URAP

Max Staller - Assistant Researcher, Center for Computational Biology

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

Transcription factors contain DNA binding domains and separate activation domains that bind coactivator complexes. DNA binding domains are conserved, structured and can be predicted from amino acid sequence. Activation domains are intrinsically disordered (they do not fold into a single 3D structure), poorly conserved and cannot be predicted from amino...

Max Staller - Assistant Researcher, Center for Computational Biology

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

Transcription factors contain DNA binding domains and separate activation domains that bind coactivator complexes. DNA binding domains are conserved, structured and can be predicted from amino acid sequence. Activation domains are intrinsically disordered (they do not fold into a single 3D structure), poorly conserved and cannot be predicted from amino...

Nicole Starosielski - Professor, Film Studies

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

Every satellite image, command signals to control a spacecraft or probe, and all the resulting science dataset from space missions are made possible by a largely invisible layer of ground-based digital infrastructure—complex systems that enable the transmission, storage, and processing of high-volume data across facilities distributed across...

Nicole Starosielski - Professor, Film Studies

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

Our research team’s forthcoming (September 2026) pair of online guides/slidedecks traces how digital infrastructures, such as data centers, are intertwined with geopolitics. The two guidebooks map digital infrastructure and discrete technologies at national borders as sites of contested sovereignty. Both of them explore the tension between border securitization and...

Scott Straus - Professor, Political Science

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

A consistent finding in genocide and mass atrocity literature is that prior episodes predict future onsets, yet the causal mechanisms explaining why violence recurs remain theoretically underspecified. This project addresses that gap by developing four interlocking hypotheses: (1) accountability absence, where impunity enables recurrence; (2) armed group persistence, where perpetrating...

Jason Su - Associate Researcher, Public Health

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

The overarching objective of this proposal is to create comprehensive cumulative impact indices that encompass the effects of both chemical and non-chemical stressors at the community level throughout the entire State. These indices will be developed using scientifically rigorous metrics, thereby furnishing robust tools to inform policy formulation including...

Jason Su - Associate Researcher, Public Health

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

This project aims to assess the spatial and temporal distribution of brake and tire wear (BTW) concentrations across the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) and their potential health impacts on vulnerable communities. The research will apply advanced source apportionment algorithms to quantify BTW profiles at both various field sampling sites, using...

Jun Sunseri - Professor, Anthropology

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

The San Francisco Bay Area is the ancestral homelands of several Native American tribes that include Ohlone, Coast Miwok, Bay Miwok, and Patwin peoples. These peoples built and maintained polities, towns, villages, camps, food processing and tool production areas, etc. that have left physical traces on the landscape. Some of...

Jun Sunseri - Professor, Anthropology

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

Our partnered project is a community-based, collaborative partnership involving Berkeley archaeologists and the Colfax-Todds Valley and Shingle Springs InterTribal Ecological Restoration (INTER) Crew. Tribal Leaders from Colfax-Todds Valley Considated Tribes and Shingle Springs Band of Miwok mentor our research at their Ancestral Places in the foothills of...

Jun Sunseri - Professor, Anthropology

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

The Archaeological Research Facility is teaming with us to develop detailed photorealistic 3D models of WW2 aircraft that went down in remote areas. The project team has begun detailed photo documentation of vintage aircraft in museums and private collections to understand what airframe components (hard points and high-density parts...

Jun Sunseri - Professor, Anthropology

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

Rosemary Joyce's Honduran archaeology project is a community-based archaeological and anthropological project between the University of California researchers and community members in Central America. Data from the animal bone and shell assemblages will inform the research from these sites...

Eve Sweetser - Professor, Linguistics

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

Compartmentalized fluid pressures organize many aspects of development and physiology. Because water is incompressible, pressure changes propagate rapidly and uniformly (Pascal’s law), coordinating collective cell behaviors. In the eye, fluid pressure plays an important role in producing and maintaining shape for vision. The anterior chamber (AC) of the eye is...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Mechanical stress is a fact of life. Fluid pressure is required for the function of the circulatory system, ear, and eye. Tissues stretch and contract during morphogenesis, locomotion, and wound healing. But how do tissues (and the cells that constitute them) adapt and respond to changes in the physical stresses...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

The vertebrate inner ear is composed of a series of connected fluid-filled cavities tightly regulated by undefined pressure-responsive mechanisms. Misregulation of this internal hydrostatic (fluid) pressure can result in developmental defects in the ear, hearing loss, and difficulties with balance. The endolymphatic sac (EDS) is a flexible chamber...

