URAP

Carla Cicero - Emeritus Staff Curator, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology is a major repository for surveyed and/or salvaged North American wildlife, especially California species. We typical have several thousand frozen carcasses at any given time, with a large diversity of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds. These carcasses come from many sources -- wildlife rescue...

Carla Cicero - Emeritus Staff Curator, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

Students will assist with research projects that investigate geographic variation and species limits in birds. Work may involve morphologic measurements, color measurements, DNA laboratory work, and/or sound analysis. Positions are not available every semester, and students must already have some experience in the MVZ working with specimens and data...

Laurent Coscoy - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a herpesvirus that infects 60% of adults in developed countries and more than 90% in developing countries. Usually, it is controlled by a vigorous immune response so infections are usually asymptomatic or symptoms are mild. However, if the immune system is compromised (for example in people...

Yang Dan - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Sleep problems are a common symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and in some cases an early warning sign before movement deficits. Sleep problems in PD are diverse and can be made worse by medications that treat other PD symptoms by affecting dopamine or norepinephrine levels in the brain. While dopamine...

Todd Dawson - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

California’s coastal grasslands, hosting roughly 90% of the state’s rare and endangered life, and 40% of the state’s native vegetation, are an important carbon sink, and a valuable natural and cultural resource. Over the past 150 years, native grasslands have waned in an absence of herbivory and fire disturbance, which...

Robert Dudley - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Flying insects are the most diverse and abundant form of animal life in the terrestrial biosphere. However, the origins of insect flight remain obscure given the absence of a transitional fossil record. This project will involve construction of a small robot that mimics the likely morphology of early insects, and...

Robert Dudley - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Hummingbirds are only found in the Americas, but in Africa and Asia some members of a different bird family (the sunbirds, Nectariniidae) can also hover, albeit for relatively short durations. This behavior has never been systematically characterized, however, and this project will survey existing video sequences from on-line ornithological...

Jennifer Dunn - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

This project will take an interdisciplinary approach to study the phenomenon of health care segregation in the United States through historical and legal research and qualitative methods. Students will have the opportunity to engage in online and archival research, transcribe and analyze audio files of interviews, write literature summaries, and...

Moisés Expósito-Alonso - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

The global climate is changing at an unprecedented rate due to human activities, threatening global biodiversity and food security. A fundamental question in evolutionary biology is: What enables or limits species to rapidly evolve and adapt to changing climates? In this project, we will use natural ecotypes of Arabidopsis to...

Lia Fernald - Professor, Public Health

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

Around one third of young children in Latin America co-reside with a grandparent. Unlike other regions, intergenerational cohabitation has remained common even with increasing economic prosperity. Grandparents may provide additional care for children with time or financial resources, yet they may also be a burden on parents if the...

Lia Fernald - Professor, Public Health

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

Over 250 million children under five years in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have been estimated to be at risk of poor development, accounting for 43% of young children living in those countries (Lu et al., 2016). There are many reasons that children are at risk for poor development...

Lia Fernald - Professor, Public Health

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

Numerous studies have shown that early childhood development (ECD) interventions, including psychosocial stimulation, are effective in promoting disadvantaged children’s short-term cognitive and socioemotional outcomes, as well as their long-term educational attainment, earnings, and health. One proposed strategy for “scaling up” these interventions to achieve greater coverage in LMICs...

Lia Fernald - Professor, Public Health

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

Background: Every seven minutes a woman is a victim of domestic violence in Brazil. Research on intimate partner violence shows that victimization is not an isolated incident. Because of the repetition of abuse, it’s possible that some women seek assistance from multiple sectors over the course of their victimization. Other...

Aaron Fields - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Many painful pathologies of the spine involve the first sacral (S1) vertebra. For example, damage to the endplates of S1 (in particular, the region near the lumbar intervertebral disc) can cause painful lesions in the vertebral bone marrow—such lesions are relatively common in patients with chronic low back pain...

Aaron Fields - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology enable novel, quantitative, and non-invasive estimation of the biochemical composition of musculoskeletal tissues. The new ability to non-invasively assay tissue composition using MRI has major implications for understanding spinal pathologies related to low back pain, such as intervertebral disc degeneration. Recent...

Aaron Fields - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Biotransport Laboratory at UCSF conducts research related to structure-function relationships in musculoskeletal tissues, with a particular focus on the mechanisms of nutrient transport in bone and cartilage and harnessing nutrient transport for tissue repair and regeneration. The lab combines engineering and biology approaches for (1...

Aaron Fields - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The Orthopaedic Biomechanics and Biotransport Laboratory at UCSF conducts research related to structure-function relationships in musculoskeletal tissues, with a particular focus on the mechanisms of nutrient transport in bone and cartilage and harnessing nutrient transport for tissue repair and regeneration. The lab combines engineering and biology approaches for (1...

