Archive for category: College News

Picture of a hand gently holding a baby’s fingers.

New UCLA center promotes reproductive science and sexual health

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Picture of a hand gently holding a baby’s fingers.

Aditya Romansa/Unsplash

Holly Ober | January 30, 2023

A new center at UCLA will bring together students, scientists, educators and physicians across a wide range of disciplines to support research and education initiatives designed to improve human reproductive health, promote healthy families and to advance the well-being of society.

The UCLA Center for Reproductive Science Health and Education aims to fill a void in reproductive health knowledge while developing new technologies to improve reproductive health for all. The center’s inaugural director is Amander Clark, a UCLA professor, stem cell biologist and an expert in the field of reproductive sciences.

While reproductive health is often associated with issues of reproduction, infertility and contraception, it also includes healthy human development as well as the study and treatment of menopause and cancers related to reproductive organs. However, individuals and policymakers alike often make decisions around reproductive health that are not based on science.

“In the past several years, far too little of the dialogue and decision-making around sexual and reproductive health has been based in scientific research,” said Tracy Johnson, dean of the UCLA Division of Life Sciences. “Yet, science is the foundation by which health and policy professionals can make rational, informed decisions on topics that impact everyone. The time has arrived for an internationally recognized center for research, education and innovation in the reproductive sciences.”

Challenges in the field today include declining fertility rates, the lack of insurance coverage for infertility treatments and the need for better access to reproductive technologies for all.

• According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 2020 marked the sixth year in a row that fewer babies were born in the United States than any previous year. This is on top of a 60-year worldwide trend in declining fertility rates. In addition, there is a marked shift in the increased age of first-time parents.

• Nearly 8 million Americans of reproductive age face a diagnosis of infertility, but treatments in most U.S. states are not covered by insurance. For women over 40 who use in-vitro fertilization, the chances of having a successful pregnancy and a healthy baby are significantly reduced, according to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. For reasons that are not well understood, even for those under 40, sometimes IVF just doesn’t work.

• People need better and more accessible options for contraception. According to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, almost 40% of women who use contraception stop in their first year because they are not satisfied with existing options.

• There’s also a need for increased access to other reproductive technologies and medical services, especially for LGBTQ and gender-diverse Americans.

Amander Clark

Amander Clark | Don Liebig

The center’s work will include research into the reproductive and endocrine systems, contraception, infertility and pregnancy — as well as the social science of reproduction and reproductive interventions.

“Once established, this will be a home for innovative science and educational programs aimed at changing the national conversation around human reproduction and infertility,” Clark said. “We will develop new therapies toward promoting healthy parents, pregnancies and families of all genders today and for future generations.”

The UCLA Center for Reproductive Science Health and Education will operate in partnership with the division of life sciences at UCLA, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Institute for Society and Genetics, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, where Clark is also a member.

The center will serve as a national and international home for training and career development of undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral and clinical fellows — and create an educational pipeline to benefit the UCLA community and beyond.

Hosted by Dean of Life Sciences Tracy Johnson, the Center for Reproductive Science Health and Education’s first event, “Let’s Talk Science: Conversations About the Future of Reproductive Health,” will be held Feb. 16 at 5:30 p.m. Register for the webinar.

This article originally appeared at UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Dominic Thomas

UCLA’s Dominic Thomas wins international Gutenberg Research Chair honor

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Dominic Thomas

Dominic Thomas, UCLA’s Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies | UCLA

Jonathan Riggs | January 23, 2023

Last November, Dominic Thomas, Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the UCLA Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, won the Gutenberg Research Chair. As part of his prize, he will serve as lead investigator on a project, “Ecology and Propaganda.”

“This honor is a testament to the remarkable timeliness, power and scope of Dominic Thomas’ work,” said Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the UCLA Division of Humanities. “We are proud to have him representing our division, university and field on a global scale as he innovates new approaches to critically studying pressing environmental and ecological questions.”

Awarded to exceptional internationally renowned researchers, Gutenberg Chairs serve to spark scientific studies in the Alsace region of France. They are funded by the Greater East Region of France and Eurometropolis of Strasbourg at the recommendation of the Gutenberg Circle, which includes all of the Circle’s active members: the Institut de France, Collège de France, Institut Universitaire de France and an international, multidisciplinary jury of researchers.

