URAP

Dawn Song - Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

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

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to revolutionize the field of mathematics by automating theorem proving and assisting in complex mathematical research. This project explores the application of AI techniques to enhance automated reasoning and support mathematicians in their work. Areas of investigation include: - Automated Theorem Proving: Developing AI models that...

Carol Spencer - Staff Curator, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

We are taking new students for Prep Lab Assistant, Bone Numbering and Tag Tying, Bird, Herp, Fish and Mammal Curatorial Assistants. See descriptions below. At the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ), University of California, Berkeley, we offer many unique opportunities to participate in MVZ endeavors and learn about natural history...

Mahesh Srinivasan - Professor, Psychology

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

If you have any questions, email our lab manager, Nafia Rahaman, at lcdmanager@berkeley.edu. Make sure the subject title is "LCD Lab Spring 2026 Research Assistant Interest". The goal of this program is to provide a comprehensive, hands-on research experience to highly motivated students, while making valuable contributions to...

Mahesh Srinivasan - Professor, Psychology

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

If you have any questions, email our lab manager, Nafia Rahaman, at lcdmanager@berkeley.edu. Make sure the subject title is "LCD Lab Spring 2026 Research Assistant Interest". This project explores how Hindu and Muslim children in India develop religious concepts and beliefs. Our project is part of a larger international...

Mahesh Srinivasan - Professor, Psychology

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

During 2020-2021, families were often forced to change their daily routines and encountered newfound or exacerbated life stressors. We are interested in exploring whether these changes impacted parent-child conversations each day. This study researches parents’ and children’s daily routines during the COVID-19 pandemic through surveys that measure activities...

Mahesh Srinivasan - Professor, Psychology

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

Differences in academic achievement between high and low socioeconomic status (SES) children arise at a very early age. Understanding the factors that give rise to these differences is essential for understanding the intergenerational transmission of poverty. The East Bay Financial Needs Study (EBFNS) tests the idea that the psychological experience...

Sameer Srivastava - Professor, Business, Haas School

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

Professor Sameer Srivastava uses computational methods to: (1) unpack the complex interrelationships between group culture, individual cognition, and interpersonal networks; and (2) examine how they jointly relate to individual attainment and organizational performance. Professor Srivastava directs the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation and the Berkeley-Stanford Computational Culture...

Max Staller - Assistant Researcher, Center for Computational Biology

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

Coulter Counters are very accurate machines for measuring cell number and volume...

Max Staller - Assistant Researcher, Center for Computational Biology

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

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

Max Staller - Assistant Researcher, Center for Computational Biology

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

Our group has developed simple and highly predictive models for transcriptional activation domains. The goal of the project is to identify human activation domains enriched for patient mutations...

Max Staller - Assistant Researcher, Center for Computational Biology

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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: Current Term Now Closed     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...

Scott Straus - Professor, Political Science

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

How should scholars conceptualize contemporary African International Relations? In today’s increasingly multipolar world, many African states are dialing back relations with traditional partners—such as France—and engaging with a broader suite of states outside the region. While China has been increasingly active on the continent since the 1990s, several...

Carly Strouse - Professor, Public Health

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

The life course perspective has provided a grounding framework in Maternal and Child Health (MCH) public health research and practice, underscoring the cumulative impacts of social, economic, and environmental influences, alongside the significance of critical and sensitive developmental periods, such as infancy or early childhood. While this framework has transformed...

Virginia Sturm - Professor, Neurology

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

In the Clinical Affective Neuroscience (CAN) lab, we conduct research on the neurobiological basis of affective symptoms in neurodegenerative diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders. Our lab utilizes a variety of assessments (psychophysiology, facial coding, and self-reported experience) to quantify emotion and social functioning in real-world and laboratory settings. Our...

Jason Su - Associate Researcher, Public Health

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

The purpose of this proposed research is to investigate the impact of air pollution exposure on metabolic outcomes, specifically focusing on Type 2 diabetes patients in California. The study aims to address the existing gaps in the literature by conducting large population-based studies at the state level with high...