Paul Fine - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

High in the rainforest canopy, epiphytic plants face the challenge of obtaining the nutrients they need without having contact with the soil. This project investigates nutrient acquisition challenges and strategies between epiphytic plants found in two different forest types in the Peruvian Amazon: relatively nutrient-rich forests with a clay...

Paul Fine - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Near infrared spectroscopy (FT-NIR) is a fast, cost-effective technology that measures the irradiation of organic molecules inside of a leaf. The spectrometer makes chemical bonds vibrate and generate a wave response that corresponds to the leaf’s internal chemical composition (both qualitative and quantitative). These signals have been shown...

Paul Fine - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

There are many missing taxa in the molecular phylogeny of Burseraceae. Some of these missing taxa are endemic to extremely remote geographic locations and far away from their closest putative relatives. We will extract DNA from dried leaves, and get samples ready for genomic sequencing...

Paul Fine - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Check back for status     

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Seth Finnegan - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

For tens of millions of years large parts of California’s Central Valley were flooded by the ocean, creating an inland sea with a unique ecosystem including now-extinct species of clams, snails, sand dollars, corals, and other groups familiar from modern California beaches. Some of the species that lived in...

Seth Finnegan - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Besides coral, marine reefs are made up of many other strange invertebrates, including the little-known “moss animal”, or bryozoan. These abundant, microscopic filter-feeders grow in colonies and build elaborate domes, lacework, and tree-like structures on the ocean floor, from the intertidal to the abyss, from the poles...

Seth Finnegan - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Death assemblages’ are the actively accumulating shelly remains of organisms living at the bottom of the ocean. Because death assemblages accumulate over 100s to 1,000s of years, they are powerful tools to estimate past biodiversity. By comparing the ecological composition of living communities and death assemblages, we can assess recent...

John Flanagan - Professor, Optometry

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

We are focused on elucidating the role and molecular mechanisms of protective lipid mediators that are essential for regulating and orchestrating routine and healthy immune responses and neuroprotection. Research in our lab uses in vitro and mouse models and bioinformatics to discover and define protective pathways and therapeutic targets in...

John Flanagan - Professor, Optometry

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

This project is centered around RNA sequencing and differential expression analysis in the context of glaucoma research. Specifically, the project aims to compare the gene expression profiles in cell culture and mice models to identify target genes implicated in glaucoma pathogenesis...

John Flanagan - Professor, Optometry

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

This project employs immunohistochemistry techniques to delve into glial cell intricacies in glaucoma, followed by a detailed morphometric analysis using Imaris software. By combining these advanced methodologies, we aim to uncover subtle cellular variations associated with glaucoma pathogenesis...

Suzanne Fleiszig - Professor, Optometry

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

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the most common cause of contact lens-mediated microbial keratitis. Our lab uses in-vitro and in-vivo models to study the adaptation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to the intracellular environment. Our recently published paper shows that intracellular bacteria persist in vacuoles, where they resist high-dose antibiotic...

Suzanne Fleiszig - Professor, Optometry

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

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is found to be the main causative agent of infection of human corneal and bronchial epithelial cells in bacterial keratitis and bacterial pneumonia respectively. To understand the etiology of chronic bacterial infection we look to determine the steps associated with intracellular biofilm formation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We aim...

Suzanne Fleiszig - Professor, Optometry

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

Our lab has shown that P. aeruginosa can interact with and invade epithelial cells to establish an intracellular niche. We have recently found that intracellular bacteria occupy a subcellular compartment where they resist high dose antibiotic treatment. We are interested in understanding the factors associated with bacterial persistence and enhanced...

Suzanne Fleiszig - Professor, Optometry

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

Contact lens wearers suffer a multitude of complications due to extended contact lens wear, including para-inflammation and bacterial infection. Contact lens wear alters the resident immune cells in the cornea specifically neutrophils after 6 days of continuous contact lens wear and this phenomenon has been observed in mice cornea...

Brent Fulton - Associate Director, Public Health

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

AI technology and AI tools will change the healthcare landscape. The purpose of this project is two-fold. First, the project aims to understand AI technology's impact on the broader economy coupled with a focus on healthcare, including diagnostics, treatments, drug development and workflow processes. Second, the project...

Brent Fulton - Associate Director, Public Health

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

Healthcare providers and insurers have consolidated in the past decade, leading to higher prices without a commensurate increase in quality. The study will extend the evidence base on the effects of healthcare consolidation, including understanding the impacts of hospital-to-hospital affiliations and the impacts of private equity firms acquiring...