“The Chairs were inaugurated in 2007 and have been awarded primarily to scientists,” said Thomas. “It is an honor to have been selected, but the fact that the selection committee has chosen to support a humanities project is therefore especially satisfying and, I believe, also indicative of the visionary qualities of the selection committee.”

With his interest in propaganda dating back to graduate school — not to mention it being the subject of both his first as well as his most recent books — Thomas will explore the paradox of how new technologies have simultaneously enhanced and undermined democratization. A transdisciplinary research project that investigates the legacies of colonialism on the environment, “Ecology and Propaganda” will be organized around five pillars (historical, intercultural, ethical, aesthetic and media/linguistic perspectives) and will correspond directly to priorities outlined by Sylvie Retailleau, the French minister for higher education.

“The transdisciplinary, transcultural scope of the project is indicative of a paradigm shift happening in the humanities,” said Todd Presner, chair of the department of European languages and transcultural studies. “UCLA is an engine of innovation for new, experimental humanities fields such as the environmental humanities.”

On the UCLA faculty since 2000, Thomas also created the UCLA Summer Paris Global Studies program, which he directed for 11 years, and will draw inspiration for his project from across UCLA’s global research leadership on ecology and the environment — and from an unwavering commitment to his field.

“The humanities have, arguably, perhaps never been so crucially important; they are relevant to all contemporary cultural, economic, political and social debates. In the face of assaults on democratic principles, the humanities help us improve intercultural understanding and encourage inclusivity,” said Thomas. “Ultimately, humanities provide the space in which to study the past, but also to delineate the contours of the future.”

For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

Kanon Mori, wearing a nametag, speaks into a microphone

Leading the Japan-America Innovators of Medicine

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UCLA student Kanon Mori works to improve health care while bridging cultures and disciplines

Kanon Mori, wearing a nametag, speaks into a microphone

Fourth-year UCLA student Kanon Mori, an organizer of the Japan-America Innovators of Medicine, speaks during a presentation last November to medtech entrepreneurs, investors, physicians and pharmaceutical executives at Awaji Island in Japan.

Lucy Berbeo | January 12, 2023

Many students embark on their college journey with the goal of finding a true sense of purpose. Kanon Mori found hers during her first year at UCLA — and spent her time as an undergraduate bringing that purpose to fruition.

Born in Los Angeles to parents from Japan, Mori grew up bilingual and passionate about bridging Japanese and U.S. culture. Excelling in STEM and interested in medicine, she chose to major in computational and systems biology, an interdisciplinary program in the UCLA College that trains students to solve biological problems by combining the sciences, math and computing.

In classes on public health and health policy, Mori learned about inequities in the U.S. health care system and decided to help change things on a global scale. “I realized the potential technological innovations can have to shake up the entire industry,” says Mori, who is set to graduate this June. “And UCLA is the gateway into the U.S. from Japan’s perspective. With its world-class medical research and technological innovations, I knew I had to take advantage of being a student here to initiate a project.”

Mori teamed up with students from Stanford University and medical schools in Japan, including those at the University of Tokyo, Osaka University and Kyoto University. Together, with support from academic institutions, companies and individuals, they spearheaded Japan-America Innovators of Medicine, or JAIM — a student-driven, entrepreneurial effort to tackle the global health care challenge of dementia and to foster U.S.-Japan collaboration in advancing medicine.

Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, is on the rise worldwide and especially in Japan, where more than a quarter of the population is 65 or older. JAIM leaders, including Mori and her counterparts at Stanford and Osaka, recruited nine students from Stanford and UCLA to participate in training bootcamps, then flew them to Japan to visit dementia care settings, observe the need firsthand and generate solutions. Returning to the U.S., the students spent the next four months working under JAIM supervision to develop prototype medical devices aimed at helping dementia patients and caregivers worldwide. By addressing the urgent need in Japan, JAIM aims to create solutions before the problem becomes severe in nations like the U.S.

REMBUDS, one of the prototype medical devices created by JAIM participants

REMBUDS, one of the prototype medical devices created by JAIM participants, were designed to electrically stimulate the transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve and reduce sleep-related injuries in Lewy Body dementia patients with REM sleep behavior disorder.

The rigorous program’s success, Mori says, owes much to the drive and dedication of everyone involved. “We all poured our passions into this project,” she says. “Each one of us brought our own respective strengths to the table, and we all had an unwavering confidence that what we were doing was valuable to the world.”

