College Newsletter – UCLA College

Kanon Mori, wearing a nametag, speaks into a microphone

Leading the Japan-America Innovators of Medicine

January 12, 2023/in College News, College Newsletter, Featured Stories, Life Sciences, Our Stories, Physical Sciences, Students, Undergraduate Education /by Lucy Berbeo

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

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, 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.

Miguel García-Garibay in the Royce Hall portico

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

January 9, 2023/in Box 5, Campus & Community, College News, College Newsletter, Faculty, Featured Stories, Our Stories /by Lucy Berbeo

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.

Haven Hunt

Making a difference through the power of storytelling

December 16, 2022/in Box 4, College Newsletter, Featured Stories, Humanities, Our Stories, Students /by Lucy Berbeo

UCLA undergraduate student Arushi Avachat on writing and publishing her first novel

Arushi Avachat, a third-year English and political science student at UCLA, will see her debut novel hit bookstore shelves in fall 2023. | Photo by Haven Hunt

Lucy Berbeo | December 16, 2022

Now in her third year as an English and political science student at UCLA, Arushi Avachat is celebrating an extraordinary milestone: the forthcoming publication of her debut novel, which is set for release in fall 2023. “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment,” a work of young adult fiction inspired by Bollywood dramas from decades past, was picked up by Wednesday Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group at Macmillan.

Avachat, a Bay Area native who finished drafting the novel during her first year at UCLA, also works in political communications and as an organizer for progressive social causes. She spoke with the UCLA College about writing through the pandemic, navigating the publishing world — and why storytelling is a powerful means to create social change.

What was it like writing a novel while navigating life as an undergraduate student?
I finished the first draft of “Arya” during the winter quarter of my first year at UCLA. As a COVID freshman, writing my novel was often a meaningful escape from the stress and uncertainties of that time. Virtual school also meant I had a lot more time to devote to writing. I was able to write for several hours each day in addition to coursework, which would definitely not be possible anymore!

What does it mean to you to see your first book slated for publication? What were some of your inspirations and challenges on this journey?
It feels so exciting and still so unbelievable! I have wanted this for as long as I can remember. The biggest challenge for me was definitely finishing my first draft. I have been a writer for most of my life, and from middle school onward, I was never not working on a novel-in-progress — “in progress” being the operative phrase, as I inevitably abandoned each manuscript in pursuit of a new, shinier idea. It was one of my proudest moments to finally complete my novel. I found a lot of inspiration from prominent South Asian writers such as Sanjena Sathian, Roshani Chokshi and Sabaa Tahir, whose careers I deeply admire and who were all so generous with advice during my publishing journey.

How has your experience at UCLA influenced your journey as a writer?
My time at UCLA has completely reinforced my desire to pursue a career as a writer. I am a third-year English student, and I am hoping to concentrate in creative writing. The fiction workshops I’ve taken so far have been really rewarding — it’s so exciting to belong to a community of writers, and I’ve loved learning from professors who have built long-lasting careers for themselves as authors. Workshop has also forced me to write much more than I typically do. By nature, I am a very slow writer, and having to produce a new short story every week (while challenging!) has helped me get into the habit of writing daily — and being comfortable with bad first drafts.

What inspired “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment,” and what do you hope readers will take away from your novel?
When I was fourteen, I wrote a short story about two sisters and their mother that I was very attached to. I felt like I had a lot more to say about those characters, and slowly, a novel idea started to emerge. I had the thought that I wanted this book to read like my favorite Bollywood dramas from the ‘90s and 2000s, and the wedding backdrop and cinematic structure evolved from there. My protagonist Arya’s older sister is home for the first time in three years to plan her wedding, and shaadi season is filled with family conflict, gossipy aunties and a rivals-to-lovers romance in the school setting.

Sisterhood is at the heart of this novel. While drafting, I spent a lot of time thinking about the moment when an elder sibling leaves home, and the younger sibling becomes a de facto only child. There can be a lot of resentment and messy feelings attached to this shift, especially if one’s home life is far from perfect. I wanted to explore this dynamic deeply. I also just had a lot of fun drafting this dramatic, hopeful, joyful book. I hope “Arya” will bring readers the same comfort that writing it brought me.

