Michael Papias

In 2017, more than 690,000 children spent time in foster care, and on any given day in the US, more than 443,000 children are in foster care. One-third of all foster youth are children of color, with 93,507 children identifying as Hispanic/Latinx. People identifying as Latinx are the fastest growing group in the child welfare system. Michael will be interviewing Latinx foster youth from across California, focusing on the cultural and family identities of each participant. Familia/family, culture, and ethnic identity are cornerstones of the Latinx community, so how do […]

Esperanza Padilla

Autism is typically understood as a disorder rather than an identity. However, the emergence of the autism self-advocacy movement and virtual spaces suggests that autism is more than a diagnosis for many individuals. Esperanza Padilla’s research seeks to delve beyond the medical models interpretation of autism to find out how autistic individuals develop their sense of self. Padilla’s research will utilize both survey data and in-depth interviews to gather information about autistic adults life experiences. She will then analyze her findings using the sociological framework of Symbolic Interactionism by Herbert […]

Metta Nicholson

Wetlands, known for their potential to sequester carbon dioxide, also contribute to a substantial proportion of global methane emissions. Currently, there is a large effort to restore wetlands in the Bay Area in order to create carbon sinks to help combat the effects of climate change. However, it is essential that wetland managers and restoration scientists understand what factors influence the release of methane from wetland soils, since the release of methane offsets the uptake of carbon dioxide in these ecosystems. To contribute to the refinement of these management practices, […]

Calvin Nguyen

The San Francisco cityscape is changing rapidly, with large influxes of residents, buildings, and communities. This change must be understood with more than soaring rents or other quantified data; it’s evident between Salesforce Transit Center and Embarcadero, banners advertising the East Cut and Yerba Buena, the trash that’s picked up and the trash left behind. Increasingly, San Franciscos neighborhoods have become spectacularly stratified stages of narrative-making, much like Disney’s lands distinct experiential worlds creating a storied landscape for themselves and the city. Through interviews, theoretical research, and fieldwork at these […]

Christopher McCarron

Soils derived from serpentine rock host a unique flora while being distributed throughout California in scattered outcrops. Their insularity makes them ideal for examining the evolution and divergence of species restricted to them, such as the leather oak (Quercus durata var. durata). Chris McCarron’s honors thesis will use reduced genome DNA sequencing for 310 samples from 31 separate populations throughout Q. duratas range. Results will determine the levels and depths of divergence among populations, spatial patterns of differentiation, their timing of isolation, and whether there was a single evolutionary event, […]

Do Khym

This research aims to examine the reasons why the Norris Colony in Americana, Brazil was the only surviving post-bellum Confederate exile colony, while all other Confederate colonies around the world failed. Through research in the archives of the city of Americana, especially its Immigration Museum, Do expects to find that small scale agriculture where settlers put in their own labor instead of slave labor, ease of transport, new technology in the form of steel plows, and the Confederados’ superior agricultural skills, were instrumental in securing the survival of the colony. […]

Zoe Hsiao

Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is one of eight pathogenic herpesviruses known to infect humans. HCMV can be asymptomatic in those with sufficient immune systems, but lead to serious or fatal disease in immunodeficient persons. Because current medications to treat HCMV have a poor safety profile and risk the potential to select for drug resistance, vaccine development remains a top priority. The goal of this project is to better understand how a component of the human immune system, complement Factor H (FH), responds to HCMV. Zoe will employ a yeast-two-hybrid screen using […]

Justin Dela Cruz

Kamayan, which in Tagalog means by hand, is the traditional, communal style of eating Filipino food without plates or utensils. Tusok-tusok, which translates into poke poke, are heavily-fried, Filipino street foods, usually cut into bite-sized pieces and eaten off wooden skewers and dipped in sweet and sour sauces. For Filipino immigrants, these traditional eating practices serve as sites of cultural nostalgia and recollections of a distant homeland. Utilizing ethnographies and interviews to study several Bay Area Filipino restaurants, Justin’s project explores the preservation of Filipino cultural cuisine practices through the […]

Saida Cornejo

Saida’s research explores how some undocumented migrants generate their income through entrepreneurship. Undocumented entrepreneurs are part of high barrier and low barrier industries, but their undocumented status leaves them vulnerable to policing and wage theft. Their vulnerability as migrants places them outside the traditional image of who an American entrepreneur represents which presents a set of challenges that otherwise goes unnoticed. Through qualitative interviews, Saida aims to reveal these challenges by examining how being viewed as illegal by law and society denies certain rights, privileges, and access to resources that […]

Janie Chen

During the prison boom of the 1990s, the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) prison population in the U.S. exploded by 250%. AAPIs were found to be one of the fastest-growing groups of incarcerated peoples nationwide, despite occupying a relatively small portion of the total prison population. The growing bodies of literature on reentry and Asian American studies have however failed to capture the complex experiences of the racial “Other” entangled in the carceral system. Therefore, Janie’s research asks, how do formerly incarcerated AAPIs experience reentry into their families and […]