Since completing their prototypes in November, several participants have presented and garnered interest at national and international conferences. In February, Mori says, JAIM will attend the UCLA MedTech Partnering Conference hosted by the UCLA Technology Development Group in order to seek mentorship and resources to launch their prototypes into production.

Mori describes leading JAIM as “challenging to say the least” — she and her team spent a year developing the program, which she says felt like running a startup in addition to being a full-time student — but found it incredibly fulfilling.

“My life mission is to bridge Japan and the U.S. by connecting resources and people in the field of medicine,” she says. “And entrepreneurship is fascinating to me — through the many failures and the endless uphill battle, I feel most alive.”

The same spirit drives Mori’s winning efforts as part of UCLA’s triathlon team. “You can find us gasping for air while inching our way up the steep hills of Malibu with our road bikes on an early Saturday morning, or charging into the crashing waves of Santa Monica to practice open water swimming before heading back to campus for class,” she says. “It’s a group of fit, quirky and driven people who make the challenging sport of triathlon into an enjoyable one.”

Mori’s ultimate goal, she says, is to develop a product or service that will make health care more accessible, affordable and efficient through technological innovation in business. She envisions herself working as a product manager, international business development manager or possibly even the creator of her own startup. For now, as she finishes senior year, she’s enjoying the many opportunities UCLA has to offer.

“There really is no place like it,” she says. “It’s so exciting to be here, just imagining what can start up in such an environment. I’m grateful for every professor, expert and fellow student who has changed my life in a profound way.”

For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

UCLA collaboration fosters mathematical brilliance of Latino and Black middle school students

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Undergraduates work in L.A. schools to bolster math learning through innovative research electives

Middle school students presenting about STEM research in their South L.A. communities

Middle school students presented their research poster about whether there should be a vaccine mandate for teenagers. | Don Liebig/UCLA

Holly Ober | January 4, 2023

A program that brings together UCLA students, the Los Angeles Unified School District and professional engineers and technologists to enhance mathematics learning in select South Los Angeles middle schools has made its public debut.

Forget boring demonstrations of solving equations on a whiteboard or listening to long lectures about math. As part of the Applied Mathematics Mentorship Program, on Dec. 14 the middle school students presented the results of research projects that were connected to their communities. The projects included studying the impacts of heat islands and COVID-19 on their neighborhoods, and on aerospace efforts in South Los Angeles. The research investigations were created so students could apply the mathematics they learn in the classroom to investigate and analyze mathematical issues and opportunities in their neighborhoods.

“We’re trying to embed mirrors and windows into the student experience so they see mathematics as a field in which they belong,” said Heather Dallas, executive director of the Curtis Center for Mathematics and Teaching at UCLA.

Supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Applied Mathematics Mentorship Program is a collaborative effort of the Curtis Center, three LAUSD middle schools, SpaceX engineers, FieldKit environmental technologists and the UCLA Myco-fluidics Lab.

The program places UCLA undergraduates as mentors at Barack Obama Global Preparatory Academy, William Jefferson Clinton Middle School, and Western Avenue T.E.C.H. Magnet School to support student research.

“It is important to show students mathematicians from their community doing mathematics for their community to inspire them to believe: I can do mathematics, I AM a mathematician,” Dallas said.

The program innovates mathematics learning by tapping into students’ innate desire to explore and understand the world around them. The effort highlights the relevance of mathematics and shows students how their community uses math to make a difference in the world.

The investigations are the brainchild of Dallas and Travis Holden, principal of Barack Obama Global Preparatory Academy and a UCLA alumnus who earned his bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics. Holden originally reached out to the Curtis Center to provide training for his mathematics department to implement a new textbook during the height of the pandemic.

The collaboration developed further when Dallas and Holden discussed a suggestion by an outside observer to involve the UCLA’s mathematics department in tutoring his middle school students.

“I told Heather I was big on not doing something remedial because I know that doesn’t work and it doesn’t excite kids,” Holden said. “I wanted to build on strengths our students already had. There’s a lot of research that says if you maintain high cognitive challenges during learning you see higher levels of learning.”

If research experiences during his time at UCLA excited him about mathematics, research could inspire his middle school students, too, he reasoned.