“In addition to creative writing, I have also worked extensively in political communications. Both fields have helped me realize how storytelling works to generate empathy, shape public opinion, and help people feel seen. I hope to contribute to this cause through my novels, which will always center the voices of Indian women, who remain largely underrepresented in literature.”

You’ve said that you see storytelling as an important means to achieve social change. Can you share more about this?
In addition to creative writing, I have also worked extensively in political communications. Both fields have helped me realize how storytelling works to generate empathy, shape public opinion, and help people feel seen. I hope to contribute to this cause through my novels, which will always center the voices of Indian women, who remain largely underrepresented in literature.

I was eighteen the first time I read a YA novel by an Indian author (“When Dimple Met Rishi” by Sandhya Menon), and I still remember the wonder and excitement I felt reading a story about a girl that looked like me. During my childhood, the books I had access to were overwhelmingly white, as was the publishing industry at large. Only recently has that begun to shift, and the young adult category in particular has led the charge in creating space for diverse stories.

I feel really proud to belong to that change. It’s so important for young people specifically to see themselves positively represented in media and to know they deserve to have their voices centered, not relegated to the sidelines as has historically been the case. I have much respect and admiration for the South Asian authors who came before me and made my career a possibility, and I’m hopeful that the book industry will continue to grow truly representative of its readers in the years to come.

What advice would you give to other young writers navigating the publishing world?
Really internalize the message that your publishing goals are a matter of when, not if. In an industry where nothing is guaranteed but rejection, and lots of it, it’s so important to have a strong sense of self-confidence in your work. I received over 40 nos from agents before receiving my first offer of representation. It was easy to get anxious during this time, but I kept reminding myself that I would always be a writer, and if not this book, then the next, or the next, would get me published. Having this mentality helped take some of the stress away from the process and kept my love for writing untainted by insecurity.

What’s next on your horizon?
It’s surreal to remember that this is just the beginning of my career — in so many ways, publishing “Arya” feels like a culmination of something; this is the end goal I have worked toward for so long. But I have so many more books left in me, and I feel so exhilarated by the variety of projects I have planned for the future. After “Arya,” I have a second young adult contemporary novel slated to release with Wednesday Books. Beyond that, I have ideas for a YA high fantasy, a YA historical fiction, an adult rom-com, and a middle grade contemporary. At some point in my life, I would love to write a murder mystery, too.

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

With redesign, UCLA’s Washington, D.C. program welcomes students from all majors

September 28, 2022/in College Newsletter /by Lucy Berbeo

The revamp is in line with UCLA’s broader commitment to community-engaged research and learning

UCLA student Bruce Fan sits in an office in Washington, D.C., as part of his quarter in the nation’s capital. | Courtesy of Bruce Fan

By Elizabeth Kivowitz

Whether a student is studying linguistics or philosophy, international development studies or history, psychology or environmental science, there’s a space for them in UCLA’s Quarter in Washington program.

The program, which was revamped last year, offers a wider-than-ever variety of internships that should appeal to students with interests across disciplines.

“My goal is to build bridges with a broad range of disciplines including labor studies, English and the physical and life sciences so that all will see the value of taking time for study and interning in Washington, D.C., and more students will take advantage of the opportunity,” said Juliet Williams, faculty director of the program and a professor of gender studies.

Click here to read the full story.

Although the program’s fees are similar to those of a quarter at UCLA, many students experiences barriers to access due to hidden costs. (For example, UCLA students who live at home would have to pay for housing at the UCDC Center dorms.) Fellowships of just $1,000 to $2,000 per participant could enable even more students to take advantage of this remarkable opportunity while diversifying our cohort.

To learn more about supporting UCLA’s Quarter in Washington students, contact Samantha Booras at sbooras@support.ucla.edu.

Image of a blue banner depicting the Bruin bear statue, with the text: UCLA #1 Public University

UCLA ranked No. 1 public university by U.S. News & World Report for sixth straight year

September 11, 2022/in Awards & Honors, Campus & Community, College News, College Newsletter, Featured Stories, Undergraduate Education /by Lucy Berbeo

‘For veterans, there are no other institutions as approachable and supportive as UCLA,’ says medical student Nam Yong Cho

Image of a blue banner depicting Royce Hall and the Bruin bear statue, with the text: UCLA #1 Public University: The number one public university in the nation, three years in a row.

