URAP

Bryan Wagner - Professor, English

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

The Berkeley Folklore Program is partnering with Berkeley Art Museum to support an extraordinary exhibit, Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California (June 7, 2025 — November 30, 2025). The work for this URAP team involves supporting the museum's marketing and communications department in creating media to promote the...

Julia Walsh - Professor Emerita, Public Health

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

California’s climate policies are models for many other states and internationally. We will advocate and lobby and for important pending Climate legislation in the CA Assembly and Senate. We will assess pending climate policies for health impact and benefits. The first major bill is Make Polluters Pay CA Climate Superfund...

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

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

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

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

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

Particle detectors like the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are complex apparatuses whose language is made of data recorded in sub-detectors and sophisticated readout modules. Inspired by large language model's revolutions in natural language processing, this project ultimately aims to develop one or more language models at...

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

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

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

Haichen Wang - Professor, Physics

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

We are seeking enthusiastic students to help create engaging STEM education and outreach materials to communicate the exciting science of high-energy physics to the public. This project will involve a directed reading component, during which students will conduct a literature review and discuss the material with a mentor. Together...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

There are over 600 million Spanish speakers worldwide, yet Spanish-language mental health resources (like therapy content) remain limited. This project explores how generative AI can deliver culturally adapted cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in Spanish. Prof. Adrian Aguilera’s Digital Health Equity & Access Lab at UC Berkeley (part of the Computational Precision...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The UCSF TECH Lab (https://techlab.ucsf.edu/) led by Dr. Peter Washington at UCSF (DoC-IT, with appointments in the CPH and BMI PhD programs), in collaboration with the OSU Lifestyle Lab (https://u.osu.edu/lifestylelab/home/ and https://cancer.osu.edu/for-cancer-researchers/research/research-labs/lifestyle-lab), is looking for a...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

Come work with a collaboration between the the UCSF TECH Lab (PI: Peter Washington, PhD, UCSF) and the UCSF Bove Lab (PI: Riley Bove, MD, UCSF) to create computer vision-based digital diagnostics for neurological conditions through the Bove lab's BRAINWALK project, with direct mentorship on the clinical, scientific, and...

Peter Washington - Professor, UC San Francisco

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

The UCSF TECH Lab (https://techlab.ucsf.edu/) led by Dr. Peter Washington at UCSF (DoC-IT, with appointments in the CPH and BMI PhD programs) is looking for a student researcher working as a full-stack web developer (Django for backend, Tailwind for frontend) to contribute to build features on a...

Linda Waterfield - Head of Registration, Hearst Museum of Anthropology

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

The Hearst Museum of Anthropology, located in Anthropology & Art Practice Building, has educational offerings that combine the exciting work of Berkeley researchers with perspectives from community members, looking at how they relate to the cultures and objects represented in the collection. We encourage visitors to think deeply about questions of...

Linda Waterfield - Head of Registration, Hearst Museum of Anthropology

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

The Development Department at the Hearst Museum focuses on projects that support the larger goals of the Museum: marketing, fundraising, communications, and project development. Students will be involved in researching museum membership strategies and designing digital and print marketing materials. Students will also be tasked with creating and evaluating engaging...

Linda Waterfield - Head of Registration, Hearst Museum of Anthropology

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

The Registration division oversees and manages collection object documentation. URAP students will assist in the transformation of once hidden collections to fully accessible collections through: · Processing New Collections Acquisitions · Research and Cataloging of Existing Collections · Archives Inventory and Needs Assessment: Library and Publications · Archives Inventory and Finding Aid Creation: Research...

Ramon Weber - Professor , Architecture

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

The UN predicts a doubling of floor area until 2050, estimating a fantastic 230 billion square meters of buildings to be built in the next decades. Meanwhile, buildings should drastically lower their carbon emissions and energy use in order to avoid climate disasters. The project tackles this question with a...

Ramon Weber - Professor , Architecture

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

In this research we want to create new building prototypes for affordable and resilient homes in Mexico. The research project should address how, with a minimal budget, we can address challenges around safety and occupant health to create a blueprint for low-cost, low-carbon housing - aligning architectural design, with...

Martin White - Professor, Physics

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

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI, https://desi.lbl.gov) is making the world's largest 3D map of the universe. In this project you will help us develop web-based data access, visualization, and analysis tools for use by thousands of scientists worldwide...