Brent Fulton - Associate Director, Public Health

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

In the United States, government spending on programs (excluding health programs) targeting low-income populations total about $450 billion per year, whereas personal savings in the U.S. totals about $1 trillion per year (but reached $2 to $3 trillion in 2020 and 2021 because of Covid/recession fears, which are...

Hernan Garcia - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Ultimately, in the developing embryo, cells make decisions individually based on local context. Individual cells don’t have access to the morphogen concentrations across the entire embryo. They can only be affected by the concentration of proteins in neighboring nuclei, and their individual response to signaling is crucial for developmental decision...

Stephen Gaughran - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

The California coast is home to more than two dozen marine mammal species. Our state is also a highly productive agricultural center for the country, producing not just food but also agricultural runoff that flows into the ocean. This runoff carries nutrients and microbes from fertilizer and livestock waste, which...

Stephen Gaughran - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Northern elephant seals are now a common sight along the California coast. These hundreds of thousands of seals, however, all descend from just a handful of individuals that survived human hunting about 150 years ago. The remarkable recovery of the northern elephant seal makes it a classic conservation success story...

Scott Geller - Research Scientist, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

We are a campus research unit located in Barker Hall at the Northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. We support primarily on-campus molecular scientists and related professionals (graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, staff, etc) with their DNA sequencing and analysis needs. As DNA sequencing technologies continually advance, so...

Rosemary Gillespie - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

This project looks at how communities of organisms come together, and the role of ecology (migrating into a community, trophic level) and evolution (adaptation and speciation) in determining the composition of species in a community. This in turn will provide information on sensitivity to invasion and probability of speciation and...

Rosemary Gillespie - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

No matter the size, all organisms interact with the world via their senses. Sensory input dictates reactions to stimuli, and the ability of organisms to adapt their neurological and sensory structures is critical to success and survival. Web building spiders in particular use webs as an extension and enhancement of...

Rosemary Gillespie - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

There are two key projects here: (1) Temporal Diversification and Evolutionary History of the Cribellum in Mesh-web Spiders: Webs play many essential roles in spider biology, including communication, prey capture, locomotion, and reproduction. One interesting morphological feature of many spiders is the cribellum, a plate located near the silk...

Rosemary Gillespie - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

This project focuses on the biodiversity of insects and spiders on Pacific islands. Biodiversity surveys often accumulate a ton of specimens, but it is usually hard to figure out what the species actually are. Many species cannot be identified because they are immature, or are not yet described. In this...

Xiaohua Gong - Professor, Optometry

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

The research in the lab has been directed to study molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate the development of the eye and the lens and to investigate the underlying mechanisms of different eye diseases including cataract and retinal degeneration by using techniques from the fields of molecular and cellular biology...

Xiaohua Gong - Professor, Optometry

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

This project will mainly focus on RNA sequencing and differential expression analysis for comparing genetically mutated mice with wild-type mice. It aims to find target genes involved in cataract formation, retinal degeneration and lens growth...

Lea Grinberg - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Are you from Computer Science and want to know how to program in an agile project? Ok, this position is for you! We must have all our sample inventory organized… but it is time to be modern! We need a web application to do that! Do we know exactly how...

Lea Grinberg - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Background: Sleep disturbance is common among patients with neurodegenerative diseases. For instance, patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) experience excessive daytime sleepiness and sundowning. Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) features hyperarousal and decreased homeostatic sleep drive. Sleep disturbance generally precedes disease-defining symptoms, often by decades, suggesting that dysregulation of sleep is...

Lea Grinberg - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The importance of histology to neuropathological research cannot be overstated. As a neurology lab, the histological characterization of proteopathies (including tauopathies, Aβ-amyloidosis, synucleiopathies, etc.) is core to our operations. From determining severity/progression of the pathology to identifying areas of selective vulnerability, immunohistochemistry and microscopy are critical tools for...

Lea Grinberg - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Despite intensive research on AD, effective disease-modifying treatments remain elusive, and novel tools for non-invasively assessing early brains lesions are needed. Our lab confirmed that the brain structures that consistently exhibit the earliest neuropathologic changes in AD, including neuronal loss, are not classically AD-associated cortical regions, but...

Karsten Gronert - Professor, Optometry

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

My research team is part of a handful of laboratories around the world that is focused on elucidating the role and molecular mechanisms of protective lipid mediator programs that are essential for regulating and orchestrating routine and healthy immune responses and neuroprotection. Research in our lab uses in vitro and...

Karsten Gronert - Professor, Optometry

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

Assist in the preparation of biological samples, carry out solid phase extractions for isolation of bioactive lipids. Learn, assist and eventually run an HPLC-mass spectrometry system. The position requires a high degree of motivation and organizational skill as well as the ability to operate complex and state-of-the...