URAP

David Moore - Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an autoimmune inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract. Statistics show that the incidence of IBD in the US is around 1.3% in the adult population. The pathophysiology of IBD is multifaceted and complex, with current therapeutics requiring optimization. Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and experimental...

David Moore - Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

Bile acids (BA), the amphipathic and water-soluble end-products of cholesterol metabolism, are essential for the emulsification and subsequent absorption of dietary lipids and fat-soluble vitamins. BA are synthesized by the liver, stored in the gallbladder, and secreted into the lumen of the small intestine to solubilize lipids...

Julian Motzkin - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

When pain becomes chronic, there can be changes in brain areas involved with processing pain signals. Our research combines fMRI of pain circuits with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a type of non-invasive brain stimulation, to determine how rTMS may alleviate difficult-to-treat pain...

Julian Motzkin - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The thermal grill illusion (TGI) is an illusion of burning pain created by interlaced innocuous warm and cool temperatures. Our lab is beginning to study this illusion as a measure of pain sensitivity in pain free adults, patients which chronic pain, and patients with mental health conditions like depression and...

Mahasin Mujahid - Professor, Public Health

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

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are a major public health concern. Despite overall declines in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality over the past several decades, CVD remains the leading cause of death in the U.S., and significant health disparities remain, especially in rural communities. For example, rural populations experience higher rates of cardiovascular...

Praveen Mummaneni - Professor, Neurosurgery-Spine

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

UCSF is a leading center for the American Spine Registry, a nationwide initiative focused on collecting patient data to enhance care for individuals undergoing cervical and lumbar surgeries. Our research team investigates the outcomes of minimally invasive surgeries, factors influencing cancer recurrence and complications in spinal tumors, and the effectiveness...

Michael Nachman - Professor, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Integrative Biology

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

Deer mice are the primary reservoir for Sin Nombre Virus (SNV). SNV causes severe respiratory disease in humans with a case fatality of 35-50%. Those who survive the disease will eventually clear the virus from their system. However, deer mice sustain lifelong infections with minimal disease. To understand how deer...

Michael Nachman - Professor, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Integrative Biology

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

Within ~500 years, house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) have expanded into a wide variety of habitats across North and South America. House mice can be found from the tropics to the arctic, and populations inhabiting these different environments have adapted to different thermal regimes. Mice from cold regions are larger...

Michael Nachman - Professor, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Integrative Biology

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

A fundamental challenge in evolutionary biology is to understand how new species arise. The California vole is a widespread Californian rodent that appears generally uniform and is currently classified as a single species. However, recent studies have shown that the California vole forms two genetically distinct groups with reproductive isolation...

Abhishek Nagaraj - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Check back for status     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...

Jason Nagata - Professor, Pediatrics

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

The project aims to: Determine health impacts impacts of digital technology (social media, video games, AI) among adolescents The goal of the project is to determine prospective associations between contemporary screen time (e.g., social media) exposures and cognitive/neuroimaging outcomes in adolescents. The outcomes of this work can inform guidelines...

Olivia Natan - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

This is an ongoing project which examines the effects of market structure on the market for consumer data. The project uses a variety of data sources, including many through the UCB library. If you are interested in the nuts and bolts of empirical research at the intersection of marketing, economics...

Olivia Natan - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

This URAP project exposes students to one or more of the ongoing projects in quantitative marketing and industrial organization, including topics on product variety, pricing, and consumer demand. Examples of ongoing projects include work on business models for AI firms, and consumer search and information processing. Projects will be supervised...

Peter Nelson - Professor, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

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

Indigenous communities in California are leading efforts in cultural and prescribed fire to enhance subsistence and cultural resources, as well as to mitigate wildfire spread. A key management objective for Indigenous communities, and this project, is to reduce insect infestations in oak (Quercus spp.) acorns, which are a critical food...

Rasmus Nielsen - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Retrons are bacterial immune systems that help protect cells from viral infection. Many retrons remain poorly characterized, particularly those found in clinically important bacteria. This project will investigate a newly identified retron system from an ESKAPE pathogen using biochemical and structural approaches. The long-term goal is to understand how...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Kinesin motors drive microtubule based intracellular transport, and autoinhibition is an intrinsic regulatory mechanism that ensures this transport is activated according to cellular needs. Aberrant activation of kinesins has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., KIF1A-Associated Neurological Disorder), affecting neuronal morphology and neurotransmitter release. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Glial cells (astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia), which make up half the brain volume, play essential roles in maintaining and protecting neurons. They regulate synaptic neurotransmission, insulate the neuronal axons, maintain their extracellular environment and are involved in immune defense, thereby playing a central role in the regulation of brain function...

Moira O'Neill - Professor, Institute for Urban and Regional Development

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

The United States faces a housing crisis estimated to be on the order of 3-5 million units, threatening the financial security of families nationwide. Existing scholarship and research establishes that zoning laws and building codes can limit construction of more dense housing, like apartments, in cities and counties where we...

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

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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

Areas of the East Bay hills have been undergoing habitat restoration, which includes the removal of Eucalyptus and other invasive plants and the promotion of native grasses, herbs, and shrubs. This project aims to sample habitats at various stages of restoration to see how insects and spiders respond to these...

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: Full- no new appr needed     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...

Diego Ocampo - Staff Curator, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology is a major repository for surveyed and/or salvaged North American wildlife, especially California species. We typical have several thousand frozen carcasses at any given time, with a large diversity of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds. These carcasses come from many sources -- wildlife rescue...