Jason Su - Associate Researcher, Public Health

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

The goal of this study is to build upon previous work by examining statewide air pollution exposure and life expectancy disparities across generations and within communities. The specific objectives of the research are as follows: 1. Conduct a systematic literature review, using peer-reviewed journal papers to identify effects of...

Jason Su - Associate Researcher, Public Health

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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...

Sandya Subramanian - Professor, Computational Precision Health

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

Our lab develops novel clinical-grade wearable sensors for at-home monitoring of chronic disease. We currently have or are in the process of developing new sensors for monitoring bladder muscle activity from the surface of the skin, which would be a groundbreaking advance for many diseases, including functional digestive...

Sandya Subramanian - Professor, Computational Precision Health

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

Our lab develops novel clinical-grade wearable sensors for at-home monitoring of chronic disease. These sensors capture multiple physiological signals from the surface of the skin, which would open the door to at-home personalized medicine for many diseases, including long COVID, chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, stroke recovery...

Sandya Subramanian - Professor, Computational Precision Health

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

Our lab works on developing new AI-based and statistical tools for analyzing various physiological time series. One of the most important among these is heartbeat dynamics, which is the beat-to-beat variation in electrical activity to the heart. We develop models that blend deep neural networks and traditional...

Sandya Subramanian - Professor, Computational Precision Health

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

Our lab proposes to model the autonomic nervous system - the system in the body that "keeps the lights on" so to speak - as a connected and dynamic network. To do this, we need to design metrics to summarize the state of the network succinctly so that we can track changes...

Weijie Sun - Staff Researcher, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

Flux Transfer Events (FTEs) are transient phenomena that occur at the boundary between the solar wind and a planet’s magnetosphere, where magnetic reconnection allows the exchange of magnetic flux, plasma and energy. Mercury’s magnetosphere is the smallest and most dynamic among the terrestrial planets, due to its proximity to the...

Jun Sunseri - Professor, Anthropology

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

The Picuris Pueblo Collaborative Field Program is a community-based archaeological and anthropological project between the University of Arizona, Columbia University, Southern Methodist University, and Picuris Pueblo in New Mexico near Taos. The project is seeking to map and record the outlying field structures surrounding the present-day Pueblo. Melanie...

Jun Sunseri - Professor, Anthropology

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

The Ghost Ranch rockshelter archaeology project is a community-based archaeological and anthropological project between the University of California and Ghost Ranch Museums in New Mexico near Abiquiu. The project is seeking to map and record the features in a 3000 year old rockshelter site for which out team is...

Madhumita Sushil - Professor, Medicine

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

Our lab focuses on the development and application of foundation models for improving diagnosis and prognostic assessment of brain tumors. Brain tumors are a complex pathology where neurosurgical interventions are critical. However, little is known about who these interventions benefit, whether complications can occur during the surgical procedures, and who...

Madhumita Sushil - Professor, Medicine

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

Rare diseases affect 1 in 10 people worldwide, but our understanding of these diseases remains very limited. Our team has developed a RAG pipeline to retrieve and embed clinical notes to enable searching for patients diagnosed with a given disease. This enables research in rare diseases to advance their understanding...

Eve Sweetser - Professor, Linguistics

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

It has long been known that co-speech gesture reveals aspects of on-line cognition which may not be revealed in speech itself. This project investigates the usage of gestures accompanying modals (e.g. CAN, MUST, MAY, SHOULD) and conditionals (IF-clauses), to see what understandings of modality and conditional relationships...