Dallas understood immediately, and pursued funding for a two-pronged effort: collaborate with mathematicians and scientists to develop relevant applied mathematics research investigations aligned to the school’s mathematics textbook and provide professional development for teachers and UCLA undergraduate mentors to facilitate the investigations. The Gates Foundation funded the effort and a research study of its effectiveness, which precipitated expansion to nearby Clinton Middle School and Western Avenue T.E.C.H.

Seventh-grade students collected data using devices from Los Angeles startup company, FieldKit to analyze heat islands in their communities. Heat islands occur in urban areas that experience higher temperatures compared to surrounding areas with more vegetation because buildings and roads reflect heat.

Eighth graders researched the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on their community. In the Grade 9 investigation, student learned about aerospace endeavors in South Los Angeles, highlighting the experiences of local astronauts and SpaceX engineers of color.

“The 7th grade investigation places students in the driver seat to solve challenges in their own community.  Students learn how to look at a problem, explore solutions and most importantly use their voice to bring upon change,” said Johnny Rivera, principal of Western T.E.C.H.

Cassandra Robbins, vice principal of Clinton Middle School, said that she sees students giving up on mathematics before they even start because it seems irrelevant to their goals. She said that the math interventions they have tried have not moved the students forward much, but the Curtis Center was not offering just another intervention.

“The Curtis Center came up with this idea that, similar to a physics class, you tie theory together with laboratory experience. It’s an addition to, not a replacement for regular math class,” Robbins said.

To study heat islands, for example, the students must learn about how materials absorb or reflect light, take accurate temperature readings, and apply mathematics to calculate averages. To study COVID, the students track and compare the spread of the illness in their own and surrounding communities. They do experiments and then graph, analyze and discuss the resulting data. In addition to applying grade-level mathematics, the students learn valuable lessons about teamwork and mathematical practice.

“It’s really great coaching them — they see me as a coach. They’re fully engaged,” said Jose Medel, who teaches a seventh grade elective on heat islands at Clinton Middle School.

The event, held at the Barack Obama Global Preparatory Academy, included a panel of STEM professionals of color, student research team poster presentations and a reception honoring their accomplishments.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Miguel García-Garibay in the Royce Hall portico

Leading the College: A conversation with new senior dean Miguel García-Garibay

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Miguel García-Garibay

Miguel García-Garibay, Dean of Physical Sciences and Senior Dean of the UCLA College

By Jonathan Riggs

A UCLA chemistry and biochemistry faculty member since 1992 and dean of physical sciences since 2016, Miguel García-Garibay celebrated another milestone last November when he was named senior dean of the UCLA College.

“Taking on this additional role at the No. 1 public university in the nation is one of the greatest honors any academic leader could aspire to,” said García-Garibay. “The vision of all my fellow College division deans and UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt includes sustained excellence and impact for the College. With their support, I am excited to accept the challenge.”

As he looks ahead to a new year and a new chapter in his remarkable Bruin career, García-Garibay spoke with us about his past achievements and future goals.

What are your top priorities as senior dean?

The primary mission of the College is to provide the best liberal arts education and research opportunities to our remarkably diverse, talented and accomplished undergraduates. There is no doubt that UCLA’s reputation comes from the exceptionally strong educational services offered by our creative faculty and our dedicated staff.

Now that our campus is committed to becoming a Hispanic-Serving Institution, one of our goals is to make UCLA even more accessible, not only to talented Hispanic students, but to talented students from all backgrounds across the state and nation. To accomplish that, the College will engage members of the community for the development and creation of endowed fellowships and resources that enhance the educational experience of our students, including bridge programs and summer research and community engagement opportunities for incoming freshmen and transfer students.

How will your longtime experience as a faculty member and dean serve you in this additional role?

Academic deans can help their departments attract creative, talented faculty who are among the very best in their fields and who bring diverse perspectives and life experiences to their scientific and educational work. One critical aspect of my job as dean of physical sciences has been to make sure that our faculty have the means and infrastructure needed to carry out their research, attract talented graduate students, and successfully deploy research and educational initiatives guided by community and societal needs. As the senior dean, I will have an opportunity to help strengthen the common goals of the College and to make sure that we are ready to support the goals of each division.

