URAP

Sona Kang - Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

DNA methylation is a reversible epigenetic mark involving the covalent transfer of a methyl group to the C-5 position of a cytosine residue and is mediated by DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs). DNMT1 maintains DNA methylation patterns during DNA replication, while DNMT3A and DNMT3B are involved in establishing de novo patterns...

Jerome Karabel - Professor, Sociology

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

Outlier Nation: The Roots and Consequences of American Exceptionalism The United States has always been exceptional – both for better and for worse. Its distinctive form of democratic capitalism has made the United States the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, the world's leading economy, and home to (by some...

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: Current Term Now Closed     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...

Shreeharsh Kelkar - Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Field (ISF)

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

The term "AI" or "artificial intelligence" is now regularly splashed across news articles and op-eds; most people have some, if vague, idea of what AI means. But the term today does not mean what it used to mean: in the last two decades, the crop of technologies we now...

Shreeharsh Kelkar - Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Field (ISF)

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

For many ordinary people, the term "Cambridge Analytica"--even if they are not sure exactly what the controversy is about--brings forth some association with the topics of election interference, psychological manipulation, illicit hacking, Russian disinformation, and Facebook. The truth is that it had very little to do with any...

Shreeharsh Kelkar - Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Field (ISF)

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

Political scientists have noticed a large contemporary trend in the US where high-income college-educated people tend to vote Democratic rather than Republican, a reversal of earlier patterns; they have labeled this as "education polarization". Education polarization is best illustrated through the case of Prop 22 in California. In...

Shreeharsh Kelkar - Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Field (ISF)

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

In October 2012, the Harvard Business Review declared “data scientist” to be the “sexiest job of the 21st century.” Part of a "Spotlight package" on the power of "big data" and its potential to change organizations and management, the articles in the issue collectively argued that with the growth of...

Zachary Kelly, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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

The Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies serves as the focal point at the University of California at Berkeley for students and faculty who conduct research and teaching on the geographic region of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ISEEES is working to organize and digitize its...

Celeste Kidd - Professor, Psychology

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

The Kidd Lab studies learning and belief formation using a combination of computational and behavioral methods. In our behavioral experiments, we measure how humans look, explore, play, and learn starting in infancy and continuing throughout childhood. We use eye-trackers to measure visual fixations, touchscreens to study exploration in kid...

Andrew Kim - Professor, Anthropology

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

This project examines the neuroendocrine, immunological, and psychiatric pathways underlying the consequences of trauma exposure in adults living in South Africa. Data come from two separate studies: the first on intergenerational trauma from apartheid in a longitudinal birth cohort study in Soweto, South Africa and the second on long COVID...

Michael Kiparsky - Associate Director, Law

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

California faces major challenges with groundwater governance. Groundwater is a crucial source of water for Californians, but Californians are pumping more groundwater than is naturally replenished. That leads to growing aquifer depletion, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, with a variety of negative human health, environmental, and economic consequences. Some...

Michael Kiparsky - Associate Director, Law

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

In 2014, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). This law tasks local government agencies with developing and implementing groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) to achieve sustainable groundwater management within their groundwater basins. Among other things, GSPs explain what management actions local agencies will take to achieve sustainability (for example...

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: Current Term Now Closed     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: Current Term Now Closed     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...

Britt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Microbiomes change over time, often with important functional consequences for their hosts. But the ecological drivers of microbiome succession are poorly understood. We are studying the role that microbial interactions play in this process by examining the constituents of the digestive microbiome of the insectivorous California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica...

Britt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Phage, viruses that infect and kill bacteria, are ubiquitous, yet their impacts on beneficial bacteria that colonize plants are not well understood. Phage are abundant in the soil and therefore soil-dwelling bacteria must hone defenses against phage in order to survive. Likewise, phage must hone their capacity to infect...

Britt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

We are building a new system (fire blight of pear trees) to better understand how bacteriophage viruses might impact the ability of a bacterial pathogen (Erwinia amylovora) to colonize and infect pear trees. We are tracking bacteria-phage interactions through time by isolating individual phages from each of 25 diseased...

Britt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

In natural systems, microorganisms interact with myriad other microbial populations which influence their evolution and ecology. When associated with a eukaryotic host, these complex microbial communities (known as microbiomes) also interact with and impact their host’s ecology and evolution, nutrient acquisition, and pathogen susceptibility. Despite the microbiome's vast importance on...

Ksenia Krasileva - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

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

Filamentous fungi are hosts to pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, parasitic fungi, and grazing nematodes. Besides RNAi to protect fungal genomes from mycoviruses, a fungal inducible defense upon recognition of bacteria has yet to be fully described. Genes encoding nucleotide-binding domain Leucine-rich repeat-like (NLR-like) proteins are...

Ksenia Krasileva - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

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

Plants have powerful defense mechanisms, which rely on an arsenal of plant immune receptors. Major classes of plant immune receptors include Receptor like kinases (RLKs), receptor like proteins (RLPs), and Nucleotide Binding Leucine Rich Repeat (NLR) proteins. On the population level, plant immune receptors provide plants with enough diversity to...

Ksenia Krasileva - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

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

Plant diseases pose a significant threat to global agricultural crop production. Developing genetically modified plants with boosted disease resistance offers an economical and environmental solution. Plant immune receptors are naturally evolved resistance determinants that recognize target pathogen molecules to initiate defense responses. They have been widely used as transgenes. However...

