Julia Huffaker
Dengue and Vika virus are mosquito-borne flaviviruses common in tropical and sub-tropical areas that can result in a range of clinical manifestations, from a self-limited dengue fever to a potentially fatal dengue shock syndrome (DSS) caused by vascular leakage. This summer, I will be researching anti-DENV and anti-ZIKV immunity interactions using a Luminex system to determine which serotypes are correlated with primary inapparent infection of Dengue. My personal focus is on domain III of the envelope protein of DENV 1-4 and ZIKV, a domain known to bind type-specific antibodies. By […]
Elham Shoghi
Myopia or short-sightedness is an increasingly prevalent ocular disorder, which has not only been linked to a number of potentially blinding diseases, including glaucoma, but also negatively affects economics due to health care costs. Increased time outdoors appears to be at least partly protective and in recent studies, short, morning exposure to blue light has been proposed as a possible treatment to inhibit myopia progression. Notably, sunlight also includes short (blue) wavelengths. Since many blue-light blocker apps exist for electronic devices and are increasingly used with the goal of promoting […]
Shiangyi Lin
Proteins often fold into compact structural units known as domains, which are the basic units of protein function and evolution. Delineating domain boundaries is a pre-requisite for further analyses of protein structures, but the accuracy of computer programs is still not satisfactory. With the support from my mentor, I have surveyed the current version of SCOPe (Structural Classification of Proteins – extended) database in the last two semesters: I have found and labeled/corrected protein families in which different structures have been inconsistently divided into domains, and built a version of […]
Greg Ritzinger
Our team, Youth & Allies Against Homelessness (YAAH), has developed a survey to assess how Youth Experiencing Homelessness (YEH) have been affected during the pandemic. All the closures and abatement of services has made an already difficult situation significantly worse and YEH are often overlooked in addressing the needs of our unhoused community. Because of this, we are seeking to find ways to reach this population so that they can provide insight that can be used to inform meaningful policy change.
Shiladitya Dutta
Deep neural networks achieve state-of-the-art performance in many tasks such as computer vision and natural language processing, however many compression/acceleration methods for these models yield unstable or unreliable results. As such, I am using statistical methodologies to investigate the properties of low-rank compression methodologies, with a particular focus on SVD-based compression. In particular, I am focusing on how SVD compression can be used in compression with various filter-level visualization methods (i.e. saliency based methods) in order to reveal the internal “decision-making” structure of particular sections of these highly complex models. […]
Christian Ringler
The summer research project will help further my understanding on factors that will affect the regenerative process of cardiomyocyte cells that would be significant in regenerative heart treatment. The project will enable me to learn how to conduct mammalian cell cultures and examine an engineered mouse strain in which the chemogenetic activation of hypothalamic thermoregulatory neurons by small chemicals, potentially induces drastic reductions of body temperature and energy metabolism like the state in torpor or hibernation. In particular, I will examine whether lowering body temperature could retain cardiac regenerative potential […]
Chung Lam Law
In this summer project, I will continue to assist Prof. Wong in building a database collection that consists of a timeline of Hong Kong art history, various bibliographies, as well as artist lists. I will also continue working on an ongoing digital resource page that is made up of online archives, photography, and local exhibition catalogues. We are currently expanding the project to include the diasporic HK artist community in order to explore the relationships between arts/culture, politics, and the HK identity. Due to HK’s political turmoil and an increasing […]
Kat Bako
This summer, I’ll be conducting a study with the Sight Enhancement Lab at Berkeley that simulates the type of vision loss associated with macular degeneration, and tracks how human subjects with normal vision adapt to simulated central vision loss. We use a gaze-contingent display to present a gray circle on a computer monitor that moves with the subject’s eyes, thus blocking out visual information on the display according to where they are looking. Subjects wear a head-mounted binocular eye tracker that follows and records gaze positions continuously. Our interest is […]
Hannah Hanson
It involves a book, for Palgrave Macmillan, due out later this year, which explores what the emerging interdiscipline of the psychological humanities offers to psychology practice and models of human subjectivity. It also includes developing and delivering a course for students within the interdisciplinary field of Women’s and Gender Studies at Cal, which is due to be expanded to Cal State East Bay later in 2021. The psychological humanities has developed out of critical psychology, and recognizes that the psy-disciplines (psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy) are human sciences, not STEM […]