Martin White - Professor, Physics

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

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey is measuring the expansion history of our universe with unprecedented precision. By measuring the light from tens of millions of extragalactic objects, the DESI team aims to understand the nature of dark energy and how it has shaped our universe. Critical to DESI’s...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Approximately fifty percent of all insect species are herbivorous and together with plants, comprise over half of all named species of life. To feed on a plant, an herbivore must evolve strategies to overcome the chemical defenses (toxins) that plants produce to protect themselves from herbivory. These toxins may inhibit...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

During the evolutionary transition from one feeding guild to another, such as microbe- to plant-feeding, it is hypothesized that behavioral adaptations are among the first to evolve. In insects, changes to the chemosensory systems that determine host preference are necessary, not only for finding an appropriate host, but in...

Noah Whiteman - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

Drosophila has been an excellent model system to uncover basic principles underlying innate immune responses. In fact, much of what we know about antimicrobial immune responses in humans was first discovered in flies! This URAP project will dive into the evolution of innate immunity in flies against two different immune...

David Whitney - Professor, Psychology

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

Attentive observers fail to notice otherwise obvious changes when the change takes place gradually, a phenomenon called slow change blindness. This striking inability to notice large changes raises questions about how perception is generated across time. One integration method that would plausibly lead to slow change blindness is a reliance...

David Whitney - Professor, Psychology

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

Previous work in the lab has shown that observers exhibit biases in their judgements of skin lesion malignancy, which depend on the previously shown lesion. For example, after viewing a benign lesion, observers tend to report that the current lesion is also benign if the two lesions are similar in...

David Whitney - Professor, Psychology

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

Accurately knowing the timing of different events happening around us is a crucial ability of all human beings. In natural scenes such as movies or everyday life, dynamic events could happen either in the left or right visual field. Given that information coming through our left visual field will be...

David Whitney - Professor, Psychology

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

The ability to quickly and accurately perceive emotion is essential in our daily lives. However, how does the brain process multiple sources of emotional information when making emotional judgments? The brain must take into consideration facial expression, tone of voice, body movement, contextual information, and even beliefs in its judgment...

Mary Wildermuth - Professor, Plant and Microbial Biology

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

Powdery mildew is an obligate biotrophic fungus that infects a broad variety of plants including plants of agronomic (e.g. grapevine) and ornamental (e.g. roses) import. It has lost many essential metabolic pathways and relies on the plant for these compounds. We are interested in figuring out the powdery mildew genes...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

Myopia or short-sightedness has become the focus of increasing concern as its prevalence steadily climbs. Figures of around 90% have been recorded for some Asian university student populations and a recent US-based study also reported a dramatic increase in the prevalence of myopia, especially among AfroAmericans. Myopia is...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

This research has a number of different aspects. One aspect involves collection of optical images of the back of the eye, using an advanced high resolution SD-OCT imagining machine. Initial work will involve images already collected. It will involves working with large amounts of data in excel, using smoothing...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

Myopia or short-sightedness has become the focus of increasing concern as its prevalence steadily climbs. Figures of around 90% have been recorded for some Asian university student populations and a recent US-based study also reported a dramatic increase in the prevalence of myopia, especially among AfroAmericans. Myopia is...

Christine Wildsoet - Professor, Optometry

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

There is increasing interest in the role of sunlight and light exposure in the development of myopia. In this project, we are using a wearable light sensor/activity monitor (Actiwatch), for human subjects. The sensor will record the intensity of light subjects are exposed to, and will allow us to...

Martha Wilfahrt - Professor, Political Science

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

How does the precolonial past influence contemporary African politics? This question animates a growing literature on precolonial legacies, yet this work has been hindered by imprecise and incomplete data on the nature of precolonial political organization. This project builds an original Atlas of Africa's precolonial polities in the 19th century...

Martha Wilfahrt - Professor, Political Science

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

The construction of the African colonial state saw extensive re-arranging of political space as European colonial powers sought to extend their control across newly claimed territories. In many cases, these subnational boundaries largely persist to the present, raising the question of how colonial visions of state-building influence contemporary...

Martha Wilfahrt - Professor, Political Science

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

In an era of democratic instability and electoral autocracy, understanding when and where viable opposition parties emerge is critical. This question is particularly pressing in sub-Saharan Africa, where opposition parties vary in their capacity to contest elections. This project seeks to a) develop a descriptive dataset of the region’s...

Michelle Wilkerson - Professor, Education

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

My research so far has focused on how teacher education programs incorporate justice and critical consciousness into K-12 computer science curricula. By investigating both their theoretical foundations and the lived experiences of CS pre-service teachers (PSTs), I have found significant variance in how these programs prepare educators to...

Caroline Williams - Professor, Integrative Biology

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

The Williams Lab in the Department of Integrative Biology studies the ecological and evolutionary physiology of insects, integrating from genes to physiology to ecology. We are recruiting a cohort of undergraduates to join our lab and take part in a rigorous training program to become an undergraduate researcher. A range...

