URAP

Peng He - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

This project centers on the use of human lung organoids—three-dimensional miniature tissue models derived from stem cells—to study how stem cells make fate decisions. In particular, it investigates how stem cells commit to the neuroendocrine lineage, a process with direct relevance to understanding the development of neuroendocrine...

Peng He - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

This project investigates how cells behave and interact in their native environments by analyzing spatial gene expression data. Interns will use Visium and Xenium spatial transcriptomics datasets to identify tissue microenvironments, reconstruct 3D spatial maps, and apply computational tools like NicheFormer...

Peng He - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

This project focuses on building robust and reusable computational pipelines to analyze bulk and single-cell transcriptomics data. Students will contribute to bioinformatics workflows for data processing, integration, and visualization across various tissues and disease contexts, including fibrosis and vascular diseases...

Roland Henry - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The ability to quantitatively measure changes to the central nervous system is approaching a crucial milestone for neuro-imaging - the ability to measure change on an individual patient level. The Multiple Sclerosis Center at UCSF, in concert with our partners, has prioritized the development of a panoply of neuro-imaging...

Roland Henry - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

UCSF’s Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and Department of Neurology are excited to offer a combined educational and research opportunity for motivated undergraduate students in the medical imaging research team. 3D segmentation of structures in the brain and spinal cord is a problem that deep learning is uniquely equipped...

Roland Henry - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

UCSF’s Department of Neurology has some of the largest clinical neuroimaging datasets in the world. As the director of imaging for the multiple sclerosis group, Dr. Roland Henry’s laboratory is in charge of making sense of this data and applying next generation analytical techniques to translate this raw data into...

Charlie Huizenga - Research Specialist, Center for Environmental Design Research

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

The Advanced Berkeley Comfort (ABC) model is one of the world's most sophisticated models of human thermal comfort. In includes a physiological model of the human body that includes all of the thermoregulatory processes including sweating, blood flow and shivering. The model calculates heat transfer between the body and the...

Charlie Huizenga - Research Specialist, Center for Environmental Design Research

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

The aim of the project is to develop a web-interactive tool that converts a user’s 15-minute data (i.e. Green Button Data upload or API request) into actual grid carbon emissions (i.e. using Watttime’s API). The tool will have data visualizations that display user’s electricity data and carbon emissions...

Charlie Huizenga - Research Specialist, Center for Environmental Design Research

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

In 2002, The Center for the Built Environment (CBE) developed a web-based survey to gather feedback from building occupants about their indoor environmental quality. Since then, it has been used in over 1,000 buildings worldwide with responses from more than 100,000 people. Although originally created for research purposes, the...

Charlie Huizenga - Research Specialist, Center for Environmental Design Research

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

Our group studies thermal comfort and heat stress in our environmental test chamber and in real buildings. We sometimes measure heart rate data using an off-the-shelf sensor (Polar H10). However, the available data collection systems do not work well for our purposes as they target athletes rather than...

Cesunica Ivey, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Healthy Martinez is a grassroots community group created to hold Martinez Refining Company (MRC), their parent company (PBF Energy) and other refineries in our area accountable for fires, flaring, and daily emissions that are polluting our air, water and soil. Apprentices will support personal measurements of speciated PM2.5 and time...

Cesunica Ivey, Civil and Environmental Engineering

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

Marin City Climate Resilience is dedicated to safeguarding the environment and promoting sustainability. We focus on implementing strategies to enhance climate resilience and mitigate environmental risks in Marin City, CA. By engaging with the community and advocating for sustainable practices, we aim to create a more resilient and environmentally conscious...

Christopher Jones - Director, California Institute of Energy and Environment

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

California has committed to fully eliminate carbon pollution from electricity by the year 2045, by passing landmark state bill SB100. Alongside, several bills have been passed to move towards deep emissions reduction in all sectors, including buildings and transport. Decarbonizing existing buildings (around 13 million residential homes along with large...

Christopher Jones - Director, California Institute of Energy and Environment

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

The technological basis for launching and operating orbiting solar generating plants is rapidly improving due to decreases in the cost of rocket launches ($/kg of payload), and improvements in durable thin-film solar and microwave beaming technology. The project is to build data-sets to inform a series of projections...

