Khashayar Nattagh

The goal of radiation cancer therapy is to deliver a lethal dose of radiation to a tumor while sparing the healthy tissue along the beam path. My project studies the phenomenon of gold nanoparticle radiosensitization: where gold nanoparticles are used to increase the damage that a certain dose of radiation has to a tumor without increasing the damage to the healthy cells. Specifically, I am trying to determine why gold nanoparticles increase the effects of radiation, a question that scientists are debating today. I am investigating this by using cutting […]

Tai Ng

Streptomyces is a large genus of actinobacteria well known for their secondary metabolism, producing a large array of antibacterial, antifungal, and antiparasitic drugs. The compound of interest in this project is physostigmine, produced by Streptomyces griseofuscus. Physostigmine is a tryptophan-derived alkaloid that reversibly inhibits acetylcholinestrase. It is a candidate drug for treating numerous neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, myasthenia gravis, glaucoma, and orthostatic hypotension. Studying the biosynthesis of physostigmine can provide insight into the biosynthesis of a large family of alkaloids with the unique pyrroloindole skeleton. Furthermore, understanding the […]

Jonathan Ho

A particularly notable obstacle to the adoption of robotics in the everyday household is the difficulty of teaching robots to execute new tasks in unforeseen environments–this is currently a task only approachable by those with plenty of time and technical expertise. I am working on a system that aims to make teaching robots as simple as providing human demonstrations. It will use ideas from artificial intelligence to enable robots to generalize demonstrations to new situations and learn from failures as they interact with the world. My work will focus on […]

Arya Nikjoo

Elevated accumulation of glycosaminoglycans in tumor microenvironments of many advanced cancers, including breast cancers, has been associated with poor patient prognosis. Our laboratory has long been developing in vitro physiologically-relevant culture models that provide epithelial cells with an in vivo-like microenvironment, which is optimal to bridge the gaps between epithelial monolayer cultures and animal models. We have also developed glycosaminoglycan-based probes for identifying invasive breast cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. My project characterizes uptake patterns of these probes into a panel of normal and malignant epithelial cell lines […]

Robert Gleichman

Currently, it is difficult for robots to manipulate deformable objects. This is because deformable object’s plethora of states make it is difficult for the robot to figure out what next action will get it closer to its goal. One solution to this problem is to use human demonstrations. The robot can currently tie knots when given a demonstration of a knot tying sequence. This is done by finding a transformation from the rope state at test time to the rope state at the beginning of a demonstration. This transformation is […]

Pedro Amaral

My research this summer focuses on object recognition for robotics. The goal is to have a robot be able to look at several objects and be able to not only identify each object, but also figure out how each is positioned. I will apply deep learning algorithms that have proven useful in other vision tasks to this problem.

Claire Parker

Pollination systems, particularly the coevolutionary forces between plants and pollinating insects, have proven vital to both natural and managed landscapes. My research will examine the assembly of pollinator communities in response to fire in backcountry settings of Yosemite National Park (YNP), through the dynamics of succession along a chronosequence since fire disturbance. Meadows created by fires in YNP, previously vegetated with native wildflowers and grasses, have been invaded by non-native cheat grass (Bromus tectorum). This invasion is thought to have substantial effect on the native California ground-nesting bee species that […]

Christopher Hansen

Dengue (DENV) is a mosquito-borne viral illness that is endemic to many areas around the world, including Central and South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, and affects approximately 300 million people per year. The current gold standard in vitro assay uses cell lines such as Vero or BHK that are not natural targets for DENV and lack several important co-receptors and FcRs that modulate DENV infections. My project will test cell lines that express the major co-receptors involved in DENV infection and will develop a new, robust, high-throughput in vitro […]

Jessica Chan

My primary work revolves around a eukaryotic pathway known as RNA interference (RNAi) where small RNA molecules regulate gene expression. As the main enzyme responsible for generating these small RNAs, Dicer measures and cleaves a diverse population of RNA molecules into mature fragments primed to control genes. The two main substrates are hairpin RNAswhich are cut into microRNAs (miRNAs)and long duplex RNAswhich are cut into small interfering RNAs (siRNAs). Although many studies have analyzed Dicers ability to cleave RNA, there are still many unanswered questions about how Dicer selects its […]

Gabrielle Ho

Different protein databases classify and organize proteins based on separate criteria. As a result, the organization and information available on these databases will often vary. By mapping the protein domains between different databases, I can analyze and add new, otherwise not apparent information. During the summer, I am augmenting the computational resources available on the Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database by mapping it to the Uniprot Gene Ontology Annotation Database (Uniprot-GOA) and the Pfam Database. Based on the results of mapping the Pfam database to SCOP, I can uncover […]