Since 1992, I have experienced an environment where faculty and students have the climate, intellectual resources and physical infrastructure to succeed. At a personal level, I have made many friends among the faculty and staff, and I have had many long-lasting interactions with former students and other College alumni. Over the last 10 years, I have had the privilege of serving in leadership roles that have given me a stronger appreciation of the impactful vision developed by our campus leaders, and how UCLA stands out among many other excellent institutions of higher education. I am proud to be a longtime faculty Bruin.

What’s your favorite advice to share with students, or anyone else?

UCLA is a remarkably resourceful institution that convenes some of the brightest minds and the most interesting people. It is up to every one of us to explore it and to make the most of it. We have experts in all areas of research and scholarship, and every hallway conversation can lead to transformative ideas and productive collaborations. We have the resources to plan and execute challenging experiments, to collect and analyze complex data or to create impactful art. We have the opportunity and obligation to help create a better society. On a personal note, I also feel that it is wise to have a healthy work-life balance and family support in order to attain greater personal fulfillment and satisfaction.

Is there a fun or little-known fact about you that we could share?

Right after college and before graduate school, I worked three years as a truck driver (and I loved it!). It took that long — lots of back-and-forth snail mail — for my wife (also a Ph.D. in chemistry and a college professor) and me to earn admission to a graduate chemistry program. (We went to the University of British Columbia.) We shared parenting responsibilities as graduate students and as postdocs, demonstrating there are ways for supporting family teams to have parallel careers in higher education.

What keeps you inspired and passionate about your work and field? 

I am still amazed that chemists are able to design and construct molecules by bonding together a few atoms at a time, that we have the tools to see how those atoms are connected and how they move, and that we can change their properties by switching one or more atoms at a time. In particular, I am passionate about exploring chemical reactions in crystalline solids and to see how they may play a role in the design of crystalline molecular machines. There is nothing quite as exciting and rewarding as practicing and teaching science.

For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

Kelly Lytle Hernández and David Myers

History professors on New Yorker’s best books of 2022 list

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Kelly Lytle Hernández and David Myers

Kelly Lytle Hernández (left) and David Myers | UCLA; Scarlett Freund

Manon Snyder | 

Books authored or co-authored by UCLA history professors have been included on the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 So Far list: “Bad Mexicans” by Kelly Lytle Hernández and “American Shtetl,” co-written by David Myers.

“Bad Mexicans”

Kelly Lytle Hernández, the Thomas E. Lifka Professor of History and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, is a race, mass incarceration and immigration expert and an award-winning author. She is also the principal investigator for Million Dollar Hoods, a data-driven project that uses police and jail records to examine costs and incarceration disparities in Los Angeles neighborhoods.

In “Bad Mexicans,” Lytle Hernández uncovers the story about a band of Mexican revolutionaries — headed by the radical Ricardo Flores Magón — that helped spark the Mexican Revolution and lead to the eventual ousting of President Porfirio Díaz in 1911. The subsequent impact of the revolution was massive, causing more than a million Mexicans to migrate north. Lytle Hernández emphasizes that “you cannot understand U.S. history without Mexico and Mexicans.”

“American Shtetl”

David Myers is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History and director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. He has authored five books in the field of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history, and is co-editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review. Myers wrote “American Shtetl” with Nomi Stolzenberg, a professor at USC Gould School of Law.

“American Shtetl” dives into the history of a separatist Hasidic Jewish group which built its own village, Kiryas Joel, in upstate New York. Myers and Stolzenberg explore how America’s political, legal and economic institutions created this ethnographic response. “‘American Shtetl’ provides an unambiguous historical refutation of the idea that liberalism renders meaningful community impossible,” according to the New Yorker.

This article originally appeared at UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

UCLA Fulbright winners collage

Graduate students selected for Fulbright-Hays Fellowship

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UCLA Fulbright winners collage

UCLA’s honorees are (top row from left) Aurora Echevarria, Rebecca Waxman, Degenhart Brown, Carly Pope; and (bottom row) Yiming Ha, Jessie Stoolman, Benjamin Kantner. | UCLA

Vania Sciolini | 

The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship has been awarded to seven UCLA graduate students, the most chosen from any university in the nation.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the Fulbright-Hays program provides awardees the opportunity to study aspects of a society or societies, including their culture, economy, history and international relations. The fellowship is designed to contribute to developing and improving the study of modern foreign languages and area studies in the U.S.

