URAP

Patina Mendez - Lecturer, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

Streams in California have a variety of forms including: (a) intermittent streams that only flow for part of the year, and often are dry throughout the summer, (b) protected streams in national, state, regional, and county parts, and (c) urban streams that serve recreational needs and stormwater management. The project...

Patina Mendez - Lecturer, Environmental Science, Policy and Management

Status: Full- no new appr needed     Weekly Hours: 3-5 hrs     Location: On Campus

Studies in ecology and evolution rely on properly curated museum material and access to museum records and specimen. Caddisflies, in the insect order Trichoptera, are aquatic insects closely related to moths and butterflies. In this project, the student will assist with labeling, organizing, and curating caddisflies. The student will also...

Guanghan Meng - Professor, Optometry

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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...

Guanghan Meng - Professor, Optometry

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

The photopigments in the human retina are capable of absorbing two photons of the same wavelength simultaneously to create a visual sensation, named "two-photon vision". This sensation matches the appearance of light at approximately half the original wavelength. For instance, the absorption of two infrared photons can generate a...

Tony Mercer - Research Scientist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

The undergraduate researcher will assist in the operations of the Solar Probe SWEAP instruments and the MAVEN PF instruments, including spacecraft coordination, science data pipeline and processing, instrument health and safety, and python data reduction and visualization software. As a note, the researcher may need to visit the lab occasionally...

Craig Miller - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

A fantastic diversity in organismal form is seen in nature, yet we know little about the genetic basis of evolutionary change. We are using the head skeleton of the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) as a model system to study the genetic basis of development and evolution. Sticklebacks have undergone one...

Dana Miller-Cotto - Professor, Education

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

This research is a mixed methods research project which aims to understand the predictors of executive function, a cognitive resource that controls our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, and its performance in early schooling. In particular, we study the 1) role of how context may play a role in executive function...

Dana Miller-Cotto - Professor, Education

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

Executive function, or our ability to hold information in mind, ignore distractions, and shift between goals, predicts many important outcomes in life, including educational outcomes and social development. Research indicates that there are differences in how children display executive function skills across race/ethnicity and socio-economic status. There is...

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...

Don Moore - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

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

Have you ever scored lower on a test than you expected, lost a competition to a competitor you thought you would trounce, been certain about a fact only to have Google prove you incorrect? People are frequently overconfident. Understanding overconfidence can help us become more accurate about our self-perceptions...

Don Moore - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

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

Human judgments are routinely biased. Can artificially intelligent agents correct for this human bias and achieve greater accuracy in their judgment...

Don Moore - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

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

The scientific world is changing quickly as scientists improve their research practices and correct errors in the published record. This project seeks to test the replicability of published work that is now suspect. This is a chance to play a role in a project in the vanguard of open science...

Don Moore - Professor, Business, Haas School, Psychology

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

Have you ever read a research article and wondered if the authors truly tested the research question they purported to test? The focus of this project concerns the evaluation of research methodology. You would work primarily with a senior graduate student in the lab on her research. It is an...

David Moore - Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

The Liver Receptor Homolog-1 (LRH-1) is an orphaned nuclear receptor (a family of protein transcription factors that regulate gene expression in the cell). Nuclear receptors contain a physical pocket known as the ligand binding domain (LBD) that is capable of binding and sensing various compounds. LRH-1&#039...

David Moore - Professor, Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology

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

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs) form a subset of nuclear receptors, currently comprising three distinct members: PPARα, PPARγ, and PPARδ. Each receptor seems to influence pathways situated at the crossroads of intermediary metabolism and inflammation, imparting significant physiological and clinical relevance to them (Bensinger and Tontonoz, 2008). PPARα, a well...

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...

Priya Moorjani - Professor, Center for Computational Biology, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Improvements in sequencing techniques and availability of ancient DNA has revolutionized the study of human evolutionary genetics and disease mapping. As human populations migrated across the globe, they underwent demographic shifts and adapted to their diverse environments via natural selection, gaining numerous genetic adaptations to diet, high altitude, disease, and...

Priya Moorjani - Professor, Center for Computational Biology, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Unraveling the first migrations of humans out of Africa has invoked great interest among researchers from a wide range of disciplines. With the advent of genome-wide DNA sequencing techniques and an increase in the availability of ancient samples, genetics offers important tools for testing different hypothesis related to human...

Ilan Morgenstern - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

This project explores how crime affects the operation of ridesharing platforms like Uber and Lyft. In many areas, rideshare drivers face safety concerns that shape how and where they choose to operate. Some platforms respond by allowing drivers to reject trips to high-crime areas or by excluding those zones...

Ilan Morgenstern - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

This project studies a classic problem in economic theory known as a bankruptcy (or claims) problem: how to allocate a limited resource among agents who have competing claims over the same resources. Such problems arise in economics, operations research, and fair division, and are central to the theory of cooperative...

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: Full- no new appr needed     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: 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. This project will focus on the...

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: Full- no new appr needed     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, Pediatrics

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

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 involved in several projects surrounding 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.). People with personal experience of disability or exclusion...

Olivia Natan - Professor, Business, Haas School

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

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

Faithful development and maintenance of cell identity requires that the expression of specific genes is turned on and off in a highly regulated manner. This epigenetic regulation requires that chromatin-modifying complexes can be dynamically recruited across the genome and activated with high spatial and temporal control. Many of these...

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

The large transcription coactivators TFIID and SAGA play important roles in the regulation of gene expression. Over a megadalton in size, each of these complexes contains a number of structural modules with distinct functionalities. Interestingly, they share one particular module that plays different roles and that contains a number of...

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

California's housing crisis is well known, and scholars attribute this crisis largely to the inadequate supply of housing across multiple income levels. This study explores the relationship between local and state land use regulation and housing supply. The study has gathered data on approval processes in selected jurisdictions to understand...

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

Status: Check back for status     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: 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...

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: Current Term Now Closed     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 focuses on the energetics of host-parasite interactions in a model zooplankton-fungal parasite system. Over the course of Fall 2025- Spring 2026, we will conduct several experiments that test how variable food resources shape host and parasite fitness. Students will have the opportunity to connect and...

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...

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...