URAP

Rong Wang - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The vasculature supplies all cells in the body. A dysfunctional vasculature causes myriad diseases, including stroke, arterial occlusive diseases, hemorrhages, and vascular anomalies. Our long-term goal is to understand vessel Pathogenesis and Regeneration and to treat vascular diseases. Our strategy is to understand genes crucial for angiogenesis (new vessel...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

This project involves building diagnostic machine learning models merging electronic health record (EHR) data with longitudinal Fitbit wearable data. After simply training these supervised learning models, the project will then focus on exploring explainable AI + algorithmic fairness issues with the dataset, all using Python-based machine learning. This project involves...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Approximately fifty percent of all insect species are herbivorous and together with plants, comprise over half of all named species of life. To feed on a plant, an herbivore must evolve strategies to overcome the chemical defenses (toxins) that plants produce to protect themselves from herbivory. These toxins may inhibit...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

During the evolutionary transition from one feeding guild to another, such as microbe- to plant-feeding, it is hypothesized that behavioral adaptations are among the first to evolve. In insects, changes to the chemosensory systems that determine host preference are necessary, not only for finding an appropriate host, but in...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

NOTE TO APPLICANTS: This project is only open to onboard a previous Whiteman Lab undergraduate researcher who had not been enrolled through URAP. We will not be evaluating new applications for this project at this time.] While much of genetic inheritance occurs via vertical transmission (i.e., from parents to offspring...

Mary Wildermuth - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Powdery mildew is an obligate biotrophic fungus that infects a broad variety of plants including plants of agronomic (e.g. grapevine) and ornamental (e.g. roses) import. It has lost many essential metabolic pathways and relies on the plant for these compounds. We are interested in figuring out the powdery mildew genes...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

Myopia or short-sightedness has become the focus of increasing concern as its prevalence steadily climbs. Figures of around 90% have been recorded for some Asian university student populations and a recent US-based study also reported a dramatic increase in the prevalence of myopia, especially among AfroAmericans. Myopia is...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

This research has a number of different aspects. One aspect involves collection of optical images of the back of the eye, using an advanced high resolution SD-OCT imagining machine. Initial work will involve images already collected. It will involves working with large amounts of data in excel, using smoothing...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

Myopia or short-sightedness has become the focus of increasing concern as its prevalence steadily climbs. Figures of around 90% have been recorded for some Asian university student populations and a recent US-based study also reported a dramatic increase in the prevalence of myopia, especially among AfroAmericans. Myopia is...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

There is increasing interest in the role of sunlight and light exposure in the development of myopia. In this project, we are using a wearable light sensor/activity monitor (Actiwatch), for human subjects. The sensor will record the intensity of light subjects are exposed to, and will allow us to...

Caroline Williams - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

The Williams Lab in the Department of Integrative Biology studies the life history and physiology of the California variable field cricket. Crickets are a model system to study how animals can adjust energetic investments to activity, reproduction, and maintenance throughout their lifetime because there are winged and wingless types within...

Caroline Williams - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

We are using grasshoppers from the Rocky Mountains in Colorado to study the biological impacts of recent anthropogenic climate change, from the level of genes and molecules to whole organisms and communities...

Carol Wilson - Research Botanist, University and Jepson Herbaria

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

Mistletoes are shrubby, aerial-branch parasites belonging to order Santalales. Most are hemiparasites that obtain water and mineral nutrients and a portion of their carbon from the xylem sap of their host plants. Although they can be forest pathogens, particularly to conifer tree species that are under stress from drought...

Carol Wilson - Research Botanist, University and Jepson Herbaria

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

Carol A. Wilson is conducting research that examines phylogeny, biogeography, endemism, and ecology of a lineage of Iris that mostly occur in a biodiversity hotspot (California Floristic Province). Iris comprise a highly diverse genus of perennials that provide significant food resources including nectar, pollen, arils, and underground structures, as well...

Ashley Wolf - Professor, Public Health

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

Bacteroidetes is one of the main bacterial groups of the human gut microbiome. Although several reference strains related to species such Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, Bacteroides fragilis and Phocaicola vulgatus have been investigated and even used as model organisms to understand the gut microbiome, strain level diversity is extensive and remains to...

Ashley Wolf - Professor, Public Health

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

The gut microbiome is a complex community of microbes that have unique enzymatic capabilities. Some gut bacteria metabolize sialic acids that are found in the diet and/or produced by host cells. We have identified putative genes that encode enzymes responsible for sialic acid metabolism. This project will use cloning...

Ashley Wolf - Professor, Public Health

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

Dietary ingredients can provide fuel to the gut microbiome and influence the abundance of particular bacterial species in the gut. During heating steps in food processing, Maillard reaction products (MRPs) are formed from non-enzymatic reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars. As one of the MRPs, ε-fructoselysine (FL...

Wendy Yue - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Spiny mice are among the few mammals capable of shedding and regenerating large areas of skin, a unique adaptation that helps them escape predators. However, this ability comes with a challenge: how do they manage the pain from such severe injuries? This project aims to investigate potential mechanisms that allow...

Qing Zhou - Professor, Psychology

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

Professor Qing Zhou’s Family and Culture Lab (https://zhoulab.berkeley.edu/) aims to investigate cultural, contextual, and temperament influences on socio-emotional/mental health, academic, executive function, and language development from childhood to young adulthood, with a particular focus on children/youth of immigrant families. We have multiple ongoing research projects investigating...