Phoebe Gross
Habitat diversity in a watershed can support diverse biological communities, as well as promote diverse traits and behaviors within a population. This project will investigate if juvenile coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) alter their foraging behavior in different stream habitats, using underwater video footage. This work will be part of a larger study that aims to understand whether diverse physical habitats within Lagunitas Creek, Marin County give rise to trait diversity within an endangered coho salmon population.
Michelle Lee
If a nuclear weapon exploded in an urban environment, the effects would be catastrophic. Governments would want to quickly know what type of weapon it was, where it came from and who made it. One effect of the explosion is that it would expose many materials to large numbers of neutrons producing a variety of radioactive isotopes. When these isotopes decay, they produce characteristic gamma rays that allow them to be uniquely identified. My project will identify the radioactive species produced by neutron interactions with a wide variety of materials […]
Romeo Connors
According to the Pell Institute, in 2012, only 25% of first-generation students attended four-year institutions. For my research project, I want to examine why this rate is so low. The existing literature focuses primarily on barriers to first-generation students once they attend college. Consequently, I want to examine barriers first generation students face when choosing to attend college in the first place. My research question for this project is: what factors dissuade first-generation students from transitioning from high school to four-year universities and how can high schools support these students […]
Jesse Clements
New technologies such as police body cameras and deepfake algorithms have recently put questions of photographys value as evidence in the spotlight. However, photographic technologies have been part of the courtroom since the mid-nineteenth century. This project turns to the emergence of photography and cinema as evidentiary tools in the courtroom in an attempt to uncover the preconditions of our current moment of mediated justice. I will assist my graduate student mentor in advancing the larger project by constructing a newspaper archive for significant early court cases involving moving-image evidence, […]
Samba Kane
My research concerns the cultural identity of the Fula people in Mauritania and Senegal, West Africa. What does it mean to be Fula in this particular region of the world? To answer this question, I will explore two volumes of poetry, written in the Fula language by Ibrahima Moctar Sarr, a Mauritanian journalist by formation who became a civil rights leader and an advocate for the preservation of the Fula language. We have much to learn from the Fula history and culture. The Fula are rarely the dominant group in […]
Meera Aravinth
Electromagnetism is a fundamental physical phenomenon, but there is still much to learn about how and why it takes shape in solids, where the interactions between many atoms can create unique and unexpected magnetic and electronic features. This summer, my SURF project will be an investigation of magnetism in FexWSe2. WSe2 is a transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD), which are often layered, quasi-2D materials which are being studied widely due to their promise in revealing foundational aspects of physics in low-dimensional systems. Intercalating a TMD with a transition metal such as […]
Aimee Cortez
The soil microbial community is rich with bacteria that provide an abundant source of medically valuable natural antibiotics and pharmaceuticals. In particular, Streptomyces padanus possesses antimicrobial activity and produces actinomycin D, an antibiotic with antitumor properties. However, there is a lack of understanding in the field regarding the ecology of antibiotic production in S. padanus — specifically how antibiotic products contribute to antimicrobial activity during microbial interactions. Preliminary data suggests that activity of actinomycin D inhibits growth of the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae during interspecies interactions. In my research, I will […]
Zoe Adams
It has been shown that tumors are not simply genetically homogeneous collections of cells, but rather growths of evolving, genetically diverse populations that typically arise from a single mutant cell. As this mutant cell proliferates, its daughter cells naturally pick up more mutations due to a variety of factors, creating genetic heterogeneity. More and more studies have been published analyzing the possible interactions of these varied populations, ultimately suggesting that there may be cooperation that influences tumor growth. My lab at UCSF has developed a system using a 4-color confetti […]
Shaunak Modak
Observations have demonstrated that almost all large galaxies contain a supermassive black hole in their centers. Although supermassive black holes constitute only a small fraction of their host galaxys total mass, their mass correlates strongly with features of their host including morphology and galactic structure, so they have long been objects of interest for astrophysicists. The mass of a supermassive black hole can be estimated through studying stellar orbits within the galaxy. However, especially in the most massive elliptical galaxies, these dynamics can be extremely challenging to model. One promising […]
Kamila Kaminska-Palarczyk
My research examines the tensions between Geoffrey Chaucers canon and modern scholarships dismissive treatment of the Legend of Good Women (the LGW). My research will uncover the historical and cultural forces causing this minor poem to be overshadowed by the infamous Canterbury Tales, a foundational text in every undergraduate English department. Through a codicological approach (study of the book as literary artifact), I will revisit the original early modern print anthologies that first consolidated Chaucers literary authority in the emergence of print culture. The primary anthologies of Thynne, Speght, and […]