Mike Fricano and Alison Hewitt | September 11, 2022

As a first-generation student, Alvina Zhan knew that getting accepted to a top-tier university was only the first of her challenges. Zhan wanted to find a school that offered her a huge span of education opportunities while fostering her individual success the way a small liberal arts college would.

That alignment brought her to UCLA, where she has excelled.

“Accessibility and strong academic support are everything to me,” said Zhan, a sophomore from the Bay Area city of Fremont, California, who credits UCLA’s Academic Advancement Program and specifically the program’s student, faculty and staff mentors with helping her adjust to the rigors of higher education.

“For many first-generation students like myself, we often don’t have the luxury to explore our academic interests and instead have to focus on supporting our families throughout high school,” Zhan said. “However, UCLA provided me the space I needed to realize my academic and personal goals.”

That commitment to student success has attracted the attention not only of prospective students and their families — UCLA has been the nation’s most applied-to school for several years running — but also of U.S. News & World Report, which has once again named UCLA the No. 1 public university in the United States in its annual “Best Colleges” rankings.

This is the sixth consecutive year UCLA has been ranked No. 1.

The ranking, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said, “is a recognition of the hard work of the staff and faculty, who believe deeply in our academic mission and drive it forward, even in the most difficult periods. It is a recognition of our students’ brilliance, creativity, ambition and persistence, both in their time on campus and in their lives as alumni.”

UCLA shares the top honor among public schools this year with UC Berkeley. Four other University of California campuses are among the top 10 public universities: UC Santa Barbara (No. 7), UC Irvine (8, tied), UC San Diego (8, tied) and UC Davis (10, tied).

UCLA is ranked highest among the top 20 national universities, public or private, for social mobility, a measurement of the achievement of students from challenging socioeconomic backgrounds. U.S. News considers the number of Pell Grant recipients enrolled, the six-year graduation rate for these students and how that rate compares to non–Pell Grant recipients.

For the sixth year in a row, UCLA was named the No. 1 public university for veterans. UC Berkeley also tied with UCLA in that category.

U.S. Army veteran Nam Yong Cho made UCLA his No. 1 choice twice over, first for his bachelor’s degree and then for medical school. Now studying to be a trauma surgeon, Cho moved to California from South Korea as a child. Growing up in Irvine, he was attracted to UCLA.

“Here was one of the best schools in the country, within driving distance of home,” said Cho, now 28.

He always knew he would serve in the military, he said, and to help his family with the cost of his education, he left UCLA in his junior year and enlisted in 2015. Serving in the Army took Cho to Afghanistan, where his work as a combat medic sparked his interest in trauma surgery. In 2019, he returned to complete his bachelor’s degree and in 2021 entered the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“For veterans, there are no other institutions as approachable and supportive as UCLA,” Cho said. “Only UCLA has a specific Veteran Resource Center that guides you in using your veteran benefits and connects you with financial aid programs, instead of having to research it all yourself.”

The U.S. News “Best Colleges” rankings are based on 17 measures, including graduation and retention rates, class size and the average federal loan debt of graduates, as well as schools’ academic reputation, as determined by a peer assessment survey of presidents, provosts and deans of admissions at U.S. colleges.

While UCLA performs extremely well across the criteria, its excellence is also rooted in efforts not reflected in U.S. News rankings. For example, UCLA is the only campus in the UC system to guarantee housing to all students who seek it for the duration of their undergraduate education, and it regularly wins awards for its food and dining facilities. UCLA has earned a reputation as a place where people from all walks of life can shape their future success.

Emelin Vivar came to UCLA thanks to her mentor, Venezia Ramirez. During Ramirez’s senior year at UCLA, she encouraged Vivar, who was then in high school, to envision herself on campus in Westwood. The pair shared a similar background as young Latinas from South Los Angeles who had dreams of expanding their experiences at a university.

“I could have never dreamed of attending UCLA if I had not met a Latina student like Venezia,” said Vivar, who is now in her second year.

