Andre Lai

Characterizing the relationship between every cell type is necessary for understanding the human body and advancing human medicine. One major technological hurdle involves the ability to isolate, manipulate, and analyze individual cells in a high-throughput fashion. Existing methods are plagued by low cell capture efficiency and limited user control. For his project, Andre aims to design, fabricate, and test a novel microfluidic device that will address these limitations. He will achieve this by incorporating a multiplex design with layered architecture and integrated elastomeric valves to enable complete isolation, imaging, and […]

Caolan John

Since last decades discovery of graphene, scientists have searched for its magnetic cousin: a magnetic material that can be cleaved down to a single monolayer thickness. One relatively little-studied family of suitable materials is the transition metal selenophosphates, a class of layered, van der Waals-bonded semiconductor materials. Caolan aims to synthesize single crystals of two members of this family, FePSe3 and NiPSe3, in order to perform magnetization measurements in an effort to understand the role of selenium in determining the direction of magnetic ordering. These materials are exciting candidates for […]

Jasmine Jan

Current Bio: Jasmine is a first year MS/PhD at Berkeley in EECS. Haas Scholars Project: One focus of point-of-care devices is to improve accessibility of essential diagnostic tools by utilizing miniaturized, accurate and low-cost optical systems. Printed organic optoelectronics are one such technology that have the potential to improve the optical sensing schemes of these systems. Because organic optoelectronics are processed in solution, they can be easily scaled for large-area manufacturing and roll-to-roll processing, leading to low-production costs. Jasmine aims to design a point-of-care device utilizing printed optoelectronics for fluorescent […]

Sebastian Herics

Elven anti-air Nike Missile Sites ringed San Francisco in a line of atomic protection, poised for launch at Soviet bombers that never came from 1950 to 1974. Only Nike Missile site SF-88 has been preserved in a coat of fresh paint that crowds of the curious have toured since 1974 in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Sebastian Herics will be tracing the cultural memory of the Cold War by comparing Nike missile sites, both preserved and left to ruin, through the eyes of the military, the city of San […]

Ariadna González Aguilera

Ariadna’s research project will focus on the West Berkeley Shellmound, an ancient village site that was once situated on the San Francisco Bay shoreline in Berkeley, California. Her thesis is directed toward understanding how Native American societies interacted with their environment during the last 5000 years. Research will be conducted on animal remains from the shellmound, using curated materials excavated in the early and mid-twentieth century, to understand ancient fisheries and fishing practices. Archaeological analyses of fisheries can contribute to historical baseline data relevant for conservation biology, restoration ecology, and […]

Lissa Garcia

Lissa grew up in Chula Vista, California, where many are transfronterizos, students and workers who live in Mexico but commute to the U.S almost daily. Nancy Wonders advances the theory of border performativity where she argues borders are not only geographically constituted, but also socially constructed via the performance of various state actors in an elaborate dance with ordinary people who seek freedom of movement and identification. Thus, border performativity points to different technologies of control such as the social construction of the illegal and the securitisation of migration. Lissas […]

Rebecca Forbes

Current Bio: Since graduation, Rebecca has been working in Research Administration for the UC system. Through this job, she has been able to assist many UC professors and researchers in securing grants and contacts funding for a variety of research projects. Haas Scholars Project: Rebecca grew up in a small town and watched the rural drug scourge destroy the young lives in her community. Now, she is using her Berkeley education to understand this phenomenon. This summer she will be traveling to rural Tuolumne County, California to do ethnographic fieldwork […]

Dan Ferenc Segedin

In many materials, the application of an electric field leads to a separation of positive and negative charges, inducing a polarization in the material. In ferroelectrics, such a polarization exists in the material without the application of an external field. Analogously, the alignment of electron spins in ferromagnetic materials results in a magnetic polarization in the absence of an external magnetic field. Bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) is a rare material in which both of these states exist at room temperature and are coupled: applying an external electric field can switch the […]

Raúl Varela

In 1993 a wave of disappearances and murders of women living in the border city of Ciudad Jurez, Chihuahua, Mxico made news around the world. Twenty-five years later, thousands of these cases of innocent victims have not been resolved. Ral proposes to create an ethnographic documentary film as part of his Anthropology honors thesis and explore why its important for the mothers of the disappeared women to keep the memory and identity of their daughters alive. He will film in Ciudad Jurez in-depth interviews with activists, scholars, journalists, and most […]

Raven Deverux

Research suggests collective bargaining improves the unionized worker’s wages and working conditions, in addition to those of non-union status in the same field. Despite the organizing successes of San Francisco’s Lusty Lady, neither working conditions nor take home earnings for Bay Area strippers improved overall. How do these particular workers secure a better working environment and basic labor rights? This ethnographic study will utilize mixed-methods to analyze possibilities for collective action within this industry. Utilizing a comparative analysis of two cases labor organization, Raven will travel to New York to […]