Clancy Wilmott - Professor, Geography

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

This project is the production of the Botanic Gardens Signage Database, part of a wider collaboration with the UC Botanic Gardens at Berkeley on the use of signage and interpretive materials within the Crops of the World garden (and the gardens more broadly) from decolonial frameworks...

Clancy Wilmott - Professor, Geography

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

This project uses Digital Humanities / GIS / Cultural Analytics methods to digitize a series of 10 performance art pieces by fluxus artist Chieko Shiomi, spanning a decade...

Clancy Wilmott - Professor, Geography

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

General Description The breaking apart of the American state is as old as the concept of the United States itself. This project seeks to document the scale of state secessionist movements through time using primary and secondary sources. The broader context of this project is a study of the co...

Mark Wilson - Professor, Education

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

Critical Reasoning for College Readiness (CR4CR) is a project that seeks to develop psychometrically sound assessments that can be used by teachers in the classrooms at the high school and early college levels. Our goal is to develop, revise, and validate a suite of assessments, including unique assessment tasks and...

Carol Wilson - Research Botanist, University and Jepson Herbaria

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

Mistletoes are shrubby, aerial-branch parasites belonging to order Santalales. Most are hemiparasites that obtain water and mineral nutrients and a portion of their carbon from the xylem sap of their host plants. Although they can be forest pathogens, particularly to conifer tree species that are under stress from drought...

Carol Wilson - Research Botanist, University and Jepson Herbaria

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

Carol A. Wilson is conducting research that examines phylogeny, biogeography, endemism, and ecology of a lineage of Iris that mostly occur in a biodiversity hotspot (California Floristic Province). Iris comprise a highly diverse genus of perennials that provide significant food resources including nectar, pollen, arils, and underground structures, as well...

Ashley Wolf - Professor, Public Health

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

Bacteroidetes is one of the main bacterial groups of the human gut microbiome. Although several reference strains related to species such Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, Bacteroides fragilis and Phocaicola vulgatus have been investigated and even used as model organisms to understand the gut microbiome, strain level diversity is extensive and remains to...

Ashley Wolf - Professor, Public Health

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

The gut microbiome is a complex community of microbes that have unique enzymatic capabilities. Some gut bacteria metabolize sialic acids that are found in the diet and/or produced by host cells. We have identified putative genes that encode enzymes responsible for sialic acid metabolism. This project will use cloning...

Ashley Wolf - Professor, Public Health

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

Dietary ingredients can provide fuel to the gut microbiome and influence the abundance of particular bacterial species in the gut. During heating steps in food processing, Maillard reaction products (MRPs) are formed from non-enzymatic reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars. As one of the MRPs, ε-fructoselysine (FL...

Winnie Wong - Professor, Rhetoric

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

This is an ongoing historical research project on the visual culture produced by Chinese painters in Guangzhou, China, for European and American markets during the period of the Canton Trade (1700-1850). The project explores the intersection of art and science, art and plants, art and animals, and lesser known parts...

Winnie Wong - Professor, Rhetoric

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

A collaboration with the Asian Art Museum, this project researches the art and visual culture of Hong Kong, in its history and present...

Winnie Wong - Professor, Rhetoric

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

This project centers on the daily diary of a literatus in early modern Guangzhou, China. Through reading and translating the diary, we examine the everyday life of an urbane gentleman, his navigation of an early modern city and its social networks. We see the centrality of painting, poetry, music, and...

Winnie Wong - Professor, Rhetoric

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

Research on the modern and contemporary artists Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Banksy, Constantin Brancusi, Matthew Wong, Agnes Martin, and others...

Michael H. Wong - Research Scientist, Space Sciences Laboratory

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

We use imaging time-series data from space telescopes (Hubble and James Webb) to track the motion of cloud features and measure the two-dimensional wind fields in Jupiter and Saturn. The most prominent features in the wind velocity fields of these atmospheres are east-west jets and coherent vortices...

Fei Xu - Professor, Psychology

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

The Berkeley Early Learning Lab, under the direction of Professor Fei Xu, researches statistical/probabilistic inference, Bayesian reasoning, conceptual representation, belief revision, social cognition, compositionality, and language acquisition in infants and children aged 4 months to 10 years. Children participate in our studies at our lab in Berkeley Way West...

Fei Xu - Professor, Psychology

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

This projects explores the origins of referential communication by analyzing the properties of parent-infant and parent-child interactions and infants' sensitivity to parents & contingent responsiveness. We use a combination of methods, including video annotation of video-recorded parent-infant dyads, eyetracking experiments, and behavioral experiments. The age range for...