Laura Cho

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by repetitive behaviors, social communication deficits, and sensory processing difficulties. Highly heritable and male-biased, ASD is frequently comorbid with other psychiatric disorders, with 71% of ASD-affected children meeting criteria for a concurrent condition and 41% having 2 or more disorders. These attributes potentially implicate sex-interacting, heritable genetic variants in transdiagnostically manifesting psychiatric traits. I will investigate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with sex-differentiated effect size for ASD, and test for enrichment in association signal for 8 other psychiatric disorders, as compared to […]

Theodore Coffey

Small molecule drugs function by binding to a target protein in a binding pocket, inhibiting or changing the protein’s activity, thereby creating a therapeutic effect. Finding novel protein binders is challenging because many potential binding pockets remain uncharacterized. Probes with a covalent warhead have been used to find binding pockets since the probes can covalently bond to amino acid residues. Enantiomeric probe pairs have recently been used to identify stereoselective binding pockets which tend to be more therapeutically relevant. I hypothesize that asymmetric gold catalysis can be used to synthesize […]

Morgan Apolonio

Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 (Synechocystis) is a fast-growing unicellular photosynthetic microorganism comprising a potential cell factory for the generation of bioactive compounds, therapeutic proteins, and biofuels. Fusion constructs of recombinant proteins with the CpcB β-subunit of the light-harvesting phycocyanin in Synechocystis has enabled the over-expression of proteins of interest up to 10-20% of the total cellular protein. I will use human interferon α-2 protein (IFN), a human immunoprotein that protects cells from infection, as a case study of over-expression and downstream signal processing of IFN. One problem in the biosynthesis […]

Rachel Arakawa

The four dengue virus serotypes (DENV1-4) and Zika virus (ZIKV) are among the most prevalent mosquito-borne flaviviruses worldwide. These viruses pose major public health challenges across various regions of the globe, with DENV infecting up to 390 million individuals yearly and resulting in an estimated 96 million cases worldwide. Clinical manifestations range from asymptomatic infections to dengue fever (DF) and severe outcomes such as dengue hemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome (DHF/DSS), which can be fatal if untreated. Interestingly, we have found that a first ZIKV infection increases the risk of DHF/DSS […]

Nick Yunqi Zhang

Representing the world in abstraction, numbers are central to humans as they are constantly informing our judgments and decisions. Every day, we use numbers to symbol quantities, index objects, and apply all sorts of calculations to solve problems. The existing literature has long established the ability to mentally represent approximate numerosity as a core knowledge, an intuition that is supported by the Approximate Number System (Xu & Spelke, 2000). While past studies have identified some key behavioral and neural signatures of number processing (Odic & Starr, 2018), its neurocognitive development […]

Qiyue Zhao

The 1980s witnessed the rise of Women’s Studies in China as a critical response to previous female construction defined by ungendered socialist labor. Female corporeality became a charged field for allegory, anticipation, and criticism. This change projected onto the cinematic screen and brought new female figures beyond associations with the historically dominant socialist developmental propaganda. However, instead of receding into the background, such developmentalism enjoyed a neoliberal and capitalistic transformation. What complicated the screen was the entanglement between the heterogeneous representations of female liberation and an alternative force of neoliberal […]

Urmila Vudali

With over 39 million people living with HIV, it is one of the world’s foremost health challenges. While Antiretroviral Therapy has reduced HIV-related mortalities by suppressing viral replication, it fails to eradicate the virus, leaving a latent viral reservoir. Thus, identifying a marker of latently infected cells is the focus of many researchers. CD30, a transmembrane protein, is primarily found in tumor cells, such as Hodgkin and other lymphomas. It is found on a small percentage of healthy lymphocytes. However, the Henrich Lab has found enhanced CD30 in HIV infected […]

Yijin Wang

This project aims to enhance the performance of Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) in simulating fluid dynamics, specifically addressing the challenge of spectral bias which can skew simulation accuracy. Our approach involves developing adaptive training strategies that empower PINNs to more precisely model a diverse range of fluid behaviors, from steady, predictable patterns to dynamic, turbulent flows. By integrating principles from the neural tangent kernel theory, we are meticulously fine-tuning the training processes of these networks. This involves recalibrating how PINNs learn from data, focusing on a balanced assimilation of both […]

Ellen Wu

The field of space exploration has seen significant shifts from its beginnings in the Cold War “Space Race” between the United States and Soviet Union, to today’s NewSpace era of commercialization via startups and venture capital. These shifts in the industry have been accompanied by the development of sociotechnical imaginaries: collective visions of ideal futures that are based on a common view of social order, and support advancements in science and technology. Space is an industry ideal for the application of this concept due to heavy government involvement and its […]

Julia Wu

My project aims to investigate neural circuits in the mammalian midbrain brain that involve the crucial neurotransmitters dopamine (DA) and acetylcholine (ACh). These systems are renowned for facilitating learning and motivation and are implicated in various psychiatric disorders including addiction. The role of DA in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) in encoding reward value has long been a focus of research. The role of ACh is less well defined, though previous studies note pauses in ACh signaling during DA release. Recently, studies have indicated NAc subregional variability of DA and ACh […]