Lee Tan - Professor, Neurosurgery- Spine

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

The UCSF Spine Center is a leading contributor to the American Spine Registry, a nationwide initiative dedicated to improving outcomes for patients undergoing cervical and lumbar spine surgery through the collection of longitudinal clinical data. Our research team investigates minimally invasive spine surgery, predictors of cancer recurrence and complications in...

Timothy Tangherlini - Professor, Scandinavian

Status: Open     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: Open     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...

Rowland Taylor - Professor, Optometry

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

Amacrine cells are inhibitory interneurons in the retina that shape how visual information is processed before it leaves the eye. Although there are upwards of 60 distinct amacrine cell types in the mammalian retina, only a small subset have been well characterized. This gap in knowledge limits our ability to...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

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

How does the brain represent meaningful information from sound? This project investigates this question by examining natural vocal communication between zebra finches. Zebra finches are gregarious songbirds with a very rich vocal repertoire of calls to communicate in different behavioral contexts: peer recognition, mate interactions, offspring care, etc. In such...

Hannah R. Thompson - Professor, Public Health

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

Current dietary guidelines recommend that children transition from whole-fat cow's milk to low-fat (1%) cow's milk beginning at 2 years of age. However, this recommendation was not established using rigorous randomized controlled trial evidence in toddlers. Because federal nutrition assistance programs and institutions that receive federal funding—including...

Hannah R. Thompson - Professor, Public Health

Status: Open     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...

William Thompson - Professor, Psychology

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

The Computational Cognitive Science lab (https://ccs-ucb.github.io) conducts experimental studies of human intelligence, focusing on reasoning and learning in multi-agent contexts. We have new and ongoing studies surrounding e.g. discovery, problem-solving, and belief formation during interactions between human participants and AI systems. Our studies leverage web technologies...

William Thompson - Professor, Psychology

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

The computational cognitive science lab (ccs-ucb.github.io) studies how knowledge is transmitted from one agent to another, among humans and machines. This project examines the transmission of knowledge from one model to another using open source LLMs. You will learn about methods for on-policy distillation (e.g. https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog...

Gregory Timmel - Director, OLAC

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

The role of the veterinarian in the research environment has become increasingly critical in recent years. Not only are lab animal veterinarians involved in research involving animal health, but in research endeavors as they relate to and intersect with human or public health (e.g., nutrition, cancer studies, and infectious disease...

Eos Trinidad - Professor , Education

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

This research will help develop a national database of K-12 state mid-level education agencies across the US. It aims to inform new research on the role of mid-level agencies in supporting education across different states...

Eos Trinidad - Professor , Education

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

Among the most interesting, controversial, and consequential decisions in education policies have emerged from social scientists in Chicago. The likes of Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, Dan Lortie, James Coleman, Anthony Bryk, James Heckman, and Eve Ewing have contributed to important research that influenced democratic schooling, school choice, human capital development...

Eos Trinidad - Professor , Education

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

This project aims to create a systematic accounting of sociological studies of education, and create a framework to understand how different studies are connected with each other. The team will create an archive of publications, scholars, and awards connected to sociology of education during a 23-year period with the...

Winston Tseng - Research Scientist, Public Health

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

The purpose of the project is to understand the issues community assets and needs of the Samoan and Pacific Islander (PI) community in the San Francisco Bay Area for Samoan language and culturation preservation. Additional project areas may include to monitor and increase the visibility of Samoan/PI social and...

Eleanor Tubman - Professor , Nuclear Engineering

Status: Open     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...

J. Miguel Villas-Boas - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

We are looking for motivated and responsible undergraduate students to help in a research project in the Quantitative Marketing group at Berkeley Haas. This project studies the rapidly evolving business AI market. This position is a great fit for students interested in AI, technology, markets, and data-driven research...

