Umair Khan

For his Senior Honors Thesis in Molecular & Cell Biology, Umair will investigate the effects of a protein co-factor on the interactions between RNase P ribozyme and a model mRNA substrate. His research will deepen our understanding of how the protein co-factor affects the sequence-specific ribozyme’s structure and activity as it cleaves an mRNA encoding thymidine kinase of herpes simplex virus 1. By revealing how the ribozyme interacts with the viral mRNA, Umair will provide insight into the engineering of sequence-specific ribozymes as antiviral therapeutic agents, with important applications for […]

Katherine Hijar

Current Bio: Katherine received her Ph.D. in History from The Johns Hopkins University in 2009. After 11 years as a history professor at California State San Marcos, she is now a curator at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. Her scholarly experitise is in U.S. social and cultural history, with emphasis on women, race, gender, urban history, and visual, print, and material culture. Haas Scholars Project: Katherine will travel to New York this summer to conduct archival research on visual and textual representations of women in the mid-nineteenth century. By […]

Leena Her

The purpose of Leena’s study is to identify factors which contribute to variation in the academic achievement of the Hmong, a relatively recent community of Asian American immigrants to California who first arrived in the mid-1970s as refugees from the Vietnam War. She will undertake a comparative ethnographic study of academically successful, college-bound Hmong students and students who are not academically successful at a high school in the Central Valley, where a large Hmong community has settled. Leena will be testing her hypothesis that, as descendants of refugees, Hmong share […]

Morgan Greene

Morgan’s project will seek to address the timely question of whether the current body of antitrust law is adequate to ensure consumer welfare in the new technology-driven economy. Through extensive historical research, he will study how courts have interpreted the original antitrust statute through the decades focusing on representative cases. He will explore continuities and trends in the areas of judicial interpretation, economic theory and technological change that may help illuminate the current historical moment. He will then undertake a case study of the Microsoft antitrust trial, through intensive study […]

Thomas Yuzvinsky

Which way does time flow? Could time really be flowing backwards, and our perception of time passing forward be purely a matter of perspective? Physical phenomena that are asymmetric under time reversal have shown that time must flow forwards, and the discovery of such phenomena in different environments opens the door for new experiments and a better understanding of the nature of the universe. By directly observing the intrinsic angular momentum of a high-quality sample of strontium ruthenate crystals, Tom intends to demonstrate time reversal symmetry breaking (T-violation) in a […]

Zachary David Gordon

Located at the nexus of linguistics, philosophy and literary studies, Zach’s Senior Honors Thesis in English will examine Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, specifically to illuminate the relationship between the theory of knowledge inherent in the novel’s syntax and the epistemological issues the novel thematizes. In order to understand Woolf’s syntactic use of “unoccupied perspectives” in the “Time Passes” section of the novel, Zach will be making use of a relatively unexploited linguistic approach to looking at philosophical issues in Woolf’s fiction. His project will not only deepen our understanding […]

Shirley Ye

Shirley will investigate how early female movie fans interacted with film celebrities between the years 1910 and 1940, the formative years of film practice in Hollywood. Traveling to New York and Los Angeles this summer, Shirley will examine early fan letters, publications and other artifacts housed at archives, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Although feminist scholars have given much attention to the theoretical aspects of female spectatorship, fan interaction with celebrity culture has too often been overlooked. At the intersection […]

Rachel Faye Giraudo

This summer, Rachel will travel to Matobo National Park in Zimbabwe to conduct a community-based study of rock art sites, dating from approximately 9,000 years ago when San hunter-gatherers painted images on rock shelters. Her goal is to develop a collaborative interpretation of the sites, through empirical research and qualitative interviews with local inhabitants, including Shona, Ndebele and white Zimbabweans. With the official endorsement and support of the museum that administers the sites, she will be well positioned to deepen our understanding of the effects of tourism and archaeological study […]

Leila Yavari

Leila will travel to Iran this summer to research Iranian theater, in order to assess the extent to which live theatrical performances offer a location for the subversion of censorship laws–and with what repercussions. She will be investigating censorship guidelines, analyzing scripts, observing performances, attending theater classes at the University of Azad, and interviewing students, directors, actors and playwrights. Leila’s project is a particularly timely one, because of the new movement toward political reform in Iran and the resulting opening of academic exchange opportunities with the United States. Her research, […]

Krisa Fredrickson

Krisa will travel this summer to Japan and Laos in order to explore the complex relationship between aesthetic and environmental practices through a case study of aloeswood, a highly valued ingredient in many Japanese incenses that is harvested in Southeast Asia. She plans to produce an ethnography of the incense culture of Japan and to explore the environmental impact of harvesting practices by the Lao suppliers of the raw material used by traditional incense arts practitioners. Krisa’s research will serve as her Honors Thesis for her self-designed Individual Major in […]