Zara Miura Brandt
The project in which I’m involved seeks to understand why and how students who are learning world languages at UC Berkeley do, or do not, use ChatGPT. As a large language model, ChatGPT presents particular challenges and opportunities in relation to second language acquisition, especially in the university setting. As of yet, there are few empirical studies that foreground students’ voices on this topic. Our project intends to address that gap by using a survey and interview-based approach to access students’ beliefs about ChatGPT, with an eye to how those […]
Melissa Young
Field school with The Nemea Center For Classical Archaeology includes excavation, identification, and classification of antiquities discovered in Nemea, Greece. While excavation is exciting, it is extremely important to also prioritize the conservation of classical sites in order to preserve the history and continue to learn from it, which is of utmost importance to the Nemea Center for Classical Archaeology. Tending to sites such as the Sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea provides students like myself with skills in excavation and communication as well as a deeper appreciation for ancient cultures. […]
Amelia Monsour
This summer, I will work to support Professor Karabel’s research for his upcoming book on American exceptionalism, “Outlier Nation.” The book seeks to evaluate how the United States is so different from other wealthy democracies, why this could be, and the impacts this has on the American people. Throughout the summer, I will continue my past research that specifically focused on the physical and mental health of Americans compared to people in other wealthy democracies and the causes of our poorer overall health. I will also be examining the sources […]
Paris Grae Bailey
This summer, as an undergraduate curatorial and research assistant at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, I am continuing my involvement in a project that aims to curate an exhibit as an entry point into exploring the intersections of Jewish and Muslim life in the MENA region through approximately sixty significant objects. Over the past two semesters, my URAP position has provided invaluable experience in handling, researching, and curating these artifacts. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to this exhibit’s fruition, delving into how these […]
Isabelle Cherry
The project, called Sustainable Subsea Networks (https://sustainablesubseanetworks.com/), investigates the sustainability of subsea cables, which are the backbone of global digital networks and carry over 99% of transoceanic internet traffic. Our research enhances the sustainability of the internet by tracking the carbon emissions associated with sourcing materials and the manufacturing, laying, maintenance, and recovery of subsea internet cables – with the goal of producing a comprehensive map of carbon emissions and their hotspots. Additionally, we hope to conduct one of the first comprehensive studies on the environmental footprint from recycling out-of-service […]
Daniel Cabrera
Our project seeks to better understand municipal politics in Argentina and Brazil by examining interactions between city council members, mayors, and citizens using several types of media. Over the spring semester, we collected recordings of municipal council meetings and built a database of transcriptions for text analysis. This summer I will be helping to build a process that will automate the downloading of new meeting recordings, their corresponding transcriptions, and systematic filing for eventual analysis.
Kayla Dixon
Dispersal, the movement of individuals away from the population in which they were born, is a behavior found in many mammals, however the underlying neurological and physiological mechanisms behind this behavior have yet to be extensively studied. The goal of this project is to identify the internal mechanisms that govern dispersal in the colonial tuco-tuco, a subterranean rodent species that expresses high variation in dispersal behavior among juvenile female individuals. To assess individual dispersal patterns, we set up a novel and naturalistic dispersal assay using RFID monitoring to continuously track […]
Michael Brand
The physical infrastructures behind producing the internet has large environmental costs. For example, data centers are currently responsible for over 3% United States power usage. The research looks to reveal the hidden environmental costs of the internet, as well as develop a set of metrics to measure the sustainability efforts of digital infrastructure industries.
Tanay (Dex) Bhadra
When modeling long-duration binary microlensing events, it is important to consider the orbital motion and dynamics of the involved binary system as the orbital period approaches the duration of the microlensing signal. The Bayesian Analysis of Gravitational Lensing Events (BAGLE) is a software used to fit microlensing events. In previous iterations of BAGLE, the orbital motion for binaries was not included. Now, we make corrections for the different proper motions of the primary and secondary sources/lenses involved in the binary system by developing new parameterization classes. These parameterization classes account […]
Ella Herbert
This project is dedicated to improving sustainability in the field of subsea telecommunications. We examine three key aspects of telecommunications: data centers and sustainability metrics, materials used in manufacturing, and marine infrastructure built for the subsea cables. My work on sustainability metrics in data centers includes compiling literature reviews, writing articles for industry magazines, assembling research papers, attending industry conferences, and working with the industry to advocate for sustainability in this crucial aspect of digital infrastructure. We aim to standardize sustainability in subsea telecommunications networks to secure a greener future […]