2022 Spring Spencer Zezulka profilepic

Spencer Zezulka

Spencer Zezulka undergrad at UC Berkeley in the departments of MCB and astrophysics. He joined CUBES in October 2021 and worked with Aaron Berliner to computationally model compact object accretion disks in search of a potentially habitable region. Outside of his own aforementioned project, he assisted teammates at CUBES in data visualization and mathematical modeling.

2022 Cameran Casale Headshot

Cameran Casale

Cameran Casale is a second year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley studying bioengineering. She is currently working with Aaron Berliner on the CUBES project. Through her work at this lab, Cameran is interested in exploring different biological applications within space systems, such as the utilization of biologically derived materials in the development of nanoscale devices.

2021 kim pham photo

Kim Pham

Kim Pham undergraduate in the Bioengineering Dept. She worked with Dr. Jake Hilzinger to develop a pan-genome on the CUBES project

2021 Divya Sivanandan Photo

Divya Sivanandan

Divya was an undergraduate in the Bioengineering Dept. Divya worked with Dr. Hilzinger to screen Spirulina mutants as they are generated (gDNA preps, PCR, possible Illumina sequencing preps), and help develop better transformation methods for this organism.

2021 0810 Gretchen Vengerova

Gretchen Vengerova

Gretchen, undergraduate in the Bioengineering Dept. She worked with Aaron Berliner on CUBES project specifically Modeling a Martian Biomanufactury

2021 Kylie Akiyama photo

Kylie Akiyama

Kylie Akiyama is a second-year bioengineering undergraduate at UC Berkeley with an interest in the convergence of synthetic biology and space exploration. She is currently within the FPSD division of CUBES, working with Dr. Jake Hilzinger to improve the group’s capacity to metabolically engineer A. platensis for small molecule production.

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Farrah Kaiyom

Farrah, undergraduate student studying Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She worked on the CUBES project with Dr. Aaron Berliner. Farrah worked on developing a model that simulates how metabolic rate of crew members fluctuate during space travel and extravehicular activity under varying conditions. She researched data for microbial biomanufacturing.

Will A Sharpless

Will A Sharpless

Will Sharpless was an undergraduate researcher in the Arkin lab for 2 years. He works on the CUBES mission to design novel microbial communities for the rhizosphere of rice. Will is a math/bio double major at Cal and focuses on the dynamics and stability of biological systems, and the application of mathematics for nonlinear systems and networks to bioengineering. In the lab, Will works under the mentorship of postdoctoral researchers Kyle Sander and Fangchao Song.

Isaac Lipsky

Isaac Lipsky

Isaac Lipsky an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley studying environmental science and public policy. In concert with Aaron Berliner, he worked on developing cost-benefit metrics for Mars surface operations. His interests include planetary science and the tantalizing prospect of Martian terraforming.

Fengzhe Shi

Fengzhe Shi

Fengzhe Shi was an undergraduate at Beijing Jiaotong University and now an exchange student at UC Berkeley studying computer science. He joined Mesbah Lab during this period and took part in the CUBES project. In CUBES, Fengzhe mainly works on modeling deep learning based surrogate models in dynamic systems. Previously, he worked in a computer science lab at Peking University on an information retrieval and recommender system.