and a debilitating condition that affects a large number of aging populations. When symptoms occur, there are a very limited set of...

Michael Shapira - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Toxins play important roles in inter-species interactions, and the ability to overcome them can open new niches. The potential of animal genomes to facilitate such adaptations is limited; instead, toxin resistance in animals is often provided by gut bacteria. Human activity and industry has dramatically increased the prevalence of...

Michael Shapira - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Animal microbiotas are increasingly recognized as essential for host health. The gut microbiota is the richest, and was shown to contribute to diverse host functions. Perturbations in microbiota composition are associated with human disease, raising interest in manipulating the microbiota to promote healthier living or treat pathology. However, current understanding...

Michael Shapira - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Aging involves a multi-system physiological deterioration. In addition to affected tissues, and likely as a consequence, aging also affects the gut microbiota, an extensive microbial community which contributes to diverse host functions. Imbalances in microbiota composition, or dysbiosis, are often associated with pathology, and recent reports indicate that aging...