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Project Descriptions
Spring 2025

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Showing 50 projects out of 868 found. On page 12 out of 18.
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Generating fertilizer from human urine

Kara Nelson - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 6-8 hrs     Location: On Campus

Despite being less than 1% of the total volume of liquid treated in wastewater treatment plants, urine is responsible for over 80% of the nitrogen in a treatment plants' influent stream. Commonly, this influx of nitrogen is only partially treated, leading to the release of excess nitrogen into the environment...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Biological & Health Sciences

Niche modeling using sedimentary ancient DNA

Rasmus Nielsen - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Using FISH for karyotyping coast redwood

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...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Structural characterization of recruitment and regulatory mechanisms of epigenetic regulators

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...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Molecular evolution in shared structural modules within transcriptional co-activators

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Cryo-electron microscopy studies of DNA methylation complexes

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

DNA methylation at CpG sites plays an essential role in maintaining genome stability and regulating gene expression and it is strictly monitored and controlled by a series of molecular machines. Defects in DNA methylation are frequently found in severe diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer's. DNMT1(DNA methyltransferase 1) with...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Structural mechanism of human kinetochore assembly on microtubules

Eva Nogales - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

Status: Check back for status     Weekly Hours: 12 or more hours     Location: On Campus

Accurate segregation of chromosomes during cell division is essential for maintaining proper cellular function and organismal health. Errors in chromosome segregation can result in apoptosis or an abnormal chromosome number, leading to conditions such as Down syndrome and Turner syndrome, exposing detrimental recessive mutations, and being associated with cancer. The...

 Biological & Health Sciences

New Perspectives on History in Early China

Michael Nylan - Professor, History

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

This project seeks to examine many aspects of ancient history from new perspectives, including the environmental and the emotional...

 Arts & Humanities

Rethinking School Lunch

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

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

School meal programs play a critical role in addressing childhood hunger, and initiatives to improve healthy eating often target school meal programs for improvement. This research explores how school districts address food access, health, educational, environmental, and social issues simultaneously through comprehensive school meal program reform. This approach to school...

 Social Sciences   Education, Cognition & Psychology

Housing and Land Use Legal Research

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

Status: Check back for status     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. We will examine approval processes in selected jurisdictions to understand...

 Social Sciences   Education, Cognition & Psychology

Photographing Bees & Moths

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

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Engineering, Design & Technologies

Insect survey of Sulawesi (Indonesia)

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

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

The Essig Museum is part of a large-scale collecting effort on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. We anticipate collecting vast quantities of bizarre and fascinating arthropods, many of which will be new to science. The two main goals of the project are to document the biological diversity of...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Engineering, Design & Technologies

Insect Sorting and Identification

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

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Engineering, Design & Technologies

Insect Museum Curation

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...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Engineering, Design & Technologies

A role of vitamin D receptor and cofactors in epithelial stem regeneration in ectodermal tissues

Yuko Oda - Research Staff, UC San Francisco

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

The goal of our research is to identify a mechanism how somatic stem cells determine their cell fate through stage or cell specific transcriptional and epigenetic program. We hypothesized that the vitamin D receptor and its regulator of Mediator is critical for temporal or spatial specific transcription to control epithelial...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Data Visualization and Selection for NASA’s MMS Mission

Mitsuo Oka - Research Scientist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

NASA’s Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission consists of a fleet of four spacecraft orbiting Earth. Since its launch in 2015, it has significantly advanced our understanding of Earth's plasma environment, in particular the electron-scale physics of explosive energy-release phenomena. This summer, NASA began transitioning the fleet formation from the...

 Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Energetics and growth dynamics of marine organisms under global change

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...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Environmental Issues

Characterizing variation in life history traits in a model fish system under harvest predation and environmental change

Daniel Okamoto - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Wild fish populations are often subject to high levels of mortality from industrialized human harvest. Harvest mortality, particularly under certain environmental contexts, may have indirect, unpredictable effects on populations' biology beyond simply the removal of individuals from a population. To study these effects, we are using an experimental model system...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Environmental Issues

Producing an Art History Book: Jusepe Ribera in 17th-century Naples

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

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

The Spanish artist Jusepe Ribera interrogated the media of painting, drawing and etching in the vice-royalty of Naples. This publication project looks at the artist's In Ribera's work and its place in the Spanish Empire. His recourse to classical mythology as well as the depiction...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Refugee Image: A Madonna from Frascati(Italy) in Colonial Mexico (Zacatecas)

