Ori Adam Skloot

Ori’s project unites his interest in business with his strong commitment to environmental sustainability. Specifically, he will be focusing on the emerging recycling industry in Israel. Israel presents a particularly interesting case study, because it is a country in which industrialization and expansion continue to progress with only minimal consideration given to their environmental impact, despite generally high educational levels among its citizens/consumers. Ori will begin by studying the organizational structure, government involvement and history of Berkeley’s local recycling system in order to gain a better understanding of the factors […]

Tamarind A. Rossetti-Johnson

Tamarind will create an experiential multimedia performance piece that involves viewers in exploring processes and representations of communication. Live performers will interact with video documentation, photographs and drawings of visual symbols of technological communication, such as satellite dishes, telephone wires and television antennae. In order to add a global dimension to her performance piece, Tamarind will be traveling to Mexico this summer, where she will be researching, collecting and documenting images and interviewing people in Mexico City and Oaxaca City, focusing particularly on the traditional dances of Oaxaca performed during […]

Jeri Lynn Parrent

Through a combination of field-work and laboratory research, Jeri’s project promises to make an important contribution to our understanding of-and our efforts to preserve-the planet’s extraordinarily rich biological diversity. This summer, Jeri will travel to Panama to collect samples of Phellinus swieteniae, a fungal pathogen of black mangroves from six spatially isolated mangrove forests located on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. While in Panama, Jeri will also have the opportunity to visit the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), one of the leading tropical ecology research institutes in the world, and […]

Lillian Park

Current Bio: Lillian is proud to be part of the original cohort of the Haas Scholars Program. She completed her Ph.D in Psychology at UC Berkeley with Dr. John Kihlstrom, her Haas Scholar mentor, in 2005. Then she did a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, ON. In 2008, she moved to New York to become a professor of psychology at SUNY Old Westbury, where she is now the Chair of the department. Lillian and her husband are expecting their first child in […]

Shahram Misaghi

The goal of Shahram’s Senior Honors Thesis in Molecular and Cell Biology is to obtain a detailed picture of the structure of a novel protein, called Acr A, that has recently been discovered to play an essential role in bacterial resistance to certain antibiotics. Using the technique of protein crystallography, Shahram plans to purify large amounts of Acr A protein from bacteria, crystallize the protein, and then study the chemical structure of this protein. His intention is to identify potential weak points that can be attacked by additional drugs, disabling […]

Kwa Yu Liou

Kwa’s Senior Honors Thesis in Molecular and Cell Biology will investigate the RNase P ribozyme, which is one of many RNA enzymes being developed as promising gene-targeting reagents to cleave specific RNA sequences. Kwa’s research will establish a kinetic framework to analyze the catalytic mechanism of RNase P ribozyme to cleave a viral mRNA. By determining the ribozyme’s catalytic efficiency, he will provide insight into the engineering of RNase P for antiviral application, with potential therapeutic use in inactivating specific mRNA sequences of infectious viruses such as Herpes Simplex Virus […]

Maurilio Arreola Leon

A joint McNair-Haas Scholar, Maurilio will continue his research into the influence of the Latino Caucus within the California State Legislature, in order to determine its effectiveness in addressing issues that impact the constituencies of its members. Founded in 1973, the Caucus has grown from five members to sixteen members, tripling in size in twenty-five years. With the recent election of the second Latino Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, Latino political leadership has continued to grow. Maurilio’s timely study promises to provide crucial information and analysis about an increasingly important arena […]

Sean Poi Lee

Sean’s project addresses two major questions in biochemistry: what is the nature of antibody catalysis, and what is the nature of transiently formed refolding intermediates. He is investigating whether antibodies that have been shown to catalyze conventional chemical reactions can be made specifically to catalyze a protein folding reaction. His project is based on the hypothesis that antibodies can recognize, bind, and stabilize high-energy intermediates of the refolding process, thus accelerating the rate of refolding.

Malihe S. Kigasari

Mali will investigate how Latino seniors at an inner city high school in Oakland make decisions about applying to prestigious institutions of higher education such as the University of California at Berkeley. Mali’s project has evolved out of previous fieldwork, in which she uncovered unexpected data suggesting a pattern she terms “self-elimination”: Latino students who were qualified to apply to academically stronger institutions, nevertheless elected to apply to community colleges. In this follow-up study, Mali will use qualitative, “new ethnographic” research methods to gain insight into her student informants’ beliefs, […]

Kabrina Kau

Kabrina will undertake a field-study of the indigenous people of Taiwan, who were colonized by Han immigrants from mainland China in the late-seventeenth century, focusing specifically on their attitudes toward education. Using surveys and interviews with several targeted youth and adult populations in the city of Taitung, she will attempt to ascertain the factors that have impeded this minority group from using education as a means of improving their socio-economic status. She intends her research to provide information that will aid in the development of a new aboriginal education assistance […]