URAP

Eve Sweetser - Professor, Linguistics

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

It has long been known that co-speech gesture reveals aspects of on-line cognition which may not be revealed in speech itself. This project investigates the usage of gestures accompanying modals (e.g. CAN, MUST, MAY, SHOULD) and conditionals (IF-clauses), to see what understandings of modality and conditional relationships...

Eve Sweetser - Professor, Linguistics

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

This group is a multilingual project, examining discourse about COVID-19 and about global climate change, in North American English, French and Spanish varieties, as well as in French of France. (A side project on Mandarin metaphor is not funded, but is also ongoing.) We are using the Coronavirus corpus...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

During development, cells self-organize to form functioning tissues, organs, and entire organisms. This requires tightly regulated communication between cells and their environment, to ensure correct signal uptake, integration, and response. Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) is a major pathway by which cells take up extracellular cues and thus communicate with...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Cells integrate extracellular cues (biochemical or mechanical signals) in order to direct specific cellular and tissue wide responses. The correct functioning of organs depends on this communication between cells and their surrounding environment. However, our understanding of how external mechanical inputs, such as increased pressure, direct cell function in health...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Auditory and vestibular senses are classic and essential senses of the body. The inner ear’s development, or morphogenesis, is a complex and well-regulated process that is guided by cell communication or signaling pathways. When signaling pathways become dysregulated, it often leads to deformities and/or diseases. And in the...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Most life processes involve cells managing fluids. Our sense of hearing and balance depend on the tight regulation of inner ear fluid (endolymph) volume and pressure. Increased endolymph volume and pressure can lead to the development of deafness and balance disorders. Our previous work in zebrafish embryos has shown that...

Lee Tan - Professor, Neurosurgery- Spine

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

UCSF is a leading center for the American Spine Registry, a nationwide initiative focused on collecting patient data to enhance care for individuals undergoing cervical and lumbar surgeries. Our research team investigates the outcomes of minimally invasive surgeries, factors influencing cancer recurrence and complications in spinal tumors, and the effectiveness...

Timothy Tangherlini - Professor, Scandinavian

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

The Icelandic Family Sagas are an intriguing window onto the social world of 10th and 11th century Iceland, seen through the authorial lens of late medieval writers. A striking characteristic of the sagas is the abundance of characters that interact in and across complex social networks as they first initiate...

Timothy Tangherlini - Professor, Scandinavian

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

The Berkeley folklore archive is one of the largest, student-created folklore archives in North America. Started in the 1960s, the archive houses over 500,000 records detailing the everyday life and informal culture of thousands of students and their communities. In 2020, the archive began digitizing these records. Along with...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

Evolutionary transitions underlying phenotypic change are difficult to study because they often occur over millions of years. However, the fruit fly has a short generation time and a small genome that is well annotated and cheap to sequence. We used a large-scale experimental evolution approach to evolve toxin-sequestering...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

The Tarvin Lab studies how and why poison frogs don’t poison themselves. We aim to measure the effect of toxin consumption on frog health and chemical defenses through toxin feeding experiments paired with phenotypic assays (health monitoring, jumping challenges) and genomic assessment (RNA and DNA sequencing...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

Amphibians -- frogs, salamanders, and caecilians -- exhibit a stunning variety of chemical defenses, ranging from antimicrobial peptides to antipredator neurotoxins and biological glues. Amphibian glues are the least-studied of these defenses. Additionally, the methods used to measure amphibian stickiness are not standardized, with some researchers gluing together beer cans to...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

Amphibians -- frogs, salamanders, and caecilians -- exhibit a stunning variety of chemical defenses, ranging from antimicrobial peptides to antipredator neurotoxins and biological glues! These defenses generally co-occur with physiological, morphological, and behavioral adaptations that sometimes exhibit convergence with distantly related taxa. However, research into amphibian chemical defense has been far...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

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

Our laboratory studies vocal communication in animals and would like to develop an automatic detecter and classifier for bird calls using advanced machine learning techniques...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

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

The apprentice(s) will prepare and analyze neural tissue to assist graduate students and staff scientists with ongoing projects. This will include slicing, mounting (on microscope slides), and imaging of brain tissue to verify where electrodes were placed during electrophysiological recordings, as well as other projects. Apprentice(s) will learn...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

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

Project Description: The zebra finch has a very rich vocal repertoire of communication calls that are used in distinct behavioral contexts: peer recognition and localization, mate interactions, offspring care, etc. We previously gathered a huge bank of these calls, classifying them along semantic categories, i.e. groups of calls with the...

Hannah R. Thompson - Professor, Public Health

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

School recess is an evidence-backed approach to increase school-based opportunities for students to play, accrue necessary physical activity, and socialize with peers, to the benefit of their physical, academic, and socioemotional health. As such, the Centers for Disease Control recommend at least 20 min of daily recess in...

Hannah R. Thompson - Professor, Public Health

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

The federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) is one of the nation’s most effective public health nutrition programs. It provides free, healthy foods and personalized nutrition education, breastfeeding support and referrals to other services for over 6.8 million low-income pregnant and postpartum women and...