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

Status: Full- no new appr needed     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...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Between Theory and Practice: Bernard Palissy’s Faïence

Todd Olson - Professor, Art History

Status: Check back for status     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...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Simone Vouet: A French artist in early seventeenth-century Rome

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...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

The Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law

David Oppenheimer - Professor, Law

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

The Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality Anti-Discrimination Law brings together academics, advocates and activists from six continents to address issues of systemic inequality and discrimination. Much of our research, administration and leadership is done by Berkeley students, including URAP students. Our current projects include working groups on Sexual Harassment...

 Social Sciences

Marangoni effect enhances an ultrafast escape and its wake impairs predator’s locomotion in water striders

Victor Ortega Jimenez - Professor, Integrative Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Phantom Crane Flies and bioinspired robots gliding without a single wing beat

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...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Unsteady aerodynamics of Helicopter Seeds

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...

 Biological & Health Sciences

Youth Voice and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) |

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...

 Social Sciences   Education, Cognition & Psychology   Biological & Health Sciences

YPAR (Youth Participatory Action Research) Systematic Literature Review

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...

 Social Sciences   Education, Cognition & Psychology   Biological & Health Sciences

Supporting San Francisco Unified School District and UC Berkeley Research-Practice Partnership (SFUSD-UC Berkeley RPP)

Emily Ozer - Professor, Public Health

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

 Social Sciences   Education, Cognition & Psychology   Biological & Health Sciences

Title Unavailable

Emily Ozer - Professor, Public Health

Status: Check back for status     

...

 Social Sciences   Education, Cognition & Psychology   Biological & Health Sciences

Regulating Bank Fees

Manisha Padi - Professor, Law

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

The Biden administration has prioritized a crackdown on "junk fees"; which proliferate across industries in modern times. The banking industry has been specifically targeted by federal regulators, resulting in a sea change in bank business models. This project studies bank fees and their effect on consumers using a hybrid qualitative...

 Social Sciences

Public Purpose of Venture Capital

Manisha Padi - Professor, Law

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

This project studies public programs that subsidize investment in early stage ventures. The goal is to compile data on these "public purpose" venture capital projects, and compare them to traditional forms of venture capital. An ideal research assistant will have both quantitative data analysis skills in Stata, R, and/or...

 Social Sciences

Supporting undergraduate success with AI adaptive tutoring and course recommendation

Zachary Pardos - Professor, Education

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

This project seeks to fill technical new researcher positions in the AskOski and OATutor research and development teams. The AskOski project (https://askoski.berkeley.edu/about) is a research and development effort lead by Professor Pardos to transfer the latest in big data and machine learning research to the domain of course...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Social Sciences   Education, Cognition & Psychology

Expanding a free content library for an open-source adaptive tutoring system using large language models

Zachary Pardos - Professor, Education

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

Adaptive tutoring systems are designed to provide students in K-12 and intro college courses a personalized homework experience. This means giving the right problem to a student at the right time based given a continuous assessment of their mastery of a skill. At Berkeley, the ALEKS system is used...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Social Sciences   Education, Cognition & Psychology

Indian Literature after Liberalization

Rahul Parson - Professor , South and Southeast Asian Studies

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

The initiation of a liberalized economy and rise of right-wing nationalist politics has increased the precarity of vulnerable communities, minorities, women, and those seen as outsiders or immigrants. This project uses historical, archival, ethnographic, and literary critical approaches to vernacular cultures in order to make visible the new political...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Ancient Texts, Modern Tools and Technologies

Laurie Pearce - Lecturer, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures

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

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Are you interested in ancient civilizations and modern technologies? Would you like to contribute to the preservation of knowledge and cultural heritage? Do you have or would you like to develop skills with databases and image preparation tools? Research apprentices associated with the URAP project Ancient Texts, Modern...

 Arts & Humanities   Digital Humanities and Data Science

The Palatine East Pottery Project

J. Theodore (Ted) Peña - Professor, Ancient Greek and Roman Studies

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

This project is concerned with the classification, quanitification, analysis and publication of the ca. 20 tons of ancient Roman pottery recovered in the Palatine East Excavations in downtown Rome. The material, which dates to the period ca. AD 50 – AD 450, comes from all over the Mediterranean world, and provides...