Vivar recalled that during their weekly talks, Ramirez would tell her that after graduating from UCLA she hoped to someday work for NASA or conduct research to address environmental inequities affecting her community. That type of aspirational talk left a huge impression on Vivar.

“It was my dream school since then.”

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

Image of Angela Deaver Campbell with three 2019 graduates who benefited from the Scholarship Resource Center’s support, Wesley Armstrong, Sereena Nand and Austin Lee.

Image credit: Alyssa Bierce/UCLA College

25 years of helping UCLA students graduate with less debt

April 5, 2022/in Box 6, College News, College Newsletter, Featured Stories, Our Stories, Students /by Lucy Berbeo

Scholarship Resource Center celebrates a quarter-century of connecting Bruins with financial support, mentorship, community

Angela Deaver Campbell with three 2019 graduates who benefited from the Scholarship Resource Center’s support, Wesley Armstrong, Sereena Nand and Austin Lee. Image credit: Alyssa Bierce/UCLA College

By Jonathan Riggs | April 5, 2022

Ask Angela Deaver Campbell how she envisioned the work of the UCLA Scholarship Resource Center, which she launched in 1996, and you’ll get a fairly understated answer: “I saw us as ambassadors of goodwill helping students to graduate with less debt.”

Ask any of the hundreds of students she and her team have helped over the past 25 years, however, and their responses speak to the center’s profound impact.

“I absolutely would not be where I am today without Angela’s and the SRC’s support,” said Aleksandr Katsnelson, a 2009 graduate who went on to earn a law degree from Harvard University. “Angela wore many hats during our interactions: role model, emotional support provider and hero.”

Helping students compete for and win scholarships is the most visible aspect of their mission, but the resource center’s staff also brings a compassionate, high-touch approach to aiding students in other critical ways, including presentation skills, goal-setting and navigating complicated institutional structures.

Constantly evolving with the times, the center proved a beacon for students whose financial situations became unpredictable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was really lost as to how to navigate my financial situation, and the SRC addressed all of my questions and concerns,” said Alice Yanovsky, a 2021 graduate who, with guidance from the center, earned a Mandel and Winick Undergraduate Scholarship. “They helped me pay for my last year of school during the peak of the pandemic, which was a really scary time.”

The center’s legacy keeps growing thanks to Deaver Campbell, who still serves as director, and assistant director Rebecca Blustein, student affairs officer Mac Harris and a group of graduate students who act as student affairs advisors. And while its scope has expanded, the center’s core mission remains unchanged: to provide scholarship information, resources, mentoring and support to all UCLA students.

“Most colleges and universities do not have a center like this — we were way ahead of the curve in 1996 in reimagining the 20th century model of having students sink or swim on their own in the private scholarship process,” Deaver Campbell said. “The SRC is unique in that we provide students with high-touch, holistic service and counseling, regardless of their financial aid eligibility.”

The center’s emphasis on treating students as unique individuals, as opposed to a one-size-fits-all approach, hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Starting from day one, I knew that I could go to Angela and her team with questions about my scholarship, academics or even job searches,” said Max Harrell, a 2021 graduate whose education was supported by a Thelma L. Culverson Scholarship, which covers California resident tuition and room and board. “The fact that everyone at the SRC knows your name, your goals on campus and even what classes you’re taking, demonstrates how much they want you to succeed.”

When the center opened in 1996, its sole focus was to help students locate and apply for scholarships from off-campus sources. But in 1998, staff began working with development officers at the UCLA College to support students applying for 18 private donor-funded scholarships. Today, the number of scholarships overseen by the resource center has grown to around 100; and of the approximately $5 million in donor-funded scholarships overseen by UCLA’s Division of Undergraduate Education, the center administers about half.

Key to the center’s success are the UCLA graduate students who provide writing and counseling support, and run workshops on how to secure scholarships. Over the years, more than 50 graduate students have served in that role, and many have gone on to use their skills in faculty, administrative and student support positions at other institutions — at East Los Angeles College, the University of Chicago, Brown University and the University of Oregon, to name a few.

One of the center’s current priorities is empowering more students to vie for the world’s most competitive scholarships — including the Rhodes, Marshall, Mitchell, Truman and Churchill — while coordinating the campus process for them. Leading that charge is Blustein, the assistant director, who can draw on her experience not only as a former student affairs advisor, but also as a past winner of a Mitchell scholarship.

