Varun Raj

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 […]

Jay Ramsay

Obese individuals have significantly greater amount of damage in their DNA compared to lean individuals, however the consumption of blueberries has been shown to decrease that damage in obese. I will be trying to figure out the mechanism by which blueberries reduce the amount of DNA damage.

Cory Gerrity

In Compton telescopes with crossstrip germanium detectors, interactions on the detector strip borders where charge is split between strips result in significant signal loss that degrades spectral resolution. Thus, modeling this charge loss mechanism is essential for making corrections and maximizing the resolving power of the instrument. Yet despite this, the mechanism is not entirely understood. My project seeks to model charge collection and transport in the detectors of the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), a balloonborne gamma ray telescope operated out of the Space Sciences Laboratory. The research hopes […]

Ruiyao Gong

The Dazu Rock Carving is the only Buddhist cave site in China representing the development of Buddhist teachings during the Song dynasty (960- 1279). My research mainly investigates the Buddhist statues of Dazu site, with a special focus on Mahamayuri Vidyaraja, or the Great Peacock King at Baodingshan, Dazu. The Great Peacock King, a deity who can cure all evils in Esoteric Buddhism and who always rides on a peacock, is rarely depicted in other Buddhist caves. Dazu has three statues of him, however, at Baodingshan, Northern Mountain and Shimen […]

Ching-Hsiu Hsu

A basic question in neurobiology research is how neural circuits are wired up to perform computations. A classic example of neural computation is that which underlies the visual systems ability to detect the direction of moving object. Input to the retina is encoded by photoreceptors, which are point detectors of light and by themselves cannot determine the direction an object moves. However at the output of the retina, there is a class of neurons that signal robustly when object moves in one direction over any other. These direction-selective cells have […]

Mallika Lal

Antibiotic resistance in the Enterobacteriaceae family, which includes Gram-negative bacteria E. coli and Klebsiella, has become a serious public health problem. Many bacteria of this family produce extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs), which are enzymes that can degrade most beta-lactam antibiotics. Therefore, carbapenems, a type of beta-lactam drug, are increasingly the drugs of last resort for ESBL-producing bacteria. However, an enzyme called Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC) threatens to render carbapenems completely ineffective, leaving few choices for treatment in patients with infections caused by KPC-producing species. In fact, the CDC has designated carbapenem-resistant […]

Joy Hsu

Several lines of evidence support a role for Natural Killer (NK) cells in the immune response to tumors. We recently found that PD-1, a receptor capable of powerfully suppressing the functions of T cells, is expressed by NK cells. However, the cellular networks responsible for PD-1 expression on NK cells are not known. Here, we propose to study the contribution of Regulatory T cells (Tregs) in inducing PD-1 expression on NK cells, by using both an ex vivo and in vivo approach. The proposed research plan will provide important knowledge […]

Billal Ahmed

Natural Killer (NK) cells are an important part of the Innate Immune System, surveying the body to recognize and eliminate cells determined to be abnormal. NK Cells can be activated through ligands that bind to excitatory receptors on the cell. The most well-studied excitatory ligands have been the NKG2D family of ligands, which bind to NKG2D receptors on NK Cells. Im using MCMV, Mouse Cytomegalovirus, as a model to study NKG2D ligand regulation in cells infected by viruses. M18, a protein in MCMV, by itself is necessary and sufficient for […]

Eliel Anttila

A worldwide abundance of glacially deposited sediments in early Neoproterozoic strata suggests the onset of a great global cooling event that began approximately 720 million years ago. Sometimes referred to as the Snowball Earth Hypothesis, this period of massive climactic change resulted in the propagation of glaciers at very low latitudes, and potentially covered the entire surface of the planet with ice. Determining the geographical, climatological, and biological changes that happened prior to the onset of this event can allow us to better understand the processes that led to such […]

Travis Bartley

According to the 20th century theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, the distinguishing feature of the novel lies in its ability to incorporate multiple dialects and forms of language into itself and better mirror the diversity of language that naturally occurs in reality. In his argument for this theory, Bakhtin relies on a cultural analysis of the genres development and ignores the impact of technological innovation in media that may have crucially affected the development of the genre. My project seeks to analyze Bakhtins theory in relation to similar studies that incorporate the […]