Kimberly Vinall - Executive Director, Berkeley Language Center

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

Academic publication is an essential part of the research process, a way for researchers to communicate and disseminate their contributions to a wider audience. This URAP project aims to mentor undergraduates in academic writing and publication through support of the L2Journal, an open-access, peer reviewed academic journal focused on...

Yasmin Vobis - Professor, Architecture

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

While much recent attention has been spent on planning and policy around housing, relatively little has been paid to the impact of these issues on architecture. This design research project seeks to develop design-forward, low-cost housing solutions to match the ambitious policy changes implemented by the City of...

Steven Vogel - Professor, Political Science

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

I will be focusing primarily on the GEN Global Citizens Forum project in Fall 2026. The Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) in Tokyo and its partners around the world have launched the GEN Forum to inspire the younger generation and to address the most pressing social, economic, and environmental...

Sophie Volpp - Professor, Comparative Literature

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

The Berkeley Anthropology Department has received a donated collection of over three hundred rave flyers documenting the electronic dance music scene in San Francisco, and the greater Bay Area from the mid-1980s through the early 2000s, now being digitally archived through the Folklore library. The donated collection includes handbills...

Julia Walsh - Professor Emerita, Public Health

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

California’s climate policies are models for many other states and internationally. We will advocate and lobby and for important pending Climate legislation in the CA Assembly and Senate. We will assess the implications, status and progress of the legislation and requirements for passage. We will research the health impact of...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

We are seeking a highly motivated student to join a project to develop an LLM-powered chatbot for personalized vaping cessation counseling for young people. This project involves designing, implementing, and evaluating a secure, cloud-based conversational system that integrates large language models (LLMs) with structured prompting, safety guardrails (via...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Project 1=== Our interdisciplinary research team is developing the next generation of GAME PROs, a digital health platform designed to help people with cancer regularly monitor symptoms, understand changes in their health, and communicate more effectively with their healthcare teams. GAME PROs builds upon the recently completed GAME Pilot Study...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

We are looking for a motivated undergraduate or graduate student interested in working on a research project at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), AI, data visualization, and digital mental health. The student will contribute to the design and evaluation of personalized visualizations that help individuals better understand and...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The UCSF TECH Lab (https://techlab.ucsf.edu/) led by Dr. Peter Washington at UCSF (DoC-IT, with appointments in the CPH and BMI PhD programs) is looking for a student researcher working as a full-stack web developer (Django for backend, Tailwind for frontend) to contribute to build features on a...

Linda Waterfield - Head of Registration, Hearst Museum of Anthropology

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

The Registration division oversees and manages collection object documentation. URAP students will assist in the transformation of once hidden collections to fully accessible collections through: · Processing New Collections Acquisitions · Research and Cataloging of Existing Collections · Archives Inventory and Finding Aid Creation: Research Documentation...

Ramon Weber - Professor , Architecture

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

Embodied carbon refers to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with designing, constructing, maintaining, and decommissioning buildings. Reducing the embodied carbon of construction materials is pertinent for combatting climate change and achieving a net-zero carbon built environment. This project will focus on key materials that account for 80% of...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

There is increasing interest in the role of sunlight and light exposure in the development of myopia. In this project, we are using a wearable light sensor/activity monitor (Actiwatch), for human subjects. The sensor will record the intensity of light subjects are exposed to, and will allow us to...

Martha Wilfahrt - Professor, Political Science

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

In an era of democratic instability and electoral autocracy, understanding when and where viable opposition parties emerge is critical. This question is particularly pressing in sub-Saharan Africa, where opposition parties vary in their capacity to contest elections. This project seeks to a) develop a descriptive dataset of the region’s...

Michelle Wilkerson - Professor, Education

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

While computer science (CS) has historically been framed as technical and value-free, emerging scholarship in the Learning Sciences and Science & Technology Studies (STS) highlights how computing intersects deeply with power, politics, and social equity. In response, frameworks have emerged to encourage educators and students to interrogate the societal and...

Caroline Williams - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

The Williams Lab in the Department of Integrative Biology studies the ecological and evolutionary physiology of insects, integrating from genes to physiology to ecology. We are recruiting a cohort of undergraduates to join our lab and take part in a rigorous training program to become an undergraduate researcher. Multiple projects...