Herman Luis Chavez, who expects to graduate from UCLA in June, is just one of the students benefiting from that approach. “Dr. Blustein was there for me every step of the way, from editing my application essays to providing mock interviews,” said Chavez, who received support from the center on his way to winning a Marshall scholarship and becoming a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship.

But beyond its ability to help students win scholarships, Blustein said, the center aims to empower all students who walk through its doors, no matter where they go or what they do after UCLA.

“The process of applying for scholarships — win or lose — was crucial to help me visualize my career goals and instrumental to prepare me for where I am today,” said Nathan Mallipeddi, a 2020 graduate who earned both Strauss and Fulbright scholarships and is now a first-year medical student at Harvard.

As the center begins its second quarter-century, Deaver Campbell has identified another important goal: securing independent support to help ensure it can continue to thrive regardless of statewide budget cuts.

“We would love for a donor to make the SRC’s funding permanent, so that no economic downturn could ever affect our ability to help change lives,” Deaver Campbell said. “Every year, more students and families come to us for solutions. Our work is too important to be vulnerable.”

Many students who have been helped by the Scholarship Resource Center have learned to appreciate the importance of philanthropy and some, like Darnel Grant, hope to become future donors themselves.

“The SRC provided me with constant support and encouragement throughout my undergraduate journey. They made me feel I was not going through my educational process alone,” said Grant, a recipient of the Eugene and Maxine Rosenfeld Scholarship who expects to graduate in June. “Now, my life’s goal is to help others to the same degree that the SRC helped me.”

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

Image credit: Daniel Blumstein/UCLA

The secret to longevity? Ask a yellow-bellied marmot

April 4, 2022/in Box 6, College News, College Newsletter, Faculty, Featured Stories /by Lucy Berbeo

UCLA-led study shows that aging slows to a crawl when the animals hibernate

During their time hibernating, marmots’ breathing slows, they burn a single gram of fat per day, and their body temperature plummets to the point that “they feel like fuzzy, cold rocks.” Image credit: Daniel Blumstein/UCLA

By Stuart Wolpert

What if you were told there was a completely natural way to stop your body from aging? The trick: You’d have to hibernate from September to May each year.

That’s what a team of UCLA biologists and colleagues studying yellow-bellied marmots discovered. These large ground squirrels are able to virtually halt the aging process during the seven to eight months they spend hibernating in their underground burrows, the researchers report today in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The study, the first to analyze the rate of aging among marmots in the wild, shows that this anti-aging phenomenon kicks in once the animals reach 2 years old, their age of sexual maturity.

The researchers studied marmot blood samples collected over multiple summer seasons in Colorado, when the animals are active above ground, to build statistical models that allowed them to estimate what occurred during hibernation. They assessed the biological aging of the marmots based on what are known as epigenetic changes — hundreds of chemical modifications that occur to their DNA.

“Our results from different statistical approaches reveal that epigenetic aging essentially stalls during hibernation,” said lead author Gabriela Pinho, who conducted the study as a UCLA doctoral student advised by Daniel Blumstein and Robert Wayne, professors of ecology and evolutionary biology. “We found that the epigenetic age of marmots increases during the active season, stops during hibernation and continues to increase in the next active season.”

This process, the researchers said, helps explain why the average life span of a yellow-bellied marmot is longer than would be expected from its body weight.

Hibernation, an evolutionary adaptation that allows animals to survive in harsh seasonal environments where there is no food and temperatures are very low, is common among smaller mammals, like marmots, native to the mountainous western regions of the U.S. and Canada.

The marmots’ hibernation alternates between periods of metabolic suppression that last a week or two and shorter periods of increased metabolism, which generally last less than a day. During metabolic suppression, their breathing slows and their body temperature drops dramatically, to the point that “they feel like fuzzy, cold rocks,” Blumstein said.

In addition, they use a miniscule amount of energy, burning about a single gram of fat a day. “That’s essentially nothing for a 5,000-to-6,000–gram (11–13 lbs.) animal,” Pinho noted. This allows them to save energy and survive long periods without food.

