2021-22 Koret Scholars

Congratulations to the 2021-22 Koret Undergraduate Research Scholars

Justine Alberto (Psychology BA) Mentor: Su-hua Wang Project: How do parents and children collaborate through question asking?
Claire Apana (Art BA) Mentor: Karolina Karlic Project: Archival Imaging: Recontextualizing the Past for the Future
Daniel Arriaza (Biomolecular Engr & Bioinformatics BS) Mentor: Daniel Kim Project: Non-coding RNA Biomarkers for Early Cancer Detection
Chailen August (Critical Race & Ethnic Studies BA) Mentor: Michelle Gomez Parra Project: The Cultural Appropriation of Hip Hop Through White Consumerism
Kaylee Baker (Psychology BA) Mentor: Hannah Hausman Project: Remembering History: How Experience, Identity, and Implicit Bias Affect Memory of Historical Figures
Mara Baylis (Neuroscience BS) Mentor: Russell Corbett-Detig Project: Somatic Mutations in Mitochondrial DNA of Drosophila
Griffin Bertucco (Linguistics) Mentor: Grant McGuire Project: Phonetic Inventorying of L2 English Speakers
Micaela Bisaccio (Linguistics) Mentor: Grant McGuire Project: Phonetic Inventorying of L2 English Speakers
Aja Bond (Art BA, History of Art and Visual Culture BA) Mentor: Kyle Parry Project: Sites of Decomposition
Lia Bonver (Classical Studies BA, Literature BA) Mentor: Kristina Chew Project: Weaving, Witchcraft, and Women in Ancient Greece
Annabel Bouwer (Cognitive Science BS) Mentor: Hannah Raila Project: The Mindful Gaze: Correlations Between Trait Mindfulness and Selective Attention to Positive Stimuli
Noah Brigham (Earth Sciences BS) Mentor: Terry Blackburn Project: Subglacial Gypsum Precipitates
Colin Campbell (Physics (Astrophysics) BS) Mentor: Martin Devecka Project: Ancient Astronomy
Samantha Carreno (Anthropology BA) Mentor: Nancy Chen Project: Reframing My Mother’s Still Born Dreams: Examining Intergenerational Trauma For First Generation Students
Madeline Chertkow (Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics) Mentor: Daniel Kim Project: Noncoding RNA biomarkers for early cancer detection
Magali Chonteco (Literature BA, Spanish Studies BA) Mentor: Zachary Zimmer Project: Design, Production, and Intellectual Property: The Evolution of Fast Fashion in the Age of Social Media
Cambell Conour (Chemistry BS) Mentor: Scott Oliver Project: Ligand Length Impacts On MOF Anion Exchange
Joseph Cruz (Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics)  Mentor: Rebecca DuBois Project: Investigating the COBRA NG2 Hemagglutinin for Universal Flu Vaccine Development
Trevin Dace (Sociology BA) Mentor: Rebecca London Project: The social and psychological benefits of agriculture
Fiona DeBernardi (Psychology BA) Mentor: Audun Dahl Project: Cheating in everyday scenarios: How situational pressures impact students’ judgments.
Phoebe Dunbar (Environmental Studies BA) Mentor: Weixin Cheng Project: Establishing baseline soil carbon contents in UCSC campus ecosystems using a simple method calibrated for each location
Austin Dymont (Physics (Astrophysics) BS) Mentor: Xinting Yu Project: Cleaning our Hazy and Cloudy Lens on Temperate Exoplanets
Joel Earwicker (Physics (Astrophysics) BS) Mentor: Jonathan Fortney Project: The Effects of Density Perturbations on Models of the Interior Structure of Jupiter and Saturn
Samuel English (Physics (Astrophysics) BS) Mentor: Stefano Profumo Project: The Hidden Friend’s Wake: Dark Matter and a Binary at the Galactic Center
Tony Estrella (Anthropology BA, Psychology BA) Mentor: Vicky Oelze Project: An ethnographic inventory of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) termite eating behaviors of the Issa Valley, Tanzania
Jordan Fickel (Art & Design: Games & Playable Media BA)  Mentor: micha cárdenas Project: Augmented Reality Climate Art Research
Kenneth Gee (Computer Science BS) Mentor: Stephan B. Munch Project: Making forecasts in exogenously driven ecosystems
Cristina Gonzalez (Psychology BA, Latin American Studies/Sociology Comb BA) Mentor: Steven McKay Project: We Belong
Sophia Grewell (Critical Race & Ethnic Studies BA, Feminist Studies BA) Mentor: Katie Keliiaa Project: Unsettling Domesticity
Sydney Haith (Earth Sciences BS) Mentor: Joshua Krissansen-Totten Project: Testing Models of Biosignature False Positives: Predicted Trends in pO2 Across Time and Space for Lifeless Terrestrial Planets
Lauren Hatcher (Classical Studies BA) Mentor: Martin Devecka Project: Ancient Astronomies
Dakota Hughes (Psychology BA) Mentor: Audun Dahl Project: Helpful or hurtful? An exploration of students' perspectives on the academic misconduct process at UCSC
Lindsay Jones (Earth Sciences BS) Mentor: Grace Pearsall Project: Examining the relationship between pesticide and herbicide pollution and tidal marsh greenhouse gas emissions in the Elkhorn Slough
Harpreet Kaur (Legal Studies BA, Feminist Studies BA) Mentor: Alison Hanson Project: How are hegemonic masculinities produced and mobilized in globalization and their effects on women's class, racial, and sexual bodies?
Sayaka Kozuki (Biotechnology BA, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology BS) Mentor: Gerrald Lodewijk Project: A CRISPR-based Method for Generation of a Synthetic Model of the Embryo
