Rahil Shaik

Rahil Shaik is a second-year chemical engineering undergraduate at UC Berkeley with an interest in studying manufacturing automation, battery materials, and semiconductor design. He is working with Dr. Kyle Sander to develop process models and 3D design modeling.

Sophia Bertoldo

Sophia is a sophomore at UC Berkeley studying Molecular & Cellular Biology and Economics. She was initially drawn to CUBES because of their work with In-situ Resource Utilization and is interested in studying different forms of life in strenuous environments. In her free time she enjoys surfing, playing soccer and reading novels.

Kerem Yazgan

Kerem is an undergraduate in the department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He will work with Drs. Arkin & Mutalik. The project a systemic approach to enrich, isolate, characterize, and engineer novel ssRNA phages that support the agricultural, environmental, and possibly health strategies.

Isra Raza

Isra is a rising senior undergraduate at UC Berkeley in Environmental Sciences. She is working with Dr. Bradley Biggs on ENIGMA to conduct research focusing on pairwise microbial interactions under low pH and anaerobic conditions, with aims of applying this to broader biological modeling efforts.

Erzsabet Gonzalez

Erzsabet is an undergraduate studying Bioengineering at UC Berkeley. She is conducting research with Dr. Bradley Biggs. She is constructing new plasmid variants to expand the genetic toolbox for gut bacteria with the overall goal of studying gene functions.

Jasmine Escobedo

Jasmine is an undergraduate bioengineering major at UC Berkeley. She works with Dr. Bradley Biggs using genomic fragments to analyze the function of particular bacterial enzymes. This involves genetic recombination and cultivation of bacteria to study the observed behavior of unknown genes. This work is part of the broader ENIGMA goals of understanding the metagenomic data gathered at the site and improving our ability to move from metagenomic DNA to practical function of the microbial communities.

2022 Min Kim

Min Kim

Min is a second year undergraduate student at Berkeley studying bioengineering. She works with Dr. Biggs to characterize enzyme genotypes and functions from metagenomic data based on the iterative workflow that involves parallel sequencing and complementation assay. The project takes isolate level approaches that can be combined with field studies to fill in the gaps in understanding metabolism.

2022 Spring Spencer Zezulka profilepic

Spencer Zezulka

Spencer Zezulka is a senior at UC Berkeley studying MCB and astrophysics. He joined CUBES in October 2021 and is working with Aaron Berliner to computationally model compact object accretion disks in search of a potentially habitable region. Outside of his own aforementioned project, he assists his teammates at CUBES in data visualization and mathematical modeling. Aside from astrobiology and data science, Spencer is interested in music and education, and helps direct an organization providing free college admissions prep to communities in the Bay Area. In his spare time, Spencer likes to read, play piano, and game.

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.

HouShuwen

Shuwen Hou

Shuwen Hou is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Hong Kong
(HKU) studying biochemistry. She is attending UC Berkeley for an exchange study.
Shuwen works with Dr. Fangchao Song to profile the microbial physiology in
different conditions through droplet-based microfluidics. This is part of the ENIGMA
project.