URAP

Guo Huang - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Current studies of mouse heart regeneration are largely limited to postmortem analysis of heart tissue to explore cellular activity and molecular mechanisms. We aim to combine a novel imaging window system designed and surgically implanted on the mouse chest by the Huang Lab at UCSF with the free-space angular...

Guo Huang - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: Off Campus

There are emerging AI-trained models that integrate tremendous genomic, genetic and gene expression datasets to successfully predict complex gene networks and functional outcomes after in silico gene perturbation. Now we are exploring these models to understand organ physiology and pathology from developmental and evolutionary perspectives. ------------------------- Publications from previous URAP...

Sa-kiera Hudson - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Have you ever laughed when someone tripped, felt joy when someone faced the consequences of their actions, or celebrated when a rival sports team or political party lost? When people think about the role of emotions in intergroup relations, they tend to think of empathy, commonly defined as the sensitivity...

Sa-kiera Hudson - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

Social psychology researchers have long theorized how social identity influences perception, treatment, and experience, but until recently, researchers have almost exclusively studied social identity in isolation. Recognizing these gaps, social psychologists have increasingly adopted intersectionality as an analytical tool to inform theory, hypotheses, and methodology. At the Haas Intersectionality, Group...

Sa-kiera Hudson - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

From recent bans on queer and feminist literature in public school systems, to restrictions on gender-affirming healthcare, to reduced access to reproductive healthcare, gender identity and sexuality is increasingly at the center of political and ideological discourse in the U.S. As a research laboratory studying social identity and hierarchy...

Sa-kiera Hudson - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

This work considers how individual differences can affect the way people perceive organizational diversity and inclusion efforts. We will primarily consider what factors influence the moral judgements of organizations. For example, one line of work examines workplace gossip. Workplace gossip is largely perceived as an anti-social and immoral act...

Susan Ivey - Professor, Public Health

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This is a qualitative study of views of residents/parents/elders in Butte County (Hmong population) and Alameda County (parents of children with asthma) regarding their knowledge and views of air pollution and health. Research includes interviews and surveys in Hmong, English, or Spanish. We will also adapt project tools...

Cesunica Ivey, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Status: Open     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: Open     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...

Richard Ivry - Professor, Psychology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Research in our laboratory addresses how people learn new motor skills. We study this topic using behavioral and computational methods with healthy and neurologically impaired humans. The neurological studies examine the contribution of different brain structures, especially the cerebellum and basal ganglia, in motor learning to develop functional hypotheses regarding...

Richard Ivry - Professor, Psychology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Complex cognition requires the integrated activity of many parts of the brain. Research on this problem has tended to focus on areas of the cerebral cortex such as the frontal lobe. However, evidence from neuroimaging studies in healthy individuals as well as patients with neurodegenerative disorders indicate that major subcortical...

Shannon Jackson - Professor, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Through the Cities of Awe Lab we advance the understanding of awe in public life and make it actionable. We do this by studying the relationship between awe and public life across diverse cultural contexts and urban environments. We explore where and how awe appears in cities, how it can...

Drew Jacoby-Senghor - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Some topics under investigation: - What if fairness? Is fairness "equality" or "deservingness"? - Do people have different heuristics for allocating resources fairly? - How do deliberative processes shift individuals' preferences for fairness-as-equality to fairness-as-deservingness...

Amin Jazaeri - Director of Instructional Support, Mechanical Engineering

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

Students will design experiments that can be controlled remotely through the internet...

Sheri Johnson - Professor, Psychology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

The goal of this study is to consider how reward sensitivity and circadian rhythm disturbance relate to bipolar disorder...

Keith Johnson - Professor, Linguistics

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project aims to document conversational speech of ordinary people of all ages and backgrounds who grew up in Oakland. Our main interest is in how people pronounce their words - is there an "Oakland accent"? - but the recordings are also social records from people spanning a wide range of age...

Rosemary Joyce - Professor, Anthropology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

Building on an existing WordPress website, this project will provide a digital portal for Honduran archaeology. This will contribute to education, professional training, and museum interpretation in Honduras as well as sharing of sometimes hard to find knowledge with European, North American, and Latin American archaeologists. Past entries to the...

Rosemary Joyce - Professor, Anthropology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

This project will contribute to completion of reports on archaeological field projects conducted in Honduras between 1980 and 2009 and preparation of original data for digital archiving in the US and Honduras. For 2026-2027 the focus is on zooarchaeology: the study of animals...

Yehuda Kalay - Professor, Architecture

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

How can AI help save lives during high-rise building fires? High-rise residential buildings present unique fire-safety challenges because of their high occupant density, complex evacuation conditions, and extended egress times. In 2023, San Francisco adopted a Fire Code amendment requiring automatic sprinkler retrofits in all residential high...

Jerome Karabel - Professor, Sociology

Status: Open     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...

Kourtney Kawano - Professor, Education

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: Off Campus

This project is a systematic review of AA&PI teachers and how they are discussed across peer-reviewed scholarship to date. The project's goals are to 1) map the field of research on AA&PI K–12 educators by identifying peer-reviewed sources published to date, 2) examine thematic trends...

Kourtney Kawano - Professor, Education

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The purpose of this project is to uplift the unique contributions of AA&PI teacher-content creators in relation to perceptions about AA&PI communities and broader educational discourse on equity-focused and race-conscious policies and programs. We aim to identify thematic trends in AA&PI teacher-content creators...

Kourtney Kawano - Professor, Education

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: Off Campus

This project explores California-based Pacific Islander (PI) college students' experiences with identity formation, familial socialization, intergroup relations, and education for social change. Through qualitative research methods, this project aims to uplift collective sensemaking about the decisions that PI families make to perpetuate their linguistic and cultural ways of knowing...