Denis Titov - Assistant Adjunct Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

ATP powers most energy-consuming reactions in cells. While ATP has a short half-life, the demand for ATP also fluctuates. Thus, ATP or energy homeostasis in cells needs to be appropriately regulated. ATP homeostasis has to perform at least three tasks: allow energy generation from ATP hydrolysis, maintain stable...

Denis Titov - Assistant Adjunct Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

A distinct metabolic phenotype in cancers is the alteration of glucose metabolism. In general, most cells in the body derive their ATP from respiration. However, most cancer cells generate a substantial fraction of their ATP through glycolysis thereby converting their glucose to lactate and exhibit lower respiration activity. The ability...

Denis Titov - Assistant Adjunct Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

Aging is the greatest risk factor for numerous chronic conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegeneration. Once thought to be an uncontrollable stochastic process due to an accumulation of damage over time, genes and regulatory networks have been discovered that modulate the rate of aging. Supported by data in...

John Tomsick - Research Scientist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a NASA-funded gamma-ray space telescope currently in the calibration and characterization phase at Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). After launch (anticipated August 2027), COSI will survey the 0.2–5 MeV sky as the most sensitive telescope in history in the energy range...

Anton Tremsin - Research Physicist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

The Experimental Astrophysics Group at the Space Sciences Laboratory builds UV detector technology for space-based astronomical instruments as well as supports the development of detector technology for niche, land-based applications (typ. in support of biological, materials, high-energy physics research, etc.). We are currently seeking undergraduates who would...

Anton Tremsin - Research Physicist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

We want to continue to show feasibility (demonstrate in the lab) a sensing/imaging approach we hope to propose in the future on a low-cost, space-based platform (cubesat, small sat, rocket). This effort supports proof of concept using mostly what we have available in the lab. Timepix/Medipix...

Eos Trinidad - Professor , Education

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

This research focuses on how Generative AI, predictive algorithms, and school accountability (i.e., AAA) are transforming instruction, student engagement, and interpersonal relationships in higher education. Using in-depth longitudinal interviews of undergraduate and graduate students, the study attempts to understand not just how technologies affect humans, but also how technologies...

Marta Truchado- Garcia - Project Scientist, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Despite dramatically different body architectures, animals share common signaling pathways and transcriptional networks that regulate their development, a core “genetic toolkit.” Asymmetries are essential for proper organization and function of organ systems, and we aim to examine the toolkit that underlies left-right asymmetry (LRA) in different animal groups. Genetic...

Marta Truchado- Garcia - Project Scientist, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Ctenophores (from Greek, meaning "comb-bearing") are gelatinous marine invertebrates that might be mistaken for medusae. However, they can be easily identified by their eight longitudinal 'comb rows' of ciliary bundles, which are used for locomotion. Like cnidarians, ctenophores possess multiple nerve nets; however, they exhibit several unique features that...

Tina Trujillo - Professor, Education

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

At the Berkeley Psychedelic Facilitation Certificate Program, advanced professionals are learning how to safely, effectively, and equitably support clients, patients, and study participants in psychedelic-assisted healing and research settings. In the 2024-25 academic year, the Program will welcome its third cohort of learners to participate in a 200-hour...

Winston Tseng - Research Scientist, Public Health

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

PROJECT 1. The Central Valley towns of Allensworth is partnering with Gadgil Lab and Health Research for Action at UC Berkeley on a research project funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and National Alliance for Water Innovation. This project is about assessing community perspectives on water safety, community education, and...

Winston Tseng - Research Scientist, Public Health

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

The goal of the project is to conduct an evaluation of the Zoosiab program, a community-based prevention and early intervention program that aims to prevent and/or reduce further mental health problems and social isolation among Hmong elders by strengthening sense of community and social engagement, improving both psychological...

Winston Tseng - Research Scientist, Public Health

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

The purpose of the project is to monitor and increase the visibility of Pacific Islander (PI) health disparities and align local health department efforts in the counties of San Francisco, Alameda, and San Mateo to be more inclusive and effective in serving PI communities. The project activities include conducting a...

Jack Tseng - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Bone crushing dogs were a diverse and successful subfamily of canids that thrived throughout North America for nearly 30 million years. As bone crushing dogs evolved they show convergent features with hyaenas in their cranial anatomy (i.e. a large sagittal crest and domed forehead to dissipate stress). While the skull...

Jack Tseng - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

With over 260 recognized extant species, the order Carnivora is one of the most diverse mammalian groups today, with a history tracing back approximately 60 million years. Crown carnivorans are divided into two suborders: Feliformia (cats, genets, hyenas, mongooses, etc.) and Caniformia (dogs, bears, raccoons, weasels, skunks, seals, etc.). Despite...