 Arts & Humanities

Institutional Archives: Working through ISEEES History

Jeffrey Pennington - Executive Director, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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

The Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies serves as the focal point at the University of California at Berkeley for students and faculty who conduct research and teaching on the geographic region of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ISEEES is working to organize and digitize its...

The Violence of American Sugar: Research Assistants (Japanese language skills required)

Bernadette Pérez - Professor, History

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

Colorado was one of the largest producers of sugar during the twentieth century, and it relied on Asian, Latino, Eastern European, and Native American migrant workers. The Violence of American Sugar is a book-length study of the Colorado beet sugar industry that examines the environmental dimensions of civil rights...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Title Unavailable

Bernadette Pérez - Professor, History

Status: Check back for status     

...

 Arts & Humanities   Social Sciences

Determining the Absolute Luminosity of Supernovae to Measure the Expansion of the Universe

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

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

Our group has developed a new model for inferring the distances between Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) that is about twice as accurate as previous models. In order to determine the present day expansion rate, or the Hubble Constant, we need to determine a zero point calibration for the model...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Constraining Cosmology from Modeling Strong Gravitational Lenses on Multiple GPU Nodes

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

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

Strong gravitational lenses are very rare occurrences and are a powerful tool in studying dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities that together account for 95% of the energy in the universe. The strong lensing team works on a range of projects with state-of-the-art computation/ML...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Measuring the universe with nearby and distant supernovae

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

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

Type Ia supernovae are used to measure the rate at which our Universes is expanding, today and over the past 10 billion years. In the past we used Type Ia supernovae to discover that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Now we have developed new techniques for making...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Critical Thinking Education

Saul Perlmutter - Professor, Physics

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

Sense & Sensibility & Science is a project which brings together researchers and educators to improve the way we use science to make decisions. Humans make decisions every day. As individuals, voters, and citizens of the world, the choices we make have the power to shape the world around us. The problem...

 Engineering, Design & Technologies   Mathematical and Physical Sciences

LGBTQ+ AGING

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This project will involve two different mini-projects: (1) HOMES Survey:(LGBTQ+/SGL) Housing, Health, and Services for Older Adults. HOMES is a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project with LGBTQ+ / same-gender-loving older adults. It uses survey data from LGBTQ+ older adults and information from community partners from...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Social Sciences

Examining Equitable Aging through Qualitative Research and Community Collaboration

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This community-engaged multi-faceted project applies an emerging theoretical and conceptual framework (equitable aging), which centers justice and power in understanding and examining aging programs, services, and policies. This project involves qualitative data collection (e.g., focus groups, interviews, ethnographic documents, virtual ethnography), qualitative data analysis, and dissemination. For one...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Social Sciences

CareYaya: An Intergenerational Program Merging Caregiving and Technology

Angie Perone - Professor , Social Welfare

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

This project will provide opportunities for students with a strong foundation in quantitative research to help design a research project that collects survey data from CareYaya’s program participants. Students will also assist with survey data analysis and potentially dissemination. CareYaya is a technology-enabled caregiving platform that connects families who...

 Biological & Health Sciences   Social Sciences

Documenting implosive variation in Atchan and Nghlwa

Alexandra Pfiffner - Professor, Linguistics

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

Implosives are a type of consonant found in 13% of the world’s languages (Maddieson, 1984) and are particularly widespread throughout the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. However, they remain extremely understudied in phonetics. The goal of this project is to work through fieldwork recordings from Summer 2024 with speakers of...

Istanpolis: Reconstructing Greek Communities in 19th-20th century Istanbul

Christine Philliou - Professor, History

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

This is a collaborative research and Digital Humanities project I initiated in 2020 and our team includes scholars in Greece, Turkey, and several other countries. We are reading Ottoman Turkish and Greek sources about the population of Greek Orthodox in Istanbul and creating data sets, and then visualizations and interactive...

 Arts & Humanities   Digital Humanities and Data Science   Social Sciences

Development of Early Mathematics

Steven Piantadosi - Professor, Psychology

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

We are currently working on a series of studies that use behavioral methods to research mathematical development in children. These studies investigate: 1) the relationship between early mathematics and attention; and 2) the development of algorithmic reasoning in early mathematics. They are funded by the NSF’s Division of Research on...

 Education, Cognition & Psychology

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