During their active summer season, marmots eat a lot, doubling their weight so that they have sufficient fat to survive the next hibernation period.

All of these hibernation-related conditions — diminished food consumption, low body temperature and reduced metabolism — are known to counter the aging process and promote longevity, the researchers said. This delayed aging is likely to occur in other mammals that hibernate, they said, because the molecular and physiological changes are similar.

“This study is the closest scientists have gotten to showing that biological processes involved in hibernation are important contributors to their longer-than-expected life span based on their body weight,” said Pinho, now a researcher with the nonprofit Institute of Ecological Research’s Lowland Tapir Conservation Initiative in Brazil.

“The fact that we are able to detect this reduced aging during hibernation in a wild population means the effect of hibernation on slowing aging is really strong,” said Blumstein, a member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and a senior author of the study. “This study was possible only because we had access to blood samples from free-living animals whose ages are known. Not many wild populations have detailed information about individual chronological age, and this reinforces the importance of long-term field projects.”

There may be biomedical advantages to inducing hibernation conditions in humans or human cells, the researchers said — to preserve organs for transplantation, for example, or as part of long-term space missions.

For the current publication, Pinho and her colleagues studied 73 female yellow-bellied marmots throughout their lives and collected blood samples every two weeks over 14 active seasons, analyzing them regularly. The marmots’ chronological age was calculated based on the date at which juveniles first emerged from their natal burrows. (The age of male marmots is difficult to determine, the researchers said, because they often migrate from one area to another.)

The research is part of part of a 60-year study of yellow-bellied marmots based at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado and was funded by Brazil’s Science Without Borders program, part of the country’s National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development, and the National Geographic Society, a Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory research fellowship and the National Science Foundation.

Other senior study authors are Robert Wayne; Matteo Pellegrini, a UCLA professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology; Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics and biostatistics at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health who developed the “epigenetic clock” in 2013; Julien Martin from Canada’s University of Ottawa; and Sagi Snir from Israel’s University of Haifa. The authors received insights from UCLA’s Statistical Consulting Group.

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

Image of actor Vin Diesel with director Justin Lin on the set of “F9: The Fast Saga.”

Courtesy of Universal Studios

People of color helped keep movie business afloat during pandemic

April 4, 2022/in Box 5, College News, College Newsletter, Faculty, Featured Stories /by Lucy Berbeo

UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report emphasizes importance of minority audiences

Actor Vin Diesel, left, with director Justin Lin on the set of “F9: The Fast Saga.” The movie, which featured a cast that was more than 50% minority, was the year’s third highest-grossing film at the box office. Image Courtesy of Universal Studios

By Jessica Wolf | March 24, 2022

A large percentage of the movie business’s box office revenue and home viewership was driven by consumers of color in 2021, according to UCLA’s latest Hollywood Diversity Report. The report examines the 252 top-performing English-language films — based on box office receipts and streaming data — during the second year that the COVID-19 pandemic forced movie studios to adopt unconventional release strategies.

The report tracks progress for women and minorities in acting, directing and writing roles, and analyzes audience segments by race and ethnicity, focusing on Asian American, Black, Latino and white audiences, and age, focusing on viewers 18 to 49.

Published twice a year — with one analysis of movies and another for TV — the Hollywood Diversity Report has consistently shown increases in the percentages of women and people of color in key jobs in front of the camera. Researchers have also tracked sustained, albeit stubborn, growth for women and minorities in Hollywood writing and directing jobs.

The report’s authors noted that 2021 was the first year since they began tracking such statistics that the majority of Academy Awards went to films that were directed by people of color and featured minority actors in lead roles. And the year’s third highest-grossing film at the box office was “F9: The Fast Saga,” which featured a cast that was more than 50% minority and was directed by Taiwanese American filmmaker Justin Lin. Sixty-five percent of opening weekend ticket sales for “F9” were to minority audiences, the highest figure among all films in the top 10.

The report tracks the numbers of writers, directors and actors who identify as Asian American, Black, Latino, Middle Eastern/North African, multiracial and Native American. People in those groups make up 42.7% of the U.S. population, and they form an important consumer bloc for entertainment, including movies.

For six of the 10 top-grossing films that opened in theaters in 2021, people of color accounted for the majority of opening-weekend U.S. ticket sales.