The 2022 UCLA Fulbright-Hays fellows come from diverse disciplines. They will conduct their research in the Republic of Benin, Taiwan, Mexico, Panama, Morocco, Spain, India, the United Kingdom and the Brazilian Amazon.

The Fulbright-Hays research abroad program at UCLA is administered by the Division of Graduate Education.  More information is available at the UCLA Fulbright Fellowships website.

The 2022 awardees are:

Degenhart Brown, culture and performance, will study in the Republic of Benin. Using ethnographic fieldwork, Brown focuses on the pragmatism of syncretic religious practice, animal-based power objects, and the relationships between different species including pathogens and divinities to illustrate how traditional-medicine unions inform established knowledge of selfhood and well-being in contemporary Benin.

Yiming Ha, history, will study in Taiwan. Ha’s research focuses on changes to the military in Yuan and Ming China due to socio-economic factors and how the state responded to these changes. He is interested in how the shifts in military mobilization affected the state’s finances, what strategies the state employed in response, and the potential disconnect between the central and local officials in how to best manage the military.

Aurora Echavarria, urban planning, will study in Mexico. Echavarria’s research explores issues at the intersection of local public finance, urban inequality, and the political economy of land and property, with a focus on how local governments tax property in Latin America. Her fieldwork will employ experimental survey methods to examine how perceptions of public good provision influence levels of support for property taxation in Mexico.

Carly Pope, archaeology, will study in Panama. Pope’s research examines archaeological ceramics from Bocas del Toro, Panama, including locally made wares and foreign imports, and the potential they hold to elucidate both interregional systems of cultural interaction and community-level labor organization. She will conduct geochemical and mineralogical analysis of these materials to determine potential locations and methods of production.

Jessie Stoolman, anthropology, will study in Morocco and Spain. Her project focuses on how the Moroccan archival landscape shapes the collective memory of Black-Jewish history. She has published academic and non-academic writing in international journals, including Hespéris-Tamuda and Asymptote.

Rebecca Waxman, history, will study in India and the U.K. Waxman’s research examines occurrences of sexualized violence that marked turning points in modern India. By engaging in pressing historical and contemporary questions concerning sexual violence in India, she hopes to contribute to scholarship on gender, power and knowledge in colonial and postcolonial South Asia.

Benjamin Kantner, geography, will study in the Brazilian Amazon. His current project maps the relations between the capital city of Belém in the state of Pará and the Quilombola communities of the surrounding islands and waterways. This research will enhance recognition of the role traditional territories play in adapting urban areas to climate change and the extra-regional political networks increasingly used by them.

This article originally appeared at UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in a casino in scene from Rain Man | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

Recent UCLA grad helped Wikipedia set the record straight on ‘Rain Man’ and autism

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Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in a casino in scene from Rain Man | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise as Raymond Babbitt and Charlie Babbitt in “Rain Man.”

Lucy Berbeo | December 21, 2022

The 1988 film “Rain Man” won four Academy Awards, earned millions at the box office and moved audiences with its depiction of a central character with autism, played by Dustin Hoffman.

But at least some of that depiction obscured or misrepresented aspects of autism spectrum disorder. And because the movie has reached such a wide audience, those discrepancies have informed how generations of viewers perceive the condition. Until recently, many of the same issues also lived on in the Wikipedia entry about “Rain Man.”

That’s where Madeline Utter comes in. Before she graduated from UCLA in June, Utter took a course called “Performance and Disability Studies,” taught by visiting professor Elizabeth Guffey. As part of the course, Utter watched the film for the first time, and she was struck by elements that seemed to misrepresent autism spectrum disorder and savant syndrome. The latter is a condition in which a person with a developmental disorder shows remarkable brilliance in a specific area, such as music or math — the film’s protagonist, Raymond Babbitt, for example, is able to quickly perform complex mathematical calculations.

Madeline Utter

Madeline Utter | Courtesy of Madeline Utter

For a course project, Guffey tasked her students with researching and rewriting Wikipedia entries about representations of disability in performance to ensure they reflected the latest disability studies research. Utter chose “Rain Man” — and saw an opportunity to right a few things that the film, as well as the Wikipedia entry, had gotten wrong.

Wikipedia allows any user to edit articles directly with the proviso that revisions and additions must be attributable to reliable sources or they may be removed by other users. Utter revised the “Rain Man” article, adding context about how the film’s portrayal of neurodivergent conditions led to public misunderstanding.

Wikipedia bills itself as the world’s largest reference website, and the “Rain Man” entry typically receives about 2,500 visitors a day. Since Utter updated the page in May, it has been viewed more than 465,000 times. Utter has two brothers with autism, so the opportunity to improve the public’s understanding of the condition has been especially meaningful for her.

“From watching the film through a critical lens, to getting feedback from my peers on the article, to finally seeing the published article, I learned so much,” said Utter, who graduated in June with a major in communication and a minor in film studies. “The biggest impact that this project had on me was to start to be able to recognize the places in film where disability representation can be improved.”

UCLA’s disability studies program comprises courses in a range of academic subjects, from media arts to anthropology to nursing. Students play an active role in advancing creative approaches to service and advocacy, from improving health care for people with disabilities to creatively reimagining assistive technology using 3D modeling.

“Our students in UCLA Disability Studies are future leaders in their fields, and they are already helping to create a more inclusive society,” said Adriana Galván, dean of undergraduate education in the UCLA College. “By participating in projects such as this one, they are making a real-world impact.”

A program operated by Wiki Education invites college students to write Wikipedia entries through their coursework. The nonprofit profiled Utter’s project on its website.

This article originally appeared at UCLA Newsroom. For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

Dipterocarp Forest at Danum Valley | Mike Prince/FlickrDipterocarp Forest at Danum Valley | Mike Prince/Flickr

Understanding what makes rainforests distinct from one another could advance conservation efforts

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Even when they’re located near each other, not all rainforests are the same, UCLA-led research finds

Dipterocarp Forest at Danum Valley | Mike Prince/Flickr

A rainforest in Danum Valley, Malaysia. New UCLA-led research demonstrates how diverse rainforests can be, even when they are located in the same region. | Mike Prince/Flickr

Anna Novoselov | October 27, 2022

For many people, the phrase “tropical rainforest” might conjure the image of a landscape teeming with vegetation, exotic animals and extraordinary beauty.

But while the world’s rainforests do share some qualities — including serving as habitats for a diverse range of wildlife and storing vast amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide — new UCLA-led research shows just how different rainforests can be, even when they’re located near each other.

“Tropical forests are not a monolith,” said UCLA ecologist Elsa Ordway, lead author of the study, which was published Oct. 20 in Communications Earth & Environment.

The study is significant because understanding how forests vary from one another could help shape conservation initiatives and efforts to fight climate change. Decision-makers and stakeholders could use the research to more accurately predict how much forests mitigate climate change — and how vulnerable they are to it.

Vegetation in tropical forests, which draws carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis, stores about one-fourth of Earth’s terrestrial carbon in leaves, trunks and roots. The specific species living in a forest affect how much carbon it can hold and determine how it responds to natural and human disturbances.

Ordway and her co-authors analyzed two tropical landscapes in the Malaysian portion of Borneo, categorizing them into seven different types based on their growth rates, mortality rates, how much carbon they can hold and other characteristics.

To categorize the rainforests, the researchers used two types of remote sensing technology: a satellite-based laser detection system called LiDAR to measure the height and distribution of vegetation, and spectroscopy to determine the forests’ chemical composition.

Those measurements helped crystallize how the forests vary both in terms of their structure — tree height, foliage shape and gaps in the canopy, for example — and their function — how ecosystems work and how natural resources are distributed.

The researchers found that the two most important variables for distinguishing forest types were leaf mass per area and the amount of phosphorus contained in the canopy — the upper layer of the forest that is formed by treetops. Phosphorus is a chemical essential to plant growth.

“To be able to actually characterize these differences at large scales has really huge value for our ability to understand these forests and how they function,” Ordway said.

Borneo is the world’s third largest island. Its forests harbor a diverse range of habitats that support more than 15,000 plant species and more than 1,400 animal species. Just 25 acres of Bornean forest coud contain about 700 different tree species — nearly as many as in all of North America.

Since the 1960s, huge swaths of the island’s forests have been destroyed due to deforestation, fires, illegal logging and agricultural expansion — especially for palm oil plantations.

