Rachel Li

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide and is one of the most common conditions for those over the age of 60. For this project, we aim to identify genetic modifiers that cause nuclear cataract formation in mice. We are also trying to understand the molecular mechanisms that are responsible for cataracts in hope of developing ways to treat it.

Zahra Ansari

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer related deaths in the U.S., and one of the more common types of cancer experienced by South Asians. CRC incidence rate is rising for South Asians, however screening rates in South Asians remain relatively low. For the past two years, my research group and I have been organizing numerous health outreach events to disseminate information about the importance of colorectal cancer screenings in South Asian populations. This summer, I will be working to finalize a manuscript evaluating the accessibility and […]

Molly Kraus

The European Migrant Crisis, as it has been popularly entitled, left millions of refugees from Syria to Afghanistan floundering for accurate information on the legal infrastructure of immigration in Europe. As a research apprentice for Berkeley School of Law, I have been able to study the digital proliferation of refugee rumors on sites such as Facebook and News that Moves to evaluate how this digital infrastructure has reshaped the informational and legal narratives of refugee communities. I also help analyze data from UNHCR on the conditions of Greek refugee camps, […]

Ben Kopania

The purpose of this project is to examine the effects of species assemblages and forest structure versus geomorphological setting on ecosystem carbon stocks in the mangroves of the Americas. This summer I will work on building statistical models that will help us understand these relationships between different forest characteristics and carbon stocks. By comparing these models to similar models for mangroves in other parts of the world, we will gain valuable insight into how ecological processes vary between mangroves from different global regions.

Dayna Stout

The research project focuses on social, economic, and political changes that have contributed to the racial differences in marijuana use of adolescents during the past few decades. We are analyzing historical trends based off various nationally conducted surveys on adolescents marijuana use. With use of these surveys, and previous research, we are attempting to understand the underlying factors that contribute to the historical shift in marijuana use between African-American, Hispanic and White adolescents.

Umar Maniku

My research has me examining discrepancies or large differences in reported security institutions troop numbers for different countries from year-to-year – whether there are problems with the coding or if they were caused by events occurring in that nation for that year. By cross-checking different published reports, military expenditure data, and news sources, a thorough picture can be drawn of the events occurring within a nation over a number of years. This is all part of ensuring the database of troop numbers that the research project is currently preparing is […]

Andrew Zhang

This project involves developing a serverless distributed machine learning framework to lower datacenter costs and achieve better utilization of resources. The idea is computers sometimes have unused computing resources that cannot be used up by conventional tasks, such as VMs, but these unused resources can be used by special serverless tasks, and we intend to write a framework for machine learning that takes advantage of serverless computing. This summer I will work on a python interface and a deep learning model existing Cirrus code.

Maria Sandoval-Navas

My research focuses on Colorectal cancer screening in a Latinx church community. Colorectal cancer is a leading cause of death in the United States and the rates of screening for Latinxs are low. Thus, we are targeting this population, in order to address these two problems. I will be working along side Vicky Gomez, who has been working with this community for years. We have recruited members of the church who have either experienced or had someone close to them experience a battler or loss due to colorectal cancer. These […]

Daniel Sun

I will work on examining the aftereffects of induced myopia through monocular lens, both in duration and magnitude. My project will use chicks as models in order to observe the gene expression levels in the chick retinal pigment epithelium, a thin cell layer right next to the retina, after termination of treatment. The treatment and magnitudes will also use either positive (convex) and negative (concave) lens for different periods of time to observe the differing levels of gene expression dependent on the lens.

Ebru Kasikaralar

I will be working on finishing two papers which focus on using systems mapping. One of the papers will discuss what kind of perspective researchers in engineering should have and what kind of points they should look into when they are conducting research that will have possible real-world applications and solutions. The other will focus on enumerating the decision-making points and showing their effects and links when it comes to creating viable solutions in commercial lighting technology and market.