Joseph Kim
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 […]
Jiahong (Benjamin) Zhang
Epilepsy currently afflicts more than 50 million people worldwide. While anti-epileptic drugs are effective at treating 70% of this population, the rest have to resort to invasive surgeries to alleviate their seizures. The electrical interactions of neurons in the brain are described by a set of stochastic partial differential equations. Seizures can be thought of as electrical waves propagating on the brain. In this project, I intend to manipulate the mathematical model to develop a new noninvasive way to control seizures in conjunction with a concept from physics called localization. […]
Jashdeep Dhoot
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 […]
Nicholas Zobrist
Microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) are an emerging technology in the field of radiation detection and have broad applications in physics, including understanding star formation as well as directly detecting dark matter. MKIDs are particularly useful for their ability to be combined easily into the arrays of hundreds to thousands of sensors needed for these experiments. However, MKIDs have not reached the fundamental energy resolutions provided by other incumbent detector technologies like transition edge sensors or micro-calorimeters. We have proposed a design, which should increase the performance of these detectors, […]
Victoria Bertics
Nicole Goldberg-Boltz
We are frequently required to halt or alter ongoing actions when an unexpected event is presented. For example, when we start crossing the street and we see an unanticipated car, we have to suddenly halt. In neuroscience, this sudden suppression of movement is referred to as response-inhibition. Response-inhibition deficits have been linked to disorders such as ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and substance use disorders. However, the exact neural pathways engaged in response inhibition are undefined, which I am interested in uncovering. For my project, I will focus on three proposed areas […]
Zhengzheng Hu
The Game of Chomp (also called Northeast) is a two-player game on a rectangular chocolate bar consisting of m-by-n squares. Players take turns eating chocolate squares on the board. If a player eats a square, they must eat all squares lying above (north) and to the right (east) of that piece. Whichever player eats the lowest left corner chocolate square (poisoned) loses (Gale). For my project, I am trying to apply Sprague-Grundy value from Game Theory and Young diagrams from Algebra to characterize winning strategies for Chomp or provide evidence […]