Jasmine Krause (Environmental Sciences BS) Mentor: Margaret Zimmer Project: Wildfire Effects On Physical and Chemical Properties of Soil in Northern California
Victoria Lacerca-Desrosiers (Literature BA) Mentor: Martin Devecka Project: Ancient Astronomy
Sarah Lange (Physics (Astrophysics) BS) Mentor: Natalie Batalha Project: Comprehensive catalog of TESS planet masses
Jodi Lee (Biochemistry & Molecular Bio BS) Mentor: Melissa Jurica Project: Harnessing Transcriptomics to Assess the Importance of Intron Retention
Luiza Leonovich (Legal Studies BA) Mentor: Kent Eaton Project: The Politics of Brazil’s Response to COVID-19
Jialin Li (Physics (Astrophysics) BS) Mentor: Andy Skemer Project: Lyot Stop Designs for New Exoplanet Imager - SCALES
Raquel Lozano (Ecology and Evolution BS) Mentor: Roxanne Beltran Project: Moult Phenology of Northern Elephant Seals at Año Nuevo State Park
Elina Luong (Molecular Cell Developmental Biology BS) Mentor: Stefany Rubio Project:Van Gogh-like 2 Paints the Milky Way
Jasmine Lyng (Psychology BA) Mentor: Regina Day Langhout Project: Student Veteran Photovoice Project: Capturing, Enhancing, and Increasing Student Veteran Visibility and Engagement on Campus
Manisha Magal (Business Mgmt Economics BA) Mentor: Gueyon Kim Project: The Effect of Crime Rates and Perceptions of Safety on the Female Labor Force Participation Rate in Rural and Urban India
Anika Mahajan (Comp Sci Computer Game Design BS) Mentor: Eddie Melcer Project: How Rewind Mechanics Affect Reflection, Player Experience, and Perceived Challenge in Emotionally Complex Games
Jenna Martinez (Environmental Sciences BS) Mentor: Phoebe Lam Project: Particulate Cd:P through trophic levels in the California Current
Jennifer Aimee Martinez (Sociology BA, Education, Democracy, & Justice BA, and Latin American & Latino Studies) Mentor: Steven McKay Project: We Belong: How Immigrant Communities Facilitate Their Sense of Belonging Through Acts of Resistance
Nikhil Marudai (Human Biology BS) Mentor: David Boyd Project: Determining differentiation pathways and lifespans of lung fibroblasts responding to viral infections
Malaika Menon (Human Biology BS) Mentor: Needhi Bhalla Project: Investigating PCH-2's Molecular Mechanism in Promoting Meiotic Fidelity
Rhea Modi (Psychology BA, Cognitive Science BS) Mentor: Hannah Raila Project: The Mindful Gaze: Correlations Between Trait Mindfulness and Selective Attention to Positive Stimuli
Elana Muzzy (Bioengineering BS) Mentor: Harika Dechiraju Project: Integrating Iontronics with Cerebral Organoids
Khang Ngo (Physics BS) Mentor: Puragra (Raja) GuhaThakurta Project: Kinematical, Chemical, and Physical Properties of the Ionized Gas Disks of Andromeda and Triangulum
Jeremiah Ockenfuss (Physics BS) Mentor: Jason Nielsen Project: High-Energy Particle Kinematics in Vector Boson Fusion
Isabella Ossiander (Marine Biology BS) Mentor: Melissa Cronin Project: Investigating Seafood Fraud of Mobula Rays in the Markets of Baja Mexico
Sophia Pinter (Earth Sciences BS) Mentor: Terry Blackburn Project: A ten thousand year record of active Antarctic subglacial lake flushing cycles and response to millennial scale climate shifts
James Retana (Film and Digital Media BA) Mentor: Emily Hentschke Project: Have You Eaten Today? A Study On CalFresh Usage and Accessibility by UCSC Students
Peter Schadlich (Anthropology BA) Mentor: Michelaina Johnson Project: Equitable Stakeholder Representation in the Pajaro Valley, California
Turvi Sharma (Biomolecular Engr & Bioinf BS) Mentor: Melissa Jurica Project: Early Assembly of the Spliceosome
Justin Sim (Biochemistry & Molecular Bio BS) Mentor: Manuel Ares Project: Detection and mechanism of intron gain in human cells
McKenna Smith (Marine Biology BS) Mentor: Peter Weiss Project: The Effect of Forest Fires on Mercury Contamination in Watersheds
Amelia Smyth (Art BA, Chemistry BA) Mentor: Shaun McKinnie Project: Synthesis of Diazepinomicin by Exploration of new VHPO b-cluster
Alec Soronow (Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics BS) Mentor: Euiseok Kim Project: Connectivity of Cortico-cortical Neurons in Mouse Visual Cortex
Casey Vigilia (Environmental Sciences BS) Mentor: Gracie Pearsall Project: Impacts of Microplastics on Wetland Soil Structure and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Urvi Vyas (Neuroscience BS) Mentor: David Feldheim Project: Histological registration of auditory neurons and probe placement in Superior Colliculus
Emma Willis (Classical Studies BA, History BA) Mentor: Elaine Sullivan Project: Witness the Weeping Woman: Feminized Mourning in Egypt and Rome
Daniel Wruck (Biochemistry & Molecular Bio BS) Mentor: Carrie L. Partch Project: Examining the Role of NHR-23 in C. elegans Molting and its Links to Mammalian Circadian Rhythms
Amy Wu (Environmental Sciences BS) Mentor: Claudie Beaulieu Project: Investigating Global Warming Surges
Michelle Yi (Psychology BA) Mentor: Heather Bullock Project: Ensuring Basic Needs: Studying Barriers to CalFresh Among College Students

 2021-2022 Koret Mentor Award Recipients

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