Kourtney Kawano - Professor, Education

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: Off Campus

Although California school districts have been successful in defending students and teachers’ legal right to engage with complex issues and ideas in Ethnic Studies courses, these attacks have implications for educators’ capacities to teach without fear of surveillance and retaliation and potential consequences for Berkeley’s vision of a community in...

Waqas Khalid - Associate Scientist, QB3

Status: Open     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...

Asir Intisar Khan - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

As nanoelectronics evolves, managing heat becomes critical, particularly in high-density 3D chips for AI workloads. Uneven power dissipation leads to localized ‘hot spots’ that compromise device reliability and safety. Current thermal management approaches, such as using high thermal conductivity materials, optimizing through-silicon vias, and passive cooling, often overlook...

Celeste Kidd - Professor, Psychology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

IMPORTANT NOTE: To apply, please fill out this Google Form to supplement your URAP application: https://forms.gle/rxjaxyWAbsoqSYqZ7 The Kidd Lab, directed by Professor Celeste Kidd, studies belief formation and learning using a combination of computational and behavioral methods. Our current research is focused on how children use AI models...

Alexa Koenig - Co-Faculty Director, Human Rights Center

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Thank you for your interest in the Investigations Lab. Our application for the Fall 2026 semester will open with the regular URAP cycle. A supplemental, google form application will be posted here when the URAP application cycle opens. The HRC Lab is a collaborative, innovative, student-driven space that conducts...

Yury Kolomensky - Professor, Physics

Status: Open     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: Open     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...

Michelle Koo - Staff Curator, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The world's natural history museums are responsible for documenting over 2 billion species known as a result of 300 years of biological exploration of the planet. The information contained in museums include observational and specimen-based data, text, images, sound and video and form the foundation of what we know...

Michelle Koo - Staff Curator, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) is a vibrant research and informatics center for the campus and the natural history communities around the world. The world's natural history museums are responsible for documenting over 1.8 billion species known as a result of 300 years of biological exploration of the planet...

Britt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Lichens are partnerships of fungi, algae, and bacteria entangled in symbiosis. In two interconnected projects focused on the lace lichen (Ramalina menziesii), we are exploring how lichens persist as integrated units despite their variable habitats and symbiotic partners. We have reciprocally transplanted lace lichen from two distinct microhabitats on Santa...

Britt Koskella - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

For the last 10 years the Pear project (fire blight of pear trees) has been seeking to better understand how bacteriophage viruses impact the ability of two bacterial pathogens (Erwinia amylovora and Pseudomonas syringae) to colonize and infect pear trees around the city of Berkeley. We are tracking bacteria-phage...

Renaud La Joie - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive cognitive decline and accumulation of amyloid-β protein in the brain. Amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) enables visualization of amyloid deposition in vivo and can be used to determine the presence of amyloid plaques, supporting the diagnosis of AD. In...

Renaud La Joie - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and exposure to repetitive head impacts (RHI) are common among military veterans and have been linked to an increased risk of cognitive impairment, psychiatric symptoms, and potentially neurodegenerative diseases later in life. Although not all individuals who are exposed to TBI or RHI experience long-term...

Renaud La Joie - Professor, UC San Francisco

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: Off Campus

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by the accumulation of abnormal proteins in the brain, including beta-amyloid (Aβ) pathology. Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging allows us to visualize and measure Aβ pathology in living people. The FDA approval of three Aβ-PET radiotracers has expanded the use of Aβ-PET...

Marika Landau-Wells - Professor, Political Science

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     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. My book investigates how policy-makers in the U.S. and in other countries determine...

Patricia Lang - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: On Campus

Climate change has dramatically reshaped plant life on Earth. Despite these widespread biological shifts creating serious challenges—such as mismatches in plant-biotic or plant-abiotic interactions—we still lack a comprehensive understanding of their molecular underpinnings. This project aims to characterize the genetic drivers underlying the most evident plant...

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

Status: Open     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: Open     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: Open     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...

Adrian Lee - Professor, Physics

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the oldest light in the Universe, and carries invaluable information about the Universe’s history and evolution. The detection of primordial gravitational waves in the CMB polarisation, a smoking gun for cosmic inflation, is one of the biggest challenges in observational cosmology. To achieve the...

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

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

General Description and Research Approach. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is the fifth most important cereal crop worldwide and serves as a major source of food, animal forage, and an emerging biofuel feedstock. Understanding the stomatal dynamics that enable sorghum to use water efficiently under drought and water-limited conditions...

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

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: to be negotiated     Location: On Campus

New approaches are needed to capture larger amounts of atmospheric carbon with the goal of reducing atmospheric CO2 and slowing or perhaps even reversing global warming. Plants are a proposed scalable solution, with the potential to both capture atmospheric carbon through photosynthetic CO2 fixation and store it through carbon sequestration...

David Levine - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

AI agents can help with running a project from organizing knowledge and tracking reports to giving feedback on drafts and identifying potential donors...

David Levine - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Roughly 1.5 billion poor people receive healthcare from roughly 1.5 million community health workers (CHWs). CHWs are typically women with limited education and minimal training. AI can help create localized code that slots into existing CHW software and provides clinicial decision support We have a prototype CHW Navigator system we...

David Levine - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

We’re evaluating a program distributing free Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) to treat diarrhea as an add-on to distributing seasonal antimalarials in Chad. We’re looking for a highly organized undergraduate to assist with document and data tracking, data cleaning, and project documentation...

Jennifer Lewis - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

Status: Open     Weekly Hours: 9-11 hrs     Location: Off Campus

The plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae causes disease in a large number of different plant species, using the type III secretion system to secrete and translocate effector proteins into the plant. Many of these effector proteins are believed to function primarily in the suppression of host defense signaling. However recognition of...

Lu Liang - Professor, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning

Status: Open     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...