Lauren Holland
The California pitcher plant (Darlingtonia californica) is a carnivorous species, endemic to Northern California and Southern Oregon, that commonly displays necrotic lesions on otherwise healthy pitchers. Through a mix of microscopy, culturing, and DNA sequencing, I’ve collected multiple lines of evidence suggesting that a fungus in the genus Sphaerulina is the causal agent of these symptoms. I’ve also found Sphaerulina in healthy, green plant tissue, suggesting it can exist in an asymptomatic, endophytic manner. While I aim to publish a description of this novel species, this project also seeks to […]
Kyle Park
Natural phenomena and anthropogenic activities continue to drive unprecedented changes in our climate, with one of the many being increasing upward pressure on global fire activity and risk. As a Southern Californian, I experienced firsthand the devastation caused by the Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires of January 2025, two of the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history sparked by record-breaking conditions. Addressing the root cause of climate change and escalating wildfire risk – anthropogenic carbon emissions – requires proactive reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide. One promising solution is wood […]
Kian Naini
During the course of embryonic development, a single cell divides into a cluster of cells. These clusters form structures, segments, tissues, and organs in developed organisms. To probe the driver of this process, we turn to genetic signaling during the early embryo. Gene regulatory networks during development relay spatial and temporal information, forming patterns that shape the adult organism. This project aims to predict pattern formation and model single-cell dynamics along the central dogma using embryos in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, establishing a quantitative, model-based understanding of embryonic development. […]
Katie Cheng
Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR) are found to regulate sleep in worms, drosophila, and, most recently, a cnidarian. Based on past studies, it appears that nAChRs may have redundant or highly specialized functions in mammals, which prompted me to investigate the conservation of nAChRs in sleep regulation. CHRNA7 is a gene that forms the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor subunit nAChRα7, and is possibly linked with memory and neurodegenerative diseases, both associated with sleep. Since humans and Xenopus laevis frogs share homologous brain structures, and X. laevis marks an important step in vertebrate […]
Kaelyn Miller
Chronic sleep deprivation is known to disrupt brain function, but the specific ways it affects wake-promoting neurons are still being uncovered. My project investigates how losing sleep changes the expression of key enzymes and transporters involved in producing and recycling important brain chemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, and acetylcholine. Preliminary results show that sleep deprivation reduces proteins needed for neurotransmitter production, which could be part of the brain’s natural way of protecting itself by pushing for sleep. This summer, I will examine how the amount of time spent awake affects […]
Justin Angert
Vision loss from retinal degeneration, including disorders like retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration, affects millions worldwide, yet the full extent of neural mechanisms remains poorly defined. While much research has focused on photoreceptor death, growing evidence suggests that surviving retinal neurons and their downstream synaptic targets in the brain are also profoundly impacted. In the Kramer lab, we have found that degeneration not only disrupts retinal circuitry but also impairs neural activity in brain regions that depend on visual input. My research will investigate how retinal signals propagate through […]
Joseph Song
Pyridine-boryl radicals have emerged as efficient catalysts for cycloaddition and coupling reactions relevant in pharmaceutical synthesis. Unlike conventional organometallic systems, pyridine-boryl radical catalysts are metal-free, cost-effective, and completely atom economical. Despite this synthetic utility, the reactivity governing pyridine-boryl radical catalysis is poorly understood. This project aims to not only provide a mechanistic understanding of these reactions, but also establish intuitive catalyst design principles that can be readily employed to optimize known transformations or develop new ones. A data science-guided approach is therefore used to investigate the impact of catalyst structure […]
Jonathan Loy
Nuclear fusion is sought after as a solution to our energy crisis and a combatant against climate change. Many challenges exist to creating viable fusion energy, including a lack of understanding of the various parameters of the plasma required to achieve fusion. One particular concern for Inertial Confinement Fusion is the expansion of plasmas created by lasers interacting with the walls of the shell containing the fuel. Thomson Scattering, elastic scattering of electromagnetic radiation by charged particles, gives us the ability to measure important properties of plasmas, including velocity and […]
Jenny Chen
My proposed research project will investigate thorium-doped calcium fluoride crystals through spectroscopy and other means in hopes of increasing the utility of thorium in the context of nuclear clocks and using it as a probe for fundamental physics. Unique to Th-229, due to miraculous circumstances, it has a nuclear transition at only 8.3eV compared to typical values of ~1MeV, motivating physicists to try to find and excite it with a tabletop UV laser. A controllable nuclear transition would be helpful in making atomic clocks, the world’s best timekeeping devices, more […]
Janell Wang
The neural crest is a collection of multipotent stem cells that give rise to diverse cell types such as cartilage, bone, connective tissue, and neurons. These cells are extremely important for proper development. Many birth defects, such as congenital heart defects, which affect 1 in 110 live births in the United States, result from errors in the neural crest. A critical regulator of neural crest development is the BMP signaling pathway, which controls all aspects of neural crest development, from formation to differentiation. My project focuses on Noggin, an antagonist […]