Jason Lam

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Organic Photovoltaic cells (OPV) are on the rise of changing modern technology. An advantage of photovoltaic cells is that it utilizes chemicals based on their properties that can harness energy from the suns radiation and provide a voltage. This green way of approaching power supply will help save Earths natural reservoirs and impede atmospheric pollution. However, standard organic photovoltaic cells (OPV) that uses P3HT and PCBM mixtures have only a power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to 4.5%. This inefficient percentage is what hampers OPV from excelling in todays technology. My […]

Stephanie Chang

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Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen responsible for a significant number of antibiotic resistant infections. It can infect almost any site of the body, but typically targets damaged epithelial tissues such as corneas of contact lens wearers, potentially leading to blindness. P. aeruginosa uses a Type 3 Secretion System, a needle-like structure, to introduce bacterial exotoxins into host cells which can cause cell death. P. aeruginosa has also been found to replicate intracellularly and occupy protrusions in the plasma membrane known as blebs. Previous studies from the Fleiszig lab have […]

Lynn Ly

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Gene duplication is a driving force in evolution – the genetic redundancy created by a gene duplication event can enable one gene copy to rapidly accumulate mutations and take on new functions, while the other copy performs the original function. Previous studies suggest that large-scale genome duplication closely preceded major evolutionary events such as the divergence of vertebrates, but the exact occurrences and evolutionary consequences of gene duplication have yet to be fully understood. The model moss Physcomitrella patens contains three homologs of the gene EMF2, which appear to have […]

Joseph Tang

There is a growing need for the development of a clean, sustainable energy supply from renewable sources. Among the many options currently under investigation, a promising route involves the conversion of plant-based biomass into biofuels. In order for this process to be viable at an industrial scale, one of the steps that must be optimized is the conversion of biomass-derived chemicals into products that can be used as additives to existing fuels such as gasoline or diesel. In particular, the optimization of the hydrodeoxygenation of intermediate platform molecules is crucial […]

Wesley Marin

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The amount of genomic information being gathered in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive (NCBI SRA) has been increasing exponentially over the past 8 years. Although the volume of genomic data being stored has recently reached the 2000 terabyte mark, methods for analyzing these data have struggled to keep pace, especially in the area of reinterpreting sequence for highly variable genomic regions. My honors thesis work will focus on development of new methods for immunogenetic data analysis, creating interoperable systems based on publicly available data. This summers project involves the integration […]

Melissa Markowitz

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The study of reproductive isolation, or the inability of two species to mate and produce fertile offspring, continues to be an area of groundbreaking evolutionary research. Both the mode of reproductive isolation (pre-zygotic or post-zygotic) and the genetic distances between species can tell us a great deal about when and how ancestral species diverged to form clades of distinct species. In order to uncover any patterns in pre-zygotic and post-zygotic isolation as species diverge, I will be studying the stage, timing, and sex-specific nature of reproductive isolation in Drosophila nasuta […]

Bao Nguyen

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Alternative splicing is a fundamental mechanism used by higher eukaryotic organisms to produce different outcomes from the same gene transcript through selection of variable splice sites. Alternative splicing gives plants the ability to modulate gene expressions in order to conserve energy resources and optimize interactions with their environment. There are many different plant-specific alternative splicing events and while they have been catalogued on a genome-wide scale, there remains little detailed knowledge about the specific, molecular mechanisms of these pathways. I am interested in studying a plant-specific alternative splicing pathway discovered […]

Lucine Oganesian

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Music is often considered a universal language, an important component of every culture. It is a complex natural stimulus, composed of a hierarchy of basic acoustic components. However, not much is known about how the human brain represents these components. This summer I will investigate the cortical representation of low-level acoustic features, such as pitch, tonality, and spectral (frequency) components. I will analyze functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and map computational models of music to brain activity to understand the hierarchical organization of basic acoustic features in the human […]

Prithvi Pande

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The undergraduate chemistry curricula at UC Berkeley has been undergoing a series of changes in the past years to update the experiments and increase their relevancy to students as they move on through their college careers. The main goals of this curriculum redesign are centered on creating experiments that give students an understanding and appreciation for green chemistry, and designing curricula that embodies authentic practice allowing students to experience science as it occurs outside the classroom setting and giving them insights into how research is realistically conducted. The project I […]

Varun Raj

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Neutrinos present some of the greatest mysteries within the Standard Model of Particle Physics. They are nearly massless and electrically neutral, making them very difficult to detect. That said, neutrinos have been observed to oscillate over time between their three flavors. The primary target of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has been to measure the exact value of the mixing angle 13, which describes this oscillation. The Experiment, which started taking data in 2011, is based in Southeast China. The eight detectors, situated in three experimental halls, analyze antineutrinos […]