Sergio Carbajo and Jun Chen,assistant professors at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering,have received Young Investigator Program Awards from the Office of Naval Research.Since 2008,the award has supported early-career faculty members who show exceptional promise and creativity in their fields.Carbajo and Chen will each receive athree-year,$750,000 grant to support their research.They join 22 other recipients honored in the 2024 award cohort.Sergio Carbajo,an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering,directs the Quantum Light-Matter Cooperative at UCLA.The award will help support his research in improving real-time control of lasers during unpredictable situations and their ability to compensate for atmospheric weather conditions using novel quantum sensing techniques.Jun Chen,an assistant professor of bioengineering,directs UCLA’s Wearable Bioelectronics Research Group.Chen’s research aims to improve wearable acoustic sensors,making them more flexible and practical for tactical communications.As an executive branch agency within the Department of Defense,the Office of Naval Research provides technical advice to the chief of naval operations and the secretary of the Navy.Recent UCLA Engineering recipients of the Young Investigator Awards include Xiang“Anthony”Chen and Kunihiko“Sam”Taira. 查看详细>>

Justin Caram,assistant professor of chemistry at the UCLA College,is arecipient of the 2023 Journal of PhysicalChemistry and PHYS Division Leadership Awards.He is one of three professors chosen for the awards,which honor investigators researching areas related to each of the journal’s sections—The Journal of Physical Chemistry A,The Journal of Physical Chemistry Band The Journal of Physical Chemistry C.Caram was selected for The Journal of Physical Chemistry C,which focuses on energy,materials and catalysis.His fields of expertise include biophysics,materials,nanoscience,and bioenergy and the environment.The journal is apublication of the American Chemical Society;the awards will be presented in San Francisco in August at the society’s Fall 2023 meeting,where the winners will be invited to speak.Other honors Caram has received include the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award,the AXS Glenn Seabord Award and aFaculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation.He was named aCottrell Scholar in 2021. 查看详细>>

Thirty-nine UCLA faculty members were named among world’s most influential researchers in the sciences and social sciences today.The Highly Cited Researchers list,compiled annually by analytics firm Clarivate,identifies scholars whose work has been cited most often in papers published by other researchers in their fields over the past decade.Those chosen for the 2022 list have authored studies that rank in the top 1%in the number of scholarly citations worldwide.Several UCLA scholars were among the most highly cited researchers in more than one of the list’s 22 research categories.“The Highly Cited Researchers list identifies and celebrates exceptional individual researchers at UCLA who are having asignificant impact on the research community as evidenced by the rate at which their work is being cited by their peers,”said David Pendlebury,head of research analysis at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate.“These individuals are helping to transform human ingenuity into our world’s greatest breakthroughs—and it is an honor to celebrate their achievements.” 查看详细>>

The UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios,which are dedicated to supporting emerging artists and strengthening Los Angeles’s position as aworld arts capital,opened Sept.26 after amajor restoration and expansion.Designed by the Los Angeles architecture firm Johnston Marklee,the 48,000 square foot campus in Culver City’s Hayden tract creates atrue artist’s neighborhood.As UCLA celebrates its centennial year,the building underscores the campus’s continued commitment to nurturing generations of artistic talent while simultaneously enriching Los Angeles’vibrant cultural community.Clusters of intimate,private studio spaces abut communal,shared facilities and critique spaces.The design considers the nature of artistic practice today and anticipates change by creating abuilding that can evolve in the future with new technologies and working methods,and the complex was designed for LEED Gold certification with sustainable materials throughout.The restoration was largely funded by a$20 million gift in 2016 from Margo Leavin,the largest ever made by an alumna to the arts within the University of California system.“I’m grateful that my career in the Los Angeles art world has afforded me the opportunity to support those at the very heart of this community:artists,”Leavin said.“The students,alumni,and faculty from the art department at UCLA shape the future of the arts in Los Angeles and beyond.It would be my wish that others who are passionate about the future of the arts,–especially other women who have enjoyed professional success–will join me in harnessing their resources to benefit those who are still developing their creative practices.We need to remember that without artists,there would be no art world.” 查看详细>>