Ksenia Krasileva - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

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

Stripe rust along with stem and leaf rust are the major threat to wheat production worldwide. It is estimated that wheat rust pathogens cause a global annual loss of approximately 15 million tons, with a value of US$ 2.9 billion. Plant breeders are constantly putting in the effort to develop...

Laura Kray - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

This project examines behavior, beliefs, and attitudes relevant to gender differences in career attainment. Using a variety of methods, including experimental studies, correlational studies, and archival analyses, this project seeks to understand organizational barriers limiting gender equality in compensation and advancement and to identify interventions aimed at mitigating them. Some...

Laura Kray - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

This project examines how power differently impacts men and women's experiences of the workplace. Power leads people to experience a number of psychological changes, however these changes may manifest differently in men and women. To investigate this question, we will run correlational studies, social science experiments, and interviews...

Laura Kray - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

In this project, we are interested in how people experience question and answer periods after talks about research. The research in this project is centered around how do people judge the questions other people ask and how does that make them in turn feel. For our next study, we would...

Dorothy Kronick - Professor, Center for Effective Global Action

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

The majority of people in extreme poverty live in conflict-affected or fragile countries, most of which experience primarily internal conflicts, rather than wars with another country. Latin America has experienced a number of recent civil conflicts, as well as notable drug trafficking efforts and crime waves that cause more...

Layla Kwong - Professor, Public Health

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

Influenzas infect 3-5 million hosts annually. Originating in avian hosts, novel strains of influenza virus have high mortality when they are transmitted to humans. Live poultry markets, including those in Bangladesh, are known focal points of disease transmission. We have collected data on building dynamics, worker exposures, and airborne avian...

Layla Kwong - Professor, Public Health

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

In large parts of Sub Saharan Africa, health facilities (e.g. hospitals and clinics) lack appropriate energy infrastructure. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where much of the continent's unelectrified are exposed to both climate and conflict pressures, the near-total absence of a central grid requires the health sector...

Layla Kwong - Professor, Public Health

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

Exposure to animal feces can cause diarrhea, but not all animal feces are the same. While chicken poop can cause many child health issues, cow dung is used for many practical and spiritual purposes. What are people using cow dung for? How does this affect their spiritual lives, health, and...

Layla Kwong - Professor, Public Health

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

As temperatures continue to rise, workplace heat exposure presents an increasing challenge to occupational health and safety. This reality positions climate change as an important labor rights issue. Workers in developing countries will be among those most affected. Still, there exists limited research on the impacts of climate change on...

HRC Lab - Co-Faculty Director, Human Rights Center

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

Thank you for your interest in the Investigations Lab. For the Spring 2025 semester, we are only accepting applications from students that completed LS125 in Fall 2024. Those students were already sent a supplemental application due January 6th. We are not accepting any other applicants this semester, but will accept...

Marika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science

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

People are exposed to stories of all kinds in their daily lives, including appealing but false stories such as conspiracy theories. One way to understand the causal influence of stories on beliefs and behaviors is to use them as experimental treatments. The outcomes of these experiments can vary widely depending...

Marika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science

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

Threat perception has always played a major role in foreign and domestic policy-making. From Covid to climate change to terrorism, policy-makers have made decisions about which potential threats to address and which to ignore. This project investigates how policy-makers in the U.S. and in other countries determine...

Marika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science

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

Neuroscientists have studied the brain's response to threatening stimuli since the earliest days of brain imaging. Yet there is no single catalogue of threat perception studies and their findings. Meta-analysis involves using data from many studies to characterize the collective state of knowledge in a field. This project seeks...

Marika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science

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

Social scientists often assign categorical values to text data in order to structure it (e.g., categorizing statements made by Congress members as pro- or anti-immigration). Traditionally, this coding has been done manually by humans who read and categorize the texts of interest. This method risks both systematic error (e.g...

Laurel Larsen - Professor, Geography

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, Geography

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, Geography

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, Geography

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. Deep learning methods...

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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: Check back for status     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: Current Term Now Closed     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...

Peggy G. Lemaux - Professor of Cooperative Extension, Plant and Microbial Biology

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

General Description and Research Approach. Were heat waves or intense rainfall events common when you were growing up? Now, these events are common due to effects of climate change. These events include heatwaves, more severe and frequent rainstorms, increased wildfires and droughts. Recent Los Angeles fires are an example of...

Peggy G. Lemaux - Professor of Cooperative Extension, Plant and Microbial Biology

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

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench), is the fifth most important cereal crop worldwide and is a critical food, forage, and emerging biofuel crop. Understanding the photosynthetic mechanisms by which sorghum can capture sunlight more efficiently under adverse climate conditions is critical to using this crop to remove carbon dioxide that...

Gabriel Lenz - Professor, Political Science

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

US cities continue to experience a criminal justice nightmare with high rates of interpersonal violence, police violence, and incarceration. When did this nightmare start? Why did it start? In preliminary work, I've found that this nightmare appears to have begun in Jim Crow southern cities around 1900. This finding suggests...

Gabriel Lenz - Professor, Political Science

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

Unions are one of the few democratic institutions within the workplace. However, the institutional structure of unions can encourage or constrain democracy within unions. I am interested in investigating the inner workings of union locals by collecting data on union local constitutions and bylaws, and collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, unions...

Gabriel Lenz - Professor, Political Science

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

Research apprentices will assist with a project studying the racial identity and racial attitudes of white Democrats. This group has become markedly more liberal on race-related issues over the past decade, and scholars don’t know exactly why. This projects help to explain this shift by exploring how white survey...