URAP

Kara Nelson - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Despite being less than 1% of the total volume of liquid treated in wastewater treatment plants, urine is responsible for over 80% of the nitrogen in a treatment plants' influent stream. Commonly, this influx of nitrogen is only partially treated, leading to the release of excess nitrogen into the environment...

Rasmus Nielsen - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Understanding how species interact with their environment and how climate influences where species occur is integral to ecology. We work on questions about what factors influence the spatial distribution of species, which can be determined using mathematical models called 'species distribution models' or 'environmental niche models'. The data that go...

Rasmus Nielsen - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

The Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) technique is a molecular cytogenetic method used to detect and localize the presence or absence of specific DNA sequences on chromosomes. It is widely used for karyotyping to visualize and map chromosomal abnormalities such as translocations, deletions, duplications, and aneuploidies. In Nielsen lab, we've...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Faithful development and maintenance of cell identity requires that the expression of specific genes is turned on and off in a highly regulated manner. This epigenetic regulation requires that chromatin-modifying complexes can be dynamically recruited across the genome and activated with high spatial and temporal control. Many of these...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

The large transcription coactivators TFIID and SAGA play important roles in the regulation of gene expression. Over a megadalton in size, each of these complexes contains a number of structural modules with distinct functionalities. Interestingly, they share one particular module that plays different roles and that contains a number of...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

DNA methylation at CpG sites plays an essential role in maintaining genome stability and regulating gene expression and it is strictly monitored and controlled by a series of molecular machines. Defects in DNA methylation are frequently found in severe diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer's. DNMT1(DNA methyltransferase 1) with...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Accurate segregation of chromosomes during cell division is essential for maintaining proper cellular function and organismal health. Errors in chromosome segregation can result in apoptosis or an abnormal chromosome number, leading to conditions such as Down syndrome and Turner syndrome, exposing detrimental recessive mutations, and being associated with cancer. The...

Daniel Okamoto - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Climate change is dramatically altering the oceans. These changes include increases in sea surface temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and primary productivity. We use experiments and field data to assess how these changes affect the physiology, growth, reproduction, and behavior of marine animals. We have numerous samples from past experiments and...

Daniel Okamoto - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Wild fish populations are often subject to high levels of mortality from industrialized human harvest. Harvest mortality, particularly under certain environmental contexts, may have indirect, unpredictable effects on populations' biology beyond simply the removal of individuals from a population. To study these effects, we are using an experimental model system...

Victor Ortega Jimenez - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Marangoni effect is used by water striders (Veliidae) and rove beetles (Staphylinidae) to induce an ultrafast escape response against inter- or intra-specific predators. However, it is unclear if the surfactants secreted by these insects, that reduce surface tension of water, can also affect predator’s locomotion during the chasing...

Victor Ortega Jimenez - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Phantom crane flies (Bittacomorpha clavipes) are one of the most mysterious fliers in the insect world because it has been suggested that they are able to use their legs and body to generate aerodynamic forces and still keep a tight aerial control. Our research can be applied to micro aerial...

Victor Ortega Jimenez - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Helicopters seeds (Samaras) are remarkable for their aerodynamic capabilities with insects wings. We Investigate the aerodynamics and kinematics of samaras in a vertical wind tunnel. The goal of this project is to understand the unsteady mechanisms they have to fly on unsteady flow conditions...

Emily Ozer - Professor, Public Health

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

Youth should be meaningfully included and engaged in conversations about policies that directly affect them. Youth-Led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is a social justice-focused approach for promoting social change and positive youth development in which youth conduct systematic research and actions to improve their schools and communities (Ozer...

Emily Ozer - Professor, Public Health

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

This project is conducting systematic review of the literature to describe the state of the youth participatory action research (YPAR) literature and synthesizing findings of the youth outcomes reported in these studies. YPAR is an approach that engages young people as researchers to study and address social problems within their...

Emily Ozer - Professor, Public Health

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

The SFUSD-UC Berkeley RPP aims to: 1) Integrate youth voice and Youth-Led Participatory Action Research into school/district decision-making processes. YPAR is an innovative approach for promoting social change and positive youth development in which youth conduct systematic research and actions to improve their schools and communities...

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This project will involve two different mini-projects: (1) HOMES Survey:(LGBTQ+/SGL) Housing, Health, and Services for Older Adults. HOMES is a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project with LGBTQ+ / same-gender-loving older adults. It uses survey data from LGBTQ+ older adults and information from community partners from...

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This community-engaged multi-faceted project applies an emerging theoretical and conceptual framework (equitable aging), which centers justice and power in understanding and examining aging programs, services, and policies. This project involves qualitative data collection (e.g., focus groups, interviews, ethnographic documents, virtual ethnography), qualitative data analysis, and dissemination. For one...

