URAP

Max Staller - Assistant Researcher, Center for Computational Biology

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

Transcription factors are proteins that control gene expression by binding to DNA and recruiting coactivators (or corepressors) using their activation (or repression) domains. Activation domains are intrinsically disordered, meaning they do not fold into a single 3D structure. This has made activation domains difficult to recognize, but years of high...

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...

Shannon Steen - Professor, Theater, Dance and Performance Studies

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

This project seeks to understand the varied approaches to teaching awareness of the history, content of, and debates around the US Constitution in K-12 education. Our work together will have two parts: (1) we will attempt to survey variations in state curricula (e.g. which states require knowledge of the...

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. This will advance our thinking on how education can improve in a...

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...

Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

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

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...

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

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

We are looking for motivated undergraduate students to join an AI-focused research project in the Quantitative Marketing group at Berkeley Haas. The project studies AI bias and how AI-generated information can shape consumer perceptions and market outcomes, using real-world data and machine-generated outputs. This role is...

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

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

We are looking for 1-2 motivated undergraduate students to join an early-stage research project in the Quantitative Marketing group at Berkeley Haas. The project broadly studies how generative AI systems (eg. LLMs, VLMs, and image-generation models) understand and produce coherent visual narratives. Potential directions include multimodal reasoning, controllable...

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

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

We are looking for an undergraduate student to provide flexible research support across 2 early-stage AI and quantitative marketing projects at Berkeley Haas. This is an ad-hoc, execution-focused role rather than a primary research position. Tasks will depend on the projects’ changing needs. Some weeks may require...

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...

Joel Wanek - Lecturer, Geography

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

The Berkeley Space Station is the only radio station located within a Geography Department in the world. Therefore the idea of “geographic radio” is a new thing and very open to interpretation. The Berkeley Space Station is actively defining what it is. And the Student-Researcher would be a big...

Joel Wanek - Lecturer, Geography

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

Sonic Geographies is a creative field studies course offered every Spring in the Geography Department. The class guides students in making high quality stereo recordings in an effort to understand Place. Every landscape has a distinct sound. How can we listen to the relationships happening in any given place - between...

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

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

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and researchers use its data to study what the universe was like shortly after the big bang. Researchers at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) play a key role in all aspects of the ATLAS...

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

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

In addition to the description below, this Fall (2025) we are adding a new component to our MLforHEP program. We are developing Large Language Model powered agent to automate data analysis and other computational tasks in High Energy Physics. High-energy physics data analysis deals with a huge amount 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...