Christopher Jones - Director, California Institute of Energy and Environment

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

The purpose of this project is to collect, analyze and visualize data on energy, transportation, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, GHG drivers, household carbon footprints, climate action planning, and equity into a single, data-driven climate action portal for all California cities and communities...

Christopher Jones - Director, California Institute of Energy and Environment

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

This project focuses on assessment of energy system resources, GHG balances and design of regional opportunities for expansion of distributed generation and micro grids in urban-agriculture interface zones across regions in California and regions with similar geo-physical resources and socio-economic features. The project will use Geographic Information...

Yehuda Kalay - Professor, Architecture

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

The performance of healthcare facilities is an important issue due to the high value of the services they provide on one hand, and the high cost of constructing and operating them on the other. Various disciplines have offered measures to assess such performance, focusing on different indicators. The healthcare industry...

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...

Waqas Khalid - Associate Scientist, QB3

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

Be the first to utilize/use cutting edge nanotechnology developed by Dr. Waqas Khalid, Berkeley Scientist and collaborators to solve problems in healthcare, energy and semiconductor industries. Join Dr. Khalid’s URAP program and learn about nanostructure based devices that have applications in monitoring human health, energy harvesting, energy storage, environmental...

Thibault Laplace - Research Scientist, Nuclear Engineering

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

Photon strength functions (PSFs) quantify the probability of γ‐ray emission and absorption in atomic nuclei as a function of energy, and they play a critical role in determining radiative neutron‐capture rates that drive the production of elements in stars. In particular, low‐lying resonances in PSFs can significantly...

Lu Liang - Professor, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning

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

Schoolyard trees are a low-cost, nature-based solution to environmental and social challenges, from reducing extreme heat and improving air quality to supporting student well-being. Research shows that access to trees can lower stress, boost attention, foster social connections, and even improve academic performance. However, many schools lack...

Lu Liang - Professor, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning

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

Understanding urban climate dynamics, such as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, requires comprehensive datasets on urban morphology and land cover. Local Climate Zones (LCZs) provide a standardized framework for classifying urban and rural areas based on their physical and surface properties. A global LCZ database is essential for analyzing...

Qihui Lyu - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

This project aims to improve metal artifacts in Computed Tomography (CT) images. In the presence of highly attenuating objects such as dental fillings, spinal screws/rods, hip prostheses, and gold fiducial markers, CT images are often corrupted by streak artifacts, making these images non-diagnostic and impacting the accuracy of...

Qihui Lyu - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Targeted alpha therapy is a promising treatment technique for late stage cancer patients with metastasis, but its clinical application is limited by the current imaging capabilities. Simultaneous broad-energy imaging is critical, but the current Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) can only image low energy photons with limited energy...

Qihui Lyu - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) is a targeted radiotherapy technique that relies on the preferential accumulation of boron-10 in tumor cells, followed by irradiation with low-energy neutrons to produce high–linear energy transfer alpha particles at the cellular level. Conventional BNCT uses external neutron beams, which results in...

Simo Makiharju - Professor, Mechanical Engineering

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

Gas-liquid flows play an important role in the environment, and in many transportation, biological and industrial processes. The FLOW lab is presently studying 1) structures of gas jets in water, 2) gas entertainment by plunging water jets, 3) air-water flows for frictional drag reduction, and 4) forces on...

Sara McMains - Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science

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

Additive Manufacturing (aka 3D Printing) is a set of relatively novel manufacturing techniques that were originally used for prototyping but are increasingly used to fabricate end-use parts, which requires higher quality manufacturing. The goal of this project is to build a machine learning model that can quickly and accurately...

Guanghan Meng - Professor, Optometry

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

Myopia (nearsightedness) is the most prevalent eye condition worldwide, affecting a rapidly growing portion of the population and requiring regular monitoring of eye health in both children and adults. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a widely adopted imaging technology for diagnosing ocular diseases and monitoring eye health. However, the high...

Raul Monsalve - Research Scientist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

The Radio Cosmology Group (RCG) at the Space Sciences Laboratory is a leader in the study of the first billion years of the Universe through the design and operation of state-of-the art radio frequency instrumentation to measure radio waves from space. We are seeking an undergraduate research assistant...