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This project will provide opportunities for students with a strong foundation in quantitative research to help design a research project that collects survey data from CareYaya’s program participants. Students will also assist with survey data analysis and potentially dissemination. CareYaya is a technology-enabled caregiving platform that connects families who...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

The Pickering Lab at UC Berkeley is currently developing SOIL-SEQ, a hands-on education module for local high school classrooms designed to engage students in a crowdsourcing effort to provide data to better understand the spread of bacterial antibiotic resistance through the environment. We are using cutting-edge, portable...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) cause a neglected tropical disease inextricably linked to poverty, inadequate sanitation, and unhygienic conditions. STH account for over five million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and infect around 1.5 billion people, representing the most prevalent parasitic infections worldwide. Classical microscopy-based surveillance strategies are suboptimal and...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

The Pickering Lab is looking for a URAP student interested in working on an in-line chlorination project in Honduras. The project evaluates the Cova Circuit Rider model as an effective model for scaling up access to inline chlorinated water in Central America. We will evaluate this model through an...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Contaminated water supplies in health facilities place patients at risk for antibiotic resistant infections, leading to poor health outcomes. Globally, more than 20% of health facilities lack even basic water services. To provide low-cost water treatment, the Pickering Lab has been developing a passive in-line chlorination technology, known...

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The UCSF Memory and Aging Center (MAC) Co-pilot project is an innovative research initiative aimed at revolutionizing the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases (NDD), such as Alzheimer's disease and Frontotemporal dementia, through the integration of advanced Large Language Models (LLMs). This project is particularly significant due to the high prevalence...

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias are neurodegenerative diseases with numbers rapidly increasing and currently no cure. To accurately identify the earliest signs of clinical dementia, there is a critical need for sensitive, low-cost, and high-access cognitive markers in the preclinical phase. Novel cognitive markers can complement biomarker information...

Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Semantic dementia (SD) presents as a unique neurodegenerative disorder with focal atrophy of the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs). It is comprised of a primarily left-lateralized language syndrome and a right-lateralized behavioral disorder. One current challenge in this disease is in accurately identifying the distant brain regions that are...

Alison Post - Professor, Political Science

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

When do voters elect medical doctors for office? Scholars focused on symbolic and substantive representation typically concentrate on race, gender, religion, or some combination thereof. However, historically, political science scholars have been interested in occupation as a salient category, particularly lawyers. With the decline of the politician-lawyer in Congress...

Alison Post - Professor, Political Science

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

What are the main types of concerns that citizens bring to mayors and city councilors in Latin America? What sorts of incentives do public officials have to address these concerns? And how do these dynamics vary between cities of different sizes? In this project, we will investigate local-level politics...

Matthew Potts - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Project Overview: California faces dual challenges of ambitious climate commitments and a severe affordable housing crisis. This project aims to address these challenges by developing and scaling the use of Engineered Living Materials (ELM)—advanced biomaterials that integrate living cells with synthetic scaffolds. These materials can sense, respond to, and...

Matthew Potts - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Overview: Public debates and policies are increasingly shifting to include nature and nature-related risks and mitigations in climate discourse. Chief among nature-related risks are issues centered on biodiversity. These frameshifts are evidenced by multilateral agreements such as the Global Biodiversity Framework and a suite of regulations coming out...

Matthew Potts - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Forest restoration is an increasingly relevant topic across the globe, hailed as a key component to solutions for climate change, biodiversity crises, and sustainable development. Despite a growing awareness of the importance of forests and the need for ecosystem restoration, crucial information on natural forest regeneration processes is often lacking...

Matthew Potts - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Project Overview El Salvador is undergoing rapid transformations driven by cryptocurrency-driven urbanization (“crypto urbanism”) and the recent lifting of the metal mining ban. These developments pose significant threats to the country’s protected natural regions, including biodiversity hotspots and critical ecosystems. This project investigates the socio-environmental impacts of these...

Mary Power - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

The Angelo Coast Range Reserve is a UC Berkeley Natural Reserve System site in Mendocino County, on the South Fork of the Eel River. Angelo is the site of numerous historical and current UC Berkeley research studies, and collections by UC Berkeley Natural History museums. The proposed research project is...

Ndola Prata - Professor, Public Health

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

This research project is focused on improving the lives of Black Birthing people in California. The postpartum period, or care after birth is one of the most important periods during the birthing cycle, yet there are limited resources during that time. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

Ndola Prata - Professor, Public Health

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

IUD’s are one of the most effective contraceptives to prevent unintended pregnancies. However, pain remains to be a significant barrier for access. Our qualitative study aims to investigate providers’ perceptions, beliefs, and practices to manage pain during IUD insertions...

