Eba Kim

In a recent groundbreaking paper by Bartal et al., Science 2011, entitled Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats, researchers discovered that when one rat of a pair of cage mates was placed in a restrainer while the other rat was free, the free rat learned to emancipate the restrained rat. This helping or empathic behavior persisted even in the absence of potential contact with the newly freed rat, which proved that the free rat engaged in this behavior for the sole purpose of liberating the trapped rat instead of expecting […]

Jonathan Kim

This summer I will be working in Ken Goldberg’s Automation Lab on a project in surgical robotics. Currently most surgical robotics systems are not “true robots”; rather, the actuator components of the systems mirror the motions of a human surgeon operator. I will be conducting research into the possibility of increasing the autonomy of such surgical robotic systems. I will be working on the Raven surgical robot system to integrate a vision component to the overall system. After this first step I will then be conducting research into what is […]

Louis Lau

I aim to study the role of antibody avidity in the immune response to dengue virus (DENV) infection, and antibody-dependent enhancement as a result of low DENV-specific neutralizing activity, which is thought to influence progression to more severe disease in secondary heterotypic DENV infectionproblematic natural infections in hyperendemic areas. Despite the great burden of dengue disease worldwide, no antiviral therapy or vaccine is commercially available, although several vaccines are currently being tested in clinical trials. The first proof-of-concept dengue live attenuated vaccine efficacy trial that were recently published by Sanofi […]

Mark Mullan

Water injection into oil reservoirs is a commonplace practice used to increase oil production beyond primary yields. Seawater is most commonly used, which creates conditions conducive to the activity of sulfate-reducing microorganisms (SRM) within the reservoir. Once established, SRM can generate immense quantities of hydrogen sulfide as a metabolic byproduct, resulting in various oil recovery problems including oil reservoir souring, crude oil contamination, and metal corrosion that later leads to oil pipeline explosions. Overall, microbial hydrogen sulfide production poses numerous environmental and public health issues, and represents a multimillion dollar […]

Robert Potter

Mycobacterium tuberculosis manipulates the host response to prevent bactericidal mechanisms and promote its own survival. AKT is one enzyme that has been linked to proliferation of M. tuberculosis within its target. As a serine/threonine protein kinase, AKT is an important enzyme in signal transduction pathways for apoptosis. Inhibition of AKT during infection leads to increase bacterial death. By looking at the downstream effects of the AKT pathway, our goal is to determine, why? This will be accomplished by using site directed mutagenesis to create multiple alterations to the structure of […]

Henry Pham

Recorded in literature, it has been observed that mud banks can dampen overpassing waves, absorbing the energy stored in the waves. In the Theoretical and Applied Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, team members have built an artificial seabed carpet coupled with dampers and springs acting vertically at various locations on the carpet to mimic the effect of a muddy seafloor. I will be investigating methods to optimize the parameters of the carpet which include designing a power take off system, spring stiffness and damping coefficient of the carpet as well as many […]

Gregory Phillips

As nascent proteins are synthesized, specific polypeptide sequences can interact with the ribosome exit tunnel to arrest translation, effectively stalling the ribosome. Importantly, stalling is sometimes dependent on small molecules raising the possibility that drugs may be designed to inhibit the synthesis of specific proteins implicated in disease. My research aims to explore the question of how both the amino acid sequence of a nascent polypeptide and the presence of a small molecule interact with the ribosome to arrest elongation. Specifically, the Arginine Attenuator Peptide elicits elongation arrest in the […]

Ryan Rezvani

G-Protein coupled receptors (GPCRs for short) are a class of membrane proteins that bind to a specific chemical stimulus, an interaction which then initiates a cellular response pathway. Such a mechanism is present in most eukaryotic organisms, where it governs over processes like olfactory responses, neurochemical signal reception from chemical compounds, or the systematic release of hormones. The manipulation of GPCR-mediated pathways can allow for novel cellular responses to a ligand of choice, a phenomenon that can be expanded to the scale of a whole nervous system if implemented uniformly […]

Joshua Saul

Many organisms have the potential to regenerate damaged tissues; however, this potential decreases as the organism ages. Using the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, I will perform a screen to identify genes that are involved in up-regulating or down-regulating regeneration in damaged tissues as the organism ages. To conduct this screen, we have developed a new genetic ablation system that allows us to damage wing tissue in the developing fly at precise timings, as well as to express or knockdown any gene of interest in the damaged tissue. By scoring the […]

Camillia Azimi

In the Raulet lab, we are interested in studying the ability of a subset of innate lymphocytes called Natural Killer (NK) cells to respond to stimulation (responsiveness). NK cell responsiveness mainly depends on their ability to engage with a family of proteins called Major Histocompatability Complex Class I (MHC-I) molecules commonly expressed throughout the body. However, whether a particular cell type is responsible for setting the levels of NK cell responsiveness is still outstanding. During the summer, I will develop part of a bigger project aimed in identifying the cellular […]