Abhishek Nagaraj - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

This URAP project exposes students to one or more of the ongoing projects that the professor (Abhishek) is working on along in his Data Innovation and AI Lab (DIAL) with PhD students and other research assistants in the Berkeley-Haas School of Business. The idea of this URAP group is...

Karen Nakamura - Professor, Anthropology

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

The Berkeley Disability Lab (https://disabilitylab.berkeley.edu/) has been working on several projects involving disability, technology, art, activism, and access in the Bay Area. We welcome students from all fields of the university (arts, engineering, social sciences, communications, CS, design, music, architecture, etc.), and people with personal experience of disability or...

Peter Oboyski - Sr. Museum Scientist, Essig Museum of Entomology

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

UCB campus: Bees are responsible for pollination of many food crops and native plants. Moth larvae (caterpillars) are important herbivores of native and domesticated plants. Both bees and moths, therefore, are important indicators of ecosystem health. We are currently working to take high resolution photographs of of the hundreds of...

Peter Oboyski - Sr. Museum Scientist, Essig Museum of Entomology

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

The Essig Museum is part of a large-scale collecting effort on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. We anticipate collecting vast quantities of bizarre and fascinating arthropods, many of which will be new to science. The two main goals of the project are to document the biological diversity of...

Peter Oboyski - Sr. Museum Scientist, Essig Museum of Entomology

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

The Essig Museum is actively collecting insect specimens across the state to document the diversity and conservation status of California's native and non-native species. Samples are captured using various complementary trapping techniques to maximize the number of species. Some of these specimens will be added to our DNA sequencing...

Peter Oboyski - Sr. Museum Scientist, Essig Museum of Entomology

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

Natural History Museums are repositories for biodiversity research, documentation of the impacts of global change, and a resource for new and innovative science. Managing these collections requires expertise in many disparate disciplines such as library science, anatomy & morphology, taxonomy, and data management. The Essig Museum houses over 5 million specimens...

Zachary Pardos - Professor, Education

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

This project seeks to fill technical new researcher positions in the AskOski and OATutor research and development teams. The AskOski project (https://askoski.berkeley.edu/about) is a research and development effort lead by Professor Pardos to transfer the latest in big data and machine learning research to the domain of course...

Zachary Pardos - Professor, Education

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

Adaptive tutoring systems are designed to provide students in K-12 and intro college courses a personalized homework experience. This means giving the right problem to a student at the right time based given a continuous assessment of their mastery of a skill. At Berkeley, the ALEKS system is used...

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

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

Our group has developed a new model for inferring the distances between Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) that is about twice as accurate as previous models. In order to determine the present day expansion rate, or the Hubble Constant, we need to determine a zero point calibration for the model...

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

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

Strong gravitational lenses are very rare occurrences and are a powerful tool in studying dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities that together account for 95% of the energy in the universe. The strong lensing team works on a range of projects with state-of-the-art computation/ML...

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

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

Type Ia supernovae are used to measure the rate at which our Universes is expanding, today and over the past 10 billion years. In the past we used Type Ia supernovae to discover that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Now we have developed new techniques for making...

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

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

It has been thought that the accelerated expansion of our universe is caused by an unknown "dark energy" which has a constant energy density. However, there are currently hints that dark energy is actually evolving over time. If this were true, there would be implications on fundamental physics and potentially...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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: Current Term Now Closed     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. Cova, a non-profit organization, has developed...

Amy Pickering - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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...

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: Full- no new appr needed     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...

Albert Ruhi Vidal - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Aquatic ecosystems transport more than just water, they also move energy, nutrients, and pollutants to adjacent terrestrial ecosystems. One of the key connections between aquatic and terrestrial systems is the movement of biomass via emergent aquatic insects (think mosquitoes): insects which start their life as aquatic larvae, metamorphose, then emerge...

Sayeef Salahuddin - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Current Term Now Closed     Location: On Campus

A remarkable development in the recent years has been the demonstration that a nanoscale magnet can be switched by a spin-polarized current, without having to apply any external magnetic field. It is a fascinating phenomenon from two different perspectives. Firstly, this effect is purely mediated by quantum mechanics, but...