URAP

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

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

This project explores the intersection of politics and clothing, across time and space. In particular, we are interested in the ways that clothing has been, and is, used to solve political "problems," including those related to economic development, geographic expansion, the projection of power, social movements, and individual or group...

Ronald Fearing - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

We are looking for students interested in robot design, fabrication, and testing of pouch-based robots, for applications in minimally invasive surgery and beyond. Current surgical tools cannot navigate tortuous anatomical corridors, and as a result, accessing certain locations requires extensive tissue removal, general anesthesia, and a full operating room...

Ronald Fearing - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

The goal of this project is to develop an augmented reality (AR) based human-robot interface to assist in surgical planning, pre-operational simulation, and live visualization and feedback of a minimally invasive autonomous surgical robot designed for endonasal biopsies and ventriculostomies inside the human brain. A major contributing factor...

Venkatesan Guruswami - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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...

Galateia Kazakia - Professor, UC San Francisco, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Our research group focuses on advanced imaging techniques for the study of musculoskeletal structure and function (for details please see: http://www.radiology.ucsf.edu/research/kazakia). For this project, we plan to use two recently developed imaging tools to investigate the structure and composition of bone. State-of-the-art micro computed...

Galateia Kazakia - Professor, UC San Francisco, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Our research group focuses on advanced imaging techniques for the study of musculoskeletal structure and function (for details please see: http://www.radiology.ucsf.edu/research/kazakia). For this project, we will be performing advanced image processing and analysis on high resolution computed tomography (CT) images of the skeleton. These images are being...

Asir Intisar Khan - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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: Full- no new appr needed     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...

Sayeef Salahuddin - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Location: On Campus

As conventional electronics approach fundamental limits in energy efficiency and scaling, controlling the spin of electrons offers new opportunities for memory, logic, and microwave technologies. Recent advances in quantum and magnetic materials—including topological materials and both collinear and non-collinear antiferromagnets—have revealed unconventional mechanisms for generating and controlling...

Sayeef Salahuddin - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Current Term Now Closed     

It is widely believed that the rate of change in current in conventional MOSFETs cannot be decreased below 60 mV/decade. This means that to change every decade of current one must apply at least 60 mV. As a result, the power supply voltage in modern MOSFETs cannot be reduced...

Sayeef Salahuddin - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Modern microelectronic devices operate at length scales where atomic structure, electronic properties, and thermal effects become strongly interconnected. In this project, we will develop machine learning methods to model materials and nanoscale electronic devices. Students will work with atomistic simulations and machine learning models to study nanoscale materials relevant to...

Sayeef Salahuddin - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Current Term Now Closed     

Optimization problems are central to many areas of computing, including scheduling, routing, resource allocation, robotics, graph problems, and circuit design. In this research effort, we are exploring new algorithms and custom hardware accelerators to efficiently solve these problems. We are particularly interested in exploiting the structure and parallelism of optimization...

Seth Sanders - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

This is a hybrid opportunity, with work mostly offsite, except for testing cycles. Responsibilities include design, simulation, and test of a custom analog IC for a Stirling engine control system targeted for space flight. Direct collaboration with Prof. Sanders, industry, and NASA teams. The role involves performing circuit-level analysis...

Carlo Sequin - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Students will participate in the development of JIPCAD, a design environment that can describe geometrical shapes (e.g., abstract sculptures by famous artists such as Charles Perry, Eva Hild, or Robert Engman) either through a simple procedural language or through an interactive graphical user interface. The typical workflow would start with...

Avideh Zakhor - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Over the past few years, we have developed a reinforcement learning based framework for a drone to navigate from one point to another point while avoiding obstacles. In doing so, we do not use the GPS signal as it could be intermittent in many situations. Our approach has been to...

Avideh Zakhor - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Over the past few years, we have developed autonomy algorithms to enable a tracked robot to vacuum debris ( peanuts, insulation etc) as it traverses over joists. The current approach is not adaptive in that the hose moves in a predefined sequence of movements. In this project, we will develop an...

Avideh Zakhor - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Humanoid locomotion and manipulation are usually done separately. However, there are many situations in the real world, where the humanoid has to do loco-manipulation, i.e. manipulate while it is locomoting. In this project, we will develop methods to enable a Unitree G1 robot to walk, run, and perform whole...

Avideh Zakhor - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

In this project we will be designing a hose management system (HMS) for a tracked Rumba robot for the attic. The HMA doles out or retracts a hose mounted on a tracked robot to relieve the robot from having to pull a 50 foot hose. This project involves 3D electro...