Eve Sweetser - Professor, Linguistics

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

During development, cells self-organize to form functioning tissues, organs, and entire organisms. This requires tightly regulated communication between cells and their environment, to ensure correct signal uptake, integration, and response. Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) is a major pathway by which cells take up extracellular cues and thus communicate with...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Cells integrate extracellular cues (biochemical or mechanical signals) in order to direct specific cellular and tissue wide responses. The correct functioning of organs depends on this communication between cells and their surrounding environment. However, our understanding of how external mechanical inputs, such as increased pressure, direct cell function in health...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Auditory and vestibular senses are classic and essential senses of the body. The inner ear’s development, or morphogenesis, is a complex and well-regulated process that is guided by cell communication or signaling pathways. When signaling pathways become dysregulated, it often leads to deformities and/or diseases. And in the...

Ian Swinburne - Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

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

Most life processes involve cells managing fluids. Our sense of hearing and balance depend on the tight regulation of inner ear fluid (endolymph) volume and pressure. Increased endolymph volume and pressure can lead to the development of deafness and balance disorders. Our previous work in zebrafish embryos has shown that...

Paul Szabo - Research Scientist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

Our Moon is continuously exposed to protons from the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere. Upon impact, these ions alter the Moon’s surface and contribute to the formation of water. Some of the protons end up scattered away as neutral hydrogen atoms. Instruments onboard NASA’s IBEX spacecraft have been able to...

Paul Szabo - Research Scientist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

The surface of Mercury is continuously exposed to ions from the solar wind and its own magnetosphere. Upon impact, these ions alter Mercury’s surface, cause surface erosion, and contribute to the formation of water. Mercury’s intrinsic global magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind plasma stream make this...

Michi Taga - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

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

Bacteria and other microbes are key players in critical processes such as recycling of Earth’s nutrients and protecting host organisms from disease. Most microbes exist in complex, multi-species communities (microbiomes) where nutrients produced by some species are used by others. The Taga lab studies corrinoids, cofactors in the vitamin...

Lee Tan - 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...

Timothy Tangherlini - Professor, Scandinavian

Status: Current Term Now Closed     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: Current Term Now Closed     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...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

Evolutionary transitions underlying phenotypic change are difficult to study because they often occur over millions of years. However, the fruit fly has a short generation time and a small genome that is well annotated and cheap to sequence. We used a large-scale experimental evolution approach to evolve toxin-sequestering...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

The Tarvin Lab studies how and why poison frogs don’t poison themselves. We aim to measure the effect of toxin consumption on frog health and chemical defenses through toxin feeding experiments paired with phenotypic assays (health monitoring, jumping challenges), chemical quantification (GCMS), and genomic assessment (RNA and DNA sequencing...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

Amphibians -- frogs, salamanders, and caecilians -- exhibit a stunning variety of chemical defenses, ranging from antimicrobial peptides to antipredator neurotoxins and biological glues. Amphibian glues are the least-studied of these defenses. Additionally, the methods used to measure amphibian stickiness are not standardized, with some researchers gluing together beer cans to...

Rebecca Tarvin - Professor , Integrative Biology, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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

Poison frogs are known for their diverse array of colors and color patterning. The Tarvin Lab studies the genetics and diversity of color in Epipedobates poison frogs from Ecuador. Currently we are generating whole-genome resequencing data for >400 individual frogs that vary in their color from brown to bright...

Rowland Taylor - Professor, Optometry

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

Our laboratory studies vocal communication in animals and would like to develop an automatic detecter and classifier for bird calls using advanced machine learning techniques...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

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

The apprentice(s) will prepare and analyze neural tissue to assist graduate students and staff scientists with ongoing projects. This will include slicing, mounting (on microscope slides), and imaging of brain tissue to verify where electrodes were placed during electrophysiological recordings, as well as other projects. Apprentice(s) will learn...

Frederic Theunissen - Professor, Psychology

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

Project Description: The zebra finch has a very rich vocal repertoire of communication calls that are used in distinct behavioral contexts: peer recognition and localization, mate interactions, offspring care, etc. We previously gathered a huge bank of these calls, classifying them along call-types, i.e. groups of calls used in...