The report also analyzed box office performance based on the diversity of the movies’ casts — whether minority actors made up less than 11% of the cast, 11% to 20%, and so on, up to 51% or more. The study revealed that films with 21% to 30% minority actors had higher median global box office receipts than films in any other tier. That echoed a pattern since the report began tracking box office performance in 2011.

The report also found that, as in previous years, films with the least diverse casts (11% or less minority) were the poorest performers at the box office.

“Last year, every time a big movie exceeded expectations or broke a box office record, the majority of opening weekend audiences were people of color,” said Ana-Christina Ramón, a co-author of the report and the director of research and civic engagement for the UCLA College division of social sciences. “For people of color, and especially Latino families, theaters provided an excursion when almost everything else was shut down. In a sense, people of color kept studios afloat the past couple of years.

“Studios should consider them to be investors, and as investors, they should get a return in the form of representation.”

Overall, 43.1% of actors in the movies analyzed by the report were minorities. That’s more than double the percentage from 2011, the first year of data collected by the authors, when 20.7% of actors were minorities. And 31.0% of the top-performing films in 2021 had casts in which the majority of the actors were minorities.

“Minorities reached proportionate representation in 2020 for the first time when it comes to overall cast diversity in films, and that held true again in 2021,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of the social sciences at UCLA and co-author of the report.

Hunt said the phenomenon is probably due in part to the greater number of movies that are initially released on streaming services: Of the films analyzed in the report, 45.6% were released on streaming services only.

“We do think this dual-release strategy is here to stay,” Hunt said. “And it could have a lasting impact on diversity metrics in front of and behind the camera as studios think about how to finance content for different platforms.”

For example, the report found that women and people of color were far more likely than white men to direct films with budgets less than $20 million.

“A small production budget usually means that there is also little to no marketing and studio support, unless it’s from a production company known for making art house films,” Ramón said. “And that makes it more difficult for filmmakers to get the next opportunity if their films have to fight for attention.”

Hunt said studios are likely to bank on big-budget tentpole movies and sequels as traditional box office drivers, even as they continue to experiment with release platforms and adjust the amount of time between films’ theatrical releases and their arrival on streaming services or on DVD or Blu-ray.

Among the 2021 films released to streaming services, those with casts in which a majority of actors were non-white enjoyed the highest ratings among viewers aged 18 to 49 and in Black households. Seventy-two films with majority-minority casts were released on streaming in 2021, including “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “Coming 2 America,” “Vivo” and “Mortal Kombat.”

Chart showing that Among the White,24 Black, Latinx, multiracial, and MENA directors helming 2021 films, women lagged far behind men. Only among Asian and Native directors did women approach or reach parity with their male counterparts in securing these important positions.

“In 2021, diversity in front of the camera did not equate to more opportunities behind the camera for filmmakers who are women and people of color,” Ramón said. “They continue to receive less financing, even when they make films with white lead actors. Most of these filmmakers are relegated to low-budget films. For women of color, directing and writing opportunities are really the final frontier.”

Of the filmmakers who directed the movies analyzed in the report, 21.8% were women and 30.2% were people of color. Among the screenwriters for those films, 33.5% were women and 32.3% were people of color. Diversity in both jobs increased incrementally from 2020.

Out of the 76 minority directors of 2021’s top films, just 23 were women. And among Black, Latino and multiracial directors, at least twice as many were men as women in each racial or ethnic classification.

Although there was gender parity among Asian American and Native American directors, the overall numbers of directors from those groups were very small: just 17 Asian American directors and and just two Native American directors were represented in 2021. Among white directors, 32 were women and 143 were men.

The authors counted one trans woman among the directors of the 2021 films they analyzed.

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

UCLA Geography Aerial Archives

A bird’s-eye view of history

March 17, 2022/in College News, College Newsletter, Featured Stories, Our Stories /by Lucy Berbeo

Iconic aerial photo archives from the UCLA Department of Geography are a rich resource for researchers and the public

UCLA Geography Aerial Archives

By Jonathan Riggs

Today, anyone with a drone can capture dazzling images of the Earth below. But it wasn’t so long ago that would-be aerial photographers had to swing nearly 50-pound aerial cameras out of single-engine plane windows to do the same. The UCLA Department of Geography owns a huge number of such images in its Benjamin and Gladys Thomas Air Photo Archives, many of which detail California life and landscapes as far back as 1920. These remarkable images are as valuable artistically as they are historically.