Mapping forests gives policymakers a better understanding of rainforests’ conservation value so they can pass laws and regulations to protect them. In addition, accurately determining rainforests’ carbon storage capacity can help shape market-based conservation programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries — known as REDD+ — which places a cash value on the carbon that rainforests prevent from being released into the atmosphere. Through such programs, large international banks have invested large sums to benefit countries that protect their forests.

And as satellite-based remote sensing improves, so too will the data available to scientists and policymakers. Upcoming satellite missions, such as a NASA hyperspectral satellite mission that is scheduled to launch in 2028, are expected to make vast amounts of data available for free, which could open the door to further studies on differences in forest function. The UCLA-led study could serve as a framework for future analyses and for identifying which variables are meaningful.

“We will soon have available an incredible amount of remote sensing data that’s going to be game-changing for what we’re able to measure and monitor across ecosystems globally,” Ordway said.

Until now, forest types have been mapped by researchers on the ground who identify different species and measure functional traits. But that type of analysis is limited by cost and scientists’ ability to access certain parts of rainforests.

Ordway said the same approach her team used could also be extended to studying other types of forests and other ecosystems.

This article originally appeared at UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Emmy-winning actor and comedic icon Jim Varney played the beloved character Ernest P. Worrell. | Courtesy of PaganomationEmmy-winning actor and comedic icon Jim Varney played the beloved character Ernest P. Worrell. | Courtesy of Paganomation

UCLA’s Jim Varney Scholarship pays the actor’s generous legacy forward

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Jim Varney, as the beloved character Ernest P. Worrell, holds a portrait of himself.

Emmy-winning actor and comedic icon Jim Varney played the beloved character Ernest P. Worrell. | Courtesy of Paganomation

Jonathan Riggs | December 20, 2022

The Kentucky-born comedian Jim Varney cared deeply about young people and their dreams.

Millions of kids — and kids at heart — delighted in the onscreen antics of the Emmy-winning actor, in and out of his beloved character of Ernest P. Worrell.

Before he died of cancer in 2000, Varney took his compassion one step further by laying the groundwork for a scholarship to support promising, financial-aid-eligible students from two states that meant a great deal to him personally: Kentucky and Tennessee. Recipients of the Jim Varney Scholarship must also plan to complete an undergraduate degree in the UCLA College and have an interest in the performing arts.

“This is one of UCLA’s few full-ride scholarships, and every single one of the students I’ve worked with who received it has had a phenomenal experience,” said Angela Deaver Campbell, director of the UCLA Scholarship Resource Center. “It’s so special, not just because it is a life-transforming opportunity for students and for their families, but also because we are honoring the final wishes of Mr. Varney, who wanted to make this opportunity possible.”

There have been 11 Varney Scholars so far, including the most recent, Joshua Hays, a current second-year biology major from Louisville, Kentucky whose dream is to become a physician specializing in pediatric orthopedics.

Joshua Hays, Varney Scholar

Joshua Hays, Varney Scholar

“Receiving this scholarship was one of the greatest honors and blessings in my life — I am the fifth of six children, and so the Varney Foundation’s generosity relieves such a burden from my family,” Hays said. “I am and will always be forever grateful to the Varney Foundation’s generosity for making the dreams of some kid from Kentucky a reality. I hope to pay it forward one day, following Mr. Varney’s example in changing lives.”

Over the course of his career, the Shakespearean-trained Varney built an impressive resume that includes more than 3,000 commercials, nine Ernest movies and originating the role of Slinky Dog in the “Toy Story” franchise. His career almost didn’t get started, though, due to an actors’ strike when he first came to Hollywood, forcing Varney to return to Kentucky and earn a living driving a truck.

“Jim always said if he’d had a college education, he could have stuck it out here sooner, and that a college education was the key to achieving your dreams,” said Jane Varney, president of the Varney Foundation, which funds the scholarship. “Jim wanted to pay his success forward and ensure that kids from Kentucky and Tennessee would have the opportunity to make it at a world-class school like UCLA.”

Without exception, that is what each scholarship recipient has done.

“Each year, the Varney Scholars thrive academically, bring diverse artistic expression and follow their passions as a result of these generous awards that honor Jim Varney’s remarkable legacy,” said Adriana Galván, dean of the division of undergraduate education. “We deeply value our longstanding partnership with the Jim Varney Foundation and look forward to many more years of working together to celebrate Jim and foster future generations of bright young change-makers at UCLA.”

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