Ndola Prata - Professor, Public Health

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

Suicide is a serious public health problem globally. There are about 800,000 deaths by suicide globally. Of these, 77% are in low-and-middle income countries. For each suicide, 35 - 140 people are affected, but very few seek care. Individuals bereaved by suicide also experience stigma and therefore are reluctant...

Elizabeth Purdom - Professor, Statistics

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

This project involves developing statistical methodologies to analyze data from single-cell sequencing of individual patients. Single-cell sequencing of mRNA measures the amount of mRNA of each gene found in individual cells. It measures the diversity of mRNA within cells, and when performed on many individuals can allow us...

Kamalini Ranasinghe - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The goal of this project is to investigate the associations between anormal protein depositions in the brain and how these may change the neuronal firing in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We use magnetoencephalography (MEG) electroencephalography (EEG) to record the activity of neurons and molecular imaging to quantify amyloid...

Eva Raphael - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common bacterial infections worldwide, particularly among urban-dwelling women. UTIs are primarily caused by Escherichia coli (E. coli). UTIs may cause a range of complications from mild discomfort to severe kidney infections. As antibiotic resistance increases, treatment strategies for UTIs become ineffective...

Onja Razafindratsima - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Seed dispersal, the movement of seeds away from parent plants, is vital for plant population dynamics and habitat colonization. In tropical forests, most plants rely on frugivorous animals for dispersal via endozoochory, where animals consume fruits and defecate viable seeds at favorable microsites. The dispersal patterns of frugivores depend on...

Onja Razafindratsima - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Forest regeneration and seed dispersal are essential ecological processes for maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem stability, and carbon sequestration. However, these processes are being threatened by agricultural expansion and defaunation. As a first step toward understanding the importance of animal seed dispersers in forest regeneration, this project aims to assess the diversity...

Onja Razafindratsima - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

What mechanism drives primate foraging decisions in their natural environments? How do these decisions influence the outcomes of the vital ecosystem services they provide? Our research group is interested in addressing such fundamental questions, contributing to elucidating the ecological and evolutionary aspects of primate behavior and crafting conservation solutions for...

Carolina Reisenman - Associate Researcher, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Plants produce many toxic compounds as defense against insect herbivory. Many insects have therefore developed adaptations to counteract the negative effects of toxic compounds. Indeed, some species evolved mechanisms that allow them to use these toxic hosts as private niches, avoiding competition with other insects. In this project the student...

Filipa Rijo-Ferreira - Professor, Public Health

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

Earth rotation was an evolutionary pressure for organisms to evolve circadian rhythms in order to be able to anticipate the rhythmic day/night cycles. These circadian clocks regulate physiological properties such as sleep, immune response and metabolism. Our lab studies circadian clocks in parasites. This project focus on performing bioinformatics...

Filipa Rijo-Ferreira - Professor, Public Health

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

Parasitic diseases cause major health burden worldwide, with over 1 million deaths each year. Despite having the genome of many parasites sequenced, almost half of their genes are of unknown function. There are still major gaps in our understanding of host-parasite interactions and disease transmission by vectors. Our research...

Filipa Rijo-Ferreira - Professor, Public Health

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

The rotation of the Earth has exerted evolutionary pressure on organisms to develop circadian rhythms, enabling them to anticipate day/night cycles. These daily rhythms are observed across all life forms, regulating physiological functions such as sleep, immune response, and metabolism. Our lab focuses on studying circadian clocks in parasites...

George Roderick - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

This project is focused on the residential urban gardens of the East Bay and how those gardens impact butterfly communities with a focus on the Western Monarch butterfly. The project covers topics of native and non-native plants, invasive arthropods, urban gardens, and changes in species interactions. This project is...

George Roderick - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

In our lab, we are interested in the ecology and evolutionary history of arthropod (insect and spider) species. We mostly study arthropods from Hawaii and other islands in the Pacific, but also species in California and elsewhere. Some are native species, some are recent invasive species, and some are introduced...

George Roderick - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Are you interested in science news and social media? In our lab, we study the ecological and evolutionary history of arthropod (insect and spider) species--the "little things that run the earth." We mostly study arthropods from Hawaii and other islands in the Pacific. Our current project aims...

George Roderick - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Biodiversity surveys often accumulate many many insect and spider specimens, but it is usually hard to figure out what the species actually are. Many species are not yet described and many are found in an area for the first time, or the species are not yet in DNA databases. In...

Hector Rodriguez - Professor, Public Health

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

The objective of this project is to survey and analyze language access services and infrastructure of 150 safety net primary care practices across California to understand and improve how language access needs are met for patients with Limited English Proficiency (LEP). This project is funded by the California Health Care...