UCLA has been named the No.2 public university in the United States and the 11th best in the world—public or private—in the 2019 Academic Ranking of World Universities,which was published today.The rankings,issued by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy,use six criteria to measure excellence,including number of alumni and faculty winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals,highly cited researchers,papers published in the journals Nature and Science,papers listed in major citation indices and the per capita academic performance of an institution.The top 10 in order were Harvard University,Stanford University,University of Cambridge,Massachusetts Institute of Technology,UC Berkeley,Princeton University,University of Oxford,Columbia University,California Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago.Earlier this week,UCLA was ranked the No.3 public university—and No.4 overall—in Money Magazine’s 2019 Best Colleges in America list.The ranking,which focuses on the quality and cost of four-year,post-secondary institutions in the United States,weighed 26 factors in the categories of quality of education,affordability and outcomes.UCLA was one of four University of California campuses included in the Top 10. 查看详细>>

It’s estimated that aperson sheds between 30,000 to 40,000 skin cells per day.These cells and their associated DNA leave genetic traces of ourselves in showers,dust—pretty much everywhere we go.Other organisms shed cells,too,leaving traces throughout their habitats.This leftover genetic material is known as environmental DNA,or eDNA.Research using eDNA began about adecade ago,but was largely limited to asmall cadre of biologists who were also experts in computers and big data.However,a new tool from UCLA could be about to make the field accessible and useful to many more scientists.A team of UCLA researchers recently launched the Anacapa Toolkit—open-source software that makes eDNA research easier,allowing researchers to detect abroad range of species quickly and producing sortable results that are simple to understand.To use Anacapa,scientists first collect asample—most often that’s water or soil—and then they extract the DNA for sequencing,which identifies DNA’s molecular composition.Anacapa then sorts through these sequences and compares the unknown sample to agenetic reference library,much like aforensic scientist on“C.S.I.”That library is customizable,granting researchers the capability to look for as few or as many species as they want,so long as there is an existing genetic sample for those species. 查看详细>>

While Shane Campbell-Staton was working on his dissertation at Harvard in 2013,he walked into acomic book store in Cambridge,Massachusetts,and saw acomic in which Superman fought Muhammad Ali.That was the first comic book he ever bought.An evolutionary biologist,he spent his days writing about the evolution of asmall green lizard that adapted from awarm,sub-tropical environment to the cold winters of Tennessee,North Carolina and Oklahoma.Before going to sleep,he read the comic book as aguilty pleasure.“Pitting the peak of human performance in Muhammad Ali against the peak of science fiction performance in the Man of Steel,in aring with gloves on,I had to see how that fight ended,”Campbell-Staton said.(He refuses to spoil the ending by saying who won.)Campbell-Staton became curious about other comic book universes,and returned to buy acouple of other superhero comics,which he also read before falling asleep.He started to have strange dreams that combined the biology he was thinking about with the comic books he was reading.He had adream about the Flash–the fastest person in the world whose super speed is coupled with superhuman reflexes–running faster than abullet.Campbell-Staton woke up thinking about muscle fiber,friction and metabolism—things that fuel abody. 查看详细>>

Beginning in January,a new UCLA course will tell the story of the Beatles through the prism of film.Offered by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music’s music industry program,the class will screen documentaries,television appearances and feature films—and students will hear firsthand accounts from industry executives and musicians,further illuminating the visual and aural record of the legendary band.The course,“The Reel Beatles,”is open to undergraduate and graduate students.It will be taught by David Leaf,an award-winning filmmaker and biographer,who was aco-writer,director and producer of the 2006 documentary“The U.S.vs.John Lennon.”“The class will use video and film to tell the compelling story of how the Beatles became beloved and mythical,”said Leaf,a UCLA adjunct professor.“We’ll watch how their story unfolds in real time,how they created abody of timeless and enormously influential music,and how the group has both been the subject of dozens of films and become an iconic trademark that still generates over$100 million in worldwide revenue every year—even though the group last performed on aconcert stage more than ahalf-century ago.” 查看详细>>

UCLA Health?Most people have,at one time or another,packed up all their belongings and lugged them to anew environment??a first dorm room,a bigger apartment,a different house.?Few people,though,have had to pack up multiple million-dollar scientific instruments,boxes upon boxes of test tubes,pipettes and beakers,and scores of experiments at various stages of completion.Hundreds of researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA recently did just that.The reason was si... 查看详细>>

The UCLA Office of Interdisciplinary and Cross Campus Affairs is opening applications to two funding opportunities to encourage schools,divisions,and other units to find areas of mutual interest and to support faculty in their exploration of these intersections.Funding can be used to support bringing speakers to campus as well as proposals for symposia and workshops.Eligibility These opportunities are open to all UCLA faculty members.Proposals must include collaborations of faculty from multiple schools or research units to be considered for funding.Please see ICCA’s Funding Opportunities web page for information specific to each opportunity.Priority for both awards will be given to events that engage adiverse range of faculty and/or students across schools. 查看详细>>