2021 Undergraduate Summer Research Award Recipients

William A. Lee (MS '79, PhD '82) Awardees

Madeline Brown
Biology
Research: Applications of VEGF Drug Delivery System Post ACL Surgery
Faculty Advisor: Michael Sailor

Shane Douty
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: The synthesis of heterobifunctional degraders to knock out α-synuclein protein
Faculty Advisor: Fleur Ferguson

Amir Golshani
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Detection of Small Organic Clusters Using Photoionization
Faculty Advisor: Amitabha Sinha

Tiffany Hamilton
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Studies on a catalytic Mitsunobu hydroxylamination of alcohols
Faculty Advisor: Emmanuel Theodorakis

Benjamin Huang
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Synthesis of a Fluorescent Analogue of Cladribine
Faculty Advisor: Yitzhak Tor

Hans Ng
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Developing polymers that target the Golgi apparatus and glycocalyx
Faculty Advisor: Kamil Godula

Aman Shihora
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Investigation of the Proline Rich Domain of Annexin A11 with mutations found in ALS
Faculty Advisor: Lalit Deshmukh

Jonathan Sorbie
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Exploring the Photodecomposition of the MnBr(bpy)(CO)3 Complex
Faculty Advisor: Clifford P. Kubiak

Willow Strey
Physics
Research: Coherent fluid structure sensing in larval zebrafish
Faculty Advisor: Mattia Serra

Andy Tran
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Group II Intron Splicing with Nonstandard Divalent Metal Ions
Faculty Advisor: Navtej Toor

Viet Tran
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Reactive Terminal BF Ligand on Sterically Encumbering Ruthenium Metal Center
Faculty Advisor: Joshua Figueroa

Nhuan Vu
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Formation and Elucidation of the Structure of the RIIb : Cb4 Holoenzyme
Faculty Advisor: Susan Taylor

Hao Wei
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Acyclic Equivalent of a Cyclic Carbene as Potential Breslow Intermediate
Faculty Advisor: Guy Bertrand

Zexi Yu
Physics
Research: Molecular Transport and Morphology in Reticulated Organelles
Faculty Advisor: Elena Koslover

Marc Zepeda
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Linking Reductions in DNA Repair to Hereditary Cancer
Faculty Advisor: Alexis Komor

Qian Yi Zhang
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Protein sumoylation regulates DNA replication to prevent genome instability
Faculty Advisor: Huilin Zhou

 

Epsilon Systems Solutions Awardees

Minh Le
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Elucidating dynamics from cryoEM data; Towards a High-Resolution Structure of hsPINK1 using Cryo-EM
Faculty Advisor: Mark Herzik

Jialu Sui
Mathematics
Research: Diet Clustering analysis on Time Restricted Eating Study
Faculty Advisor: Jason G. Fleischer

 

General Atomics Awardees

Weston Ferrell
Mathematics
Research: Design Optimization for CNC Machined Parts
Faculty Advisor: Alicia Kim

Reagan Beers
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Porphyrin-Based Porous Silicon Nanoparticles for Photocatalytic Detoxification of Nerve Agents
Faculty Advisor: Michael Sailor

Ethan Chen
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Increasing the efficiency of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells through Singlet Fission Using Apocarotenoids
Faculty Advisor: Michael J. Tauber

Mikaela Larkin
Physics
Research: Computing Atmospheres of Population III Stars
Faculty Advisor: Adam Burgasser

Rocco Novello
Physics
Research: The Coolest Stars in the Universe
Faculty Advisor: Adam Burgasser

Reno Sammons
Physics
Research: Search for New Low-Disordered Superconductors by Means of Electrochemistry
Faculty Advisor: Alex Frañó

Jevon Suharnoko
Electrical Computer Engineering
Research: Short-Wavelength Infrared Photodiodes (SWIR) Based on Modular Tunable Conjugated Polymers
Faculty Advisor: Tse Nga Ng

Austin Wang
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Self-assembly of polymer-grafted metal-organic frameworks
Faculty Advisor: Seth Cohen

Zhihan Wu
Physics
Research: Direct detection and calculations of Dark Matter
Faculty Advisor: Tongyan Lin

Taurean Zhang
Physics
Research: What Limits Zonal Flow Shears in Collisionless Drift-Wave Turbulence?
Faculty Advisor: Patrick H. Diamond

Delilah Jacobsen
Physics
Research: SpeX Archive Reduction and Identifying Wide M Dwarf Binaries
Faculty Advisor: Adam Burgasser

Tyler Lam
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: The Possibilities Of HINA As A Strong Emissive Moiety In Nitrogenous Bases
Faculty Advisor: Yitzhak Tor

Pawan Paleja
Mathematics
Research: Approaching Perfection: A Rigorous Analysis of Graph Coloring Heuristics on Perfect and Near-Perfect Graphs
Faculty Advisor: Russell Impagliazzo

Haiwen Xu
Physics
Research: Development of a Cylindrical Liquid Xenon Time Projection Chamber for Reactor Neutrino Detection
Faculty Advisor: Kaixuan Ni

 

Geoffrey Hueter (PhD '87) Awardees

Zichun Hao
Physics
Research: Machine Learning Tagger for Single Higgs Bosons Decaying to Two W Bosons
Faculty Advisor: Javier Duarte

Sinan Oral
Physics
Research: Direct detection of light dark matter via crystal detectors
Faculty Advisor: Tongyan Lin

 

Information Systems Laboratories Awardees

Andrew Dennehy
Mathematics
Research: LIBSCAN- A Linearity-Based Clustering Algorithm
Faculty Advisor: Alexander Cloninger

 

Kenneth Abeloe (BS '91) Awardees

Sohan Ghosh
Physics
Research: Ages of White Dwarfs - Main Sequence Star Binaries
Faculty Advisor: Adam Burgasser

Amelia Kawasaki
Mathematics
Research: Improved Dimensionality Reduction Algorithms for Clustering-Aware Embeddings
Faculty Advisor: Ery Arias-Castro

Lucas Scheiblich
Physics
Research: Into the Impossible Explainers
Faculty Advisor: Brian Keating

Joman Wong
Physics
Research: Expanding the SpeX Prism Library Analysis Toolkit (SPLAT)
Faculty Advisor: Adam Burgasser

Tianxing Zhou
Physics
Research: IRTF/SpeX Archive Reduction
Faculty Advisor: Adam Burgasser

 

Jeffrey Marks (PhD '80) Awardees

Gabrielle Balistreri
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Porous Silicon Nanoparticles for Imaging Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors
Faculty Advisor: Michael Sailor

Jaden Lara
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Synthesis and Characterization of Various Alkoxy Derivatives of a Tin-capped Tri-nuclear Nickel Cluster
Faculty Advisor: Clifford P. Kubiak

Grace Lee
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Intro to Photoredox reactions with Aminoboranes
Faculty Advisor: Erik A. Romero

Gordon Peiker
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Freezing and low temperature water uptake of marine relevant salts and sea spray aerosols.
Faculty Advisor: Vicki Grassian

 

Clyde W. Ostler II (BA '68) Awardees

Sophie Leuchtner
Mathematics
Research: Big-Line Big-Clique Conjecture in the Case of a 5-Visible Island
Faculty Advisor: Andrew Suk

 

Richard Shen Awardees

Lingbo (Bobby) Kong
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Exploring functions of new cancer-associated long non-coding RNAs
Faculty Advisor: Colleen A. McHugh

Hei Yu Annika So
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Research: Creating a High-throughput Base Editor Screen for NTHL1 Variants
Faculty Advisor: Alexis Komor