Jack Tseng - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Human actions and infrastructure are impacting biodiversity in real time, rapidly changing environments, modifying ecological interactions, and introducing new selection pressures that living organisms have never before encountered. To develop effective, targeted conservation strategies, we need to understand how anthropogenic actions, infrastructure, and management decisions influence evolution. One of the...

Eleanor Tubman - Professor , Nuclear Engineering

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

Fusion is an ongoing effort worldwide to produce a ‘clean’ energy resource. There are several approaches to achieving net energy gain that are being utilised. Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a method of achieving fusion energy, typically using lasers to implode and heat the fuel. However, there are, and will...

Eleanor Tubman - Professor , Nuclear Engineering

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

Fusion is an ongoing effort worldwide to produce a ‘clean’ energy resource. There are several approaches to achieving net energy gain that are being utilised. Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a method of achieving fusion energy, typically using lasers to implode and heat the fuel. However, there are, and will...

Eleanor Tubman - Professor , Nuclear Engineering

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

Fusion is an ongoing effort worldwide to produce a ‘clean’ energy resource. There are several approaches to achieving net energy gain that are being utilised. Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a method of achieving fusion energy, typically using lasers to implode and heat the fuel. However, there are, and will...

Eric Van Dusen - Lecturer, Data Science Undergraduate Studies

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

Research and help to develop a data-driven example of algorithmic pricing. This could be from online, from another author, or scraping information. There are many policy implications of algorithmic priceing, in ride-share and delivery, in housing rental markets, and on Amazon. This project is to develop a hands...

Eric Van Dusen - Lecturer, Data Science Undergraduate Studies

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

This project will focus on constructing a comprehensive dataset to analyze sovereign debt ratings across countries over time. The core of the dataset will be historical sovereign credit ratings from major agencies, which will then be enriched with additional macro-political and institutional indicators. These include measures such as corruption...

Maryam Vareth - Researcher, Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS)

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

Our project focuses on developing a clinician-facing platform designed to enhance the lives of individuals with diabetes and hypertension. By integrating real-time continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and blood pressure (BP) data into a dynamic, interactive dashboard, we empower healthcare professionals with comprehensive insights into patient health, enabling more...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Oxidative damage to mitochondria has been implicated in the pathogenesis of diabetes, stroke, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and many other metabolic syndrome disorders. Recent work shows that deletion of the antioxidant protein peroxiredoxin 6 (PRDX6) dysregulates mitochondrial function. PRDX6 is a multi-functional enzyme that expresses at least 2...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

This project seeks to characterize cells isolated from the blubber of northern elephant seal pups during the post-weaning fasting period. Elephant seal pups nurse from their mothers for ~1 month, after which they are abruptly weaned and carry out a terrestrial post-weaning fast for several months prior to...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

The focus of this project is to develop tissue culture models to answer mechanistic questions that are relevant to physiological responses during diving and under stress conditions in sea turtles. This project will examine sea turtles’ adaptations to hypoxia by characterizing gene expression and reactive oxygen species generation under differential...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Elephant seals are expert divers that can hold their breath for long periods without sustaining any injuries, even in low-oxygen conditions. Unlike humans, they avoid the harmful effects of reduced blood flow and reoxygenation by using strong antioxidant defenses. This project will explore how their genes change during natural...

Kimberly Vinall - Executive Director, Berkeley Language Center

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

AI language technologies offer new potentials and new challenges for language instruction and language learning. This project aims to explore how students actually use AI tools for language learning while writing. This project is hosted by the Berkeley Language Center (BLC), whose mission is to support research in applied language...

Steven Vogel - Professor, Political Science

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

I will be actively working on several projects in Fall 2025. 1) I will be conducting research for an international project sponsored by the Canon Institute in Japan called the Global Order Framework Project. The project goals include developing guidelines and metrics for monitoring the behavior of governments and firms...

Sophie Volpp - Professor, Comparative Literature

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

I am engaged in two projects. One concerns attempts to preserve China's cultural heritage by saving rare books from capture by the Japanese army during the Sino-Japanese war. Since English-language sources are somewhat limited, reading knowledge of Chinese or Japanese is a big plus. The undergraduate students work...

Bryan Wagner - Professor, English

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

Berkeley's Folklore Program is working with Arhoolie Foundation on several projects involving their extraordinary archive of recordings, photographs, films, and manuscripts related to vernacular music and the vernacular arts broadly conceived. Arhoolie Foundation nonprofit organization rooted in the life's work of its founder Chris Strachwitz and his acclaimed independent label...

Bryan Wagner - Professor, English

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

The Berkeley Folklore Program is partnering with Berkeley Art Museum to support for the African American Quilt Documentation Study Group -- a Bay Area nonprofit that maintains a registry of quilt stories that will eventually be catalogued at the Library of Congress. The work for URAP position involves organizing metadata and...

Bryan Wagner - Professor, English

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

The Folklore Archive is seeking a detail-oriented student to help digitize archival materials. This role provides a hands-on opportunity to engage with archival processes and contribute to the preservation and dissemination of rich cultural materials from the Berkeley Folklore Archive. No prior experience in archival work or digitization...