Marit Oieroset - Research Physicist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process that converts magnetic energy into particle energy and plays an important role throughout space, laboratory, and astrophysical plasmas. At Earth, reconnection at the magnetopause provides a pathway for solar-wind particles and energy to enter the magnetosphere and is an important driver of...

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

In kelp forests, food resources are a key contributor to a kelp forest inhabitant’s fitness. Recently, sea urchin herbivory has been shown to rapidly reshape the food landscape within these forests, converting areas of high productivity to desert-like ‘urchin barrens’. We aim to study food assimilation as it relates...

Daniel Okamoto - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

This URAP opportunity in the Okamoto lab focuses on understanding the reproductive phenology of golden mussels (Limnoperna fortunei), a fast-spreading invasive species in the California river delta. Students participating in this URAP opportunity will conduct field work in the delta including mussel collections, collecting and deploying larval settlement plates...

Daniel Okamoto - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Seaweeds (e.g., kelp, nori) are important primary producers, food sources, and essential fish habitat around the globe. While many species are resilient to climate change, many important species are also exhibiting declines in recent years and especially in response to marine heatwaves. We are conducting laboratory experiments and fieldwork focused...

Jessica Olney - Executive Director, International Studies, Institute of

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

Requires weekly workshop attendance, Mondays 10 am - 12 pm, 223 Philosophy Hall ** This project engages students in research that supports the Berkeley Institute of International Studies (IIS) and its collaborator, the human rights organization PAEMA (Preventing And Ending Mass Atrocities). The Berkeley lead researcher is Jessica Olney, IIS Executive Director...

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

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

The early seventeenth-century Italian artist Caravaggio painted a series of works for a chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. The altarpiece and the two lateral paintings are the subject of a chapter in my book "Caravaggio’s Pitiful Relics." My current research project returns to...

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

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

Beato Antonio Baldinucci (Florence 1665 – Lazio 1717), son of the art historian to the Medici court, was a Jesuit missionary in Lazio, known for his penitential missions, involving carrying a cross, flagellation and bonfires of the vanities. During these internal missions, Baldinucci carried with him a copy of a painting...

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

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

The French Huguenot ceramicist Bernard Palissy’s is famous for his casting of living specimens (amphibians and reptiles) for his plates. He was also a prolific writer, revealing his research in salt flats and his observation of fossils in the mountains. Palissy’s Discours admirable (1580) is a dialogue between Theory and...

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

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

Simone Vouet was an emigré artist in Rome in the 1620s before he returned to France and became a major painter in Paris, most notably serving Anne d'Autriche, the mother of Louis III. This research project concerns the artist's production in Rome, most notably his execution...

David Oppenheimer - Professor, Law

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

Professor David Oppenheimer seeks 4-5 research apprentices to work with him on five book projects. They are 1) a series of essays on global systemic racism; 2) a simulated housing discrimination casefile used for teaching civil procedure; 3) a textbook on comparative equality and anti-discrimination law; 4) a legal...

Victor Ortega Jimenez - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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...

Victor Ortega Jimenez - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Water boatmen are renowned for their remarkable adaptations for both diving and flying. However, the physical mechanisms these insects employ to overcome the constraints imposed when transitioning between aquatic and aerial environments remain poorly understood. We investigate in the lab their locomotion performance using High-speed video and fluid dynamics...

Jorge Otero-Millan - Professor, Optometry

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

Blinks are usually treated as noise in eye-tracking research: intervals to be detected and discarded before analyzing gaze. Yet blink rate, duration, and timing relative to task events are informative measures of visual and cognitive state in their own right, and they are also relevant to ocular surface health...

Jorge Otero-Millan - Professor, Optometry

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

This project designs and runs human-subject experiments in which participants read passages while eye position, pupil, and eyelid movements are recorded with video cameras. We will manipulate factors about the text, display and physical conditions, ask how each shifts blink rate and how correlated they are to other metrics...

Jorge Otero-Millan - Professor, Optometry

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

This project focuses on turning blink behavior recordings into quantitative answers: How does blink rate change over the course of a reading session? Are blinks temporally coupled to line sweeps and sentence boundaries, or is the apparent clustering explained by chance given the base rate? Do blink duration and inter...

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: Full- no new appr needed     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...

Emily Ozer - Professor, Public Health

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

The Ozer lab works on multiple projects focused on community-engaged and participatory research approaches, such as: Research-practice partnerships (RPP); Community-based participatory research (CBPR); Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR). YPAR is an innovative approach for promoting social change and positive youth development in which youth conduct systematic...

Christian Paiz - Professor, Ethnic Studies

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

The University of California, Berkeley played a critical role in the development of Chicanx Studies and in the student, community, and labor activism that fostered the field’s expansion in the mid-to-late twentieth century. This apprenticeship project asks: what goals, contexts, and visions inspired early Chicano/a scholars at...

Christian Paiz - Professor, Ethnic Studies

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

This apprenticeship focuses on farmworker history in the Coachella Valley, a small agricultural desert in Southern California. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Coachella Valley played a critical role in the development, successes, and challenges of the United Farm Worker (UFW) movement, one of the most important agricultural labor movements...

Zachary Pardos - Professor, Education

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

The AskOski project (https://askoski.berkeley.edu/about) is a research and development effort led by Professor Pardos to transfer the latest in big data and machine learning research to the domain of course guidance in higher ed. The recommender system is live in-production at Berkeley, with partial deployments at several...