In fact, the department has launched a new website featuring images from two of its collections, which are among the world’s best. Breathtaking images of Los Angeles and New York City—everything from a gorgeously moody shot of clouds over Manhattan on Oct. 15, 1931 to a view of UCLA and Westwood on Jan. 13, 1950—are available to purchase as fine art prints.

“The department was given these collections and has been maintaining them as best as possible for decades. However, some of the negatives are now over 100 years old and deserve better long-term treatment than we can give them,” says department chair Greg Okin. “Proceeds from the sale of images will allow us to preserve the physical images for posterity. It will also allow us to digitize them in order to ease access to the collection for generations to come.”

Overall, the Aerial Archives contain 120,000 black and white negatives, 100,000 black and white prints, and several hundred color images. What makes these collections so special is that they are exclusively oblique aerial photos, meaning they were taken from the side, rather than looking straight down as on a Google map. This angle captures a richness of detail that allows viewers to read signs, identify specific cars and even see what people were wearing.

UCLA Geography Aerial Archives

In addition to bringing the past to vivid life for members of the public, these archives are an incredible scholarly resource.

“We have students and faculty across the university as well as people in many industries who use this unique resource for their research,” Okin says. “We can see, for example, the development of the Los Angeles River as it was channelized. We can identify areas of beach erosion. We can see how specific areas of Los Angeles have changed through time. We can see how the city developed into the complex place that it is now as well as map the legacies of policies and attitudes in the region. The potential uses are endless.”

Another devoted user of the Archives is Kelly Turner, assistant professor of Urban Planning and of Geography and co-director of the Luskin Center for Innovation. She’s leading a multifaceted project to explore how the racist policy of redlining—and hundreds of other seemingly unrelated and everyday actions by homeowners and developers alike—caused the L.A. neighborhood of Watts to become nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the overall city average.

“Our project aims to use innovative, interdisciplinary methods to say what land change occurred, why and how much it changed the temperature,” Turner says. “We hope to arm the community of Watts with data, and to enable them to pinpoint specific elements that can be effectively changed.”

UCLA Geography Aerial Archives

Turner and her team, which includes anthropologist Bharat Venkat collecting oral histories and historian Marquis Vestal with expertise in the intersection of race and land transactions, are using the Archives to create a painstakingly accurate model of historic Watts over the years. By simulating the built environment so accurately, they are able to replicate the past microclimate conditions and determine how the temperature felt for the average citizen on the street on a given day.

“This project wouldn’t be possible without these archives. We need to know the exact placement of features like walls and sidewalks to build the model,” Turner says. “This high resolution imagery allows us to revisit a place with methods that were not available in the 1920s or ’50s to glean new insights that are relevant to contemporary debates about heat and environmental justice.”

“Archival photos reveal the history of planning decisions,” adds Tiffany Rivera, an urban and regional planning graduate student who is assisting on the project. “I look at these images to inform more sustainable and equitable urban designs.”

It’s fitting that these collections landed at UCLA: Los Angeles was a nexus for early aerial photography, and early motion pictures used aerial photography starting in the 1920s. These two iconic industries essentially grew up together just a few miles from campus, making the Archives especially meaningful for the UCLA community.

“We invite anyone interested to check out this incredible world-class resource, either on our website or to reach out and make an in-person visit,” says Okin. “It’s a remarkable opportunity for everyone to see what the collection, and UCLA, have to offer while also providing the chance to own beautiful pieces of history.”

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

An image of the Madrigal family from the Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Encanto”

Courtesy of The Walt Disney Studios

UCLA botanist Felipe Zapata brings Colombia’s biodiversity to Academy Award winner ‘Encanto’

February 28, 2022/in College News, College Newsletter, Faculty, Featured Stories, Life Sciences, Research /by Lucy Berbeo

The outside walls of Colombian homes are commonly adorned with magenta-colored bougainvillea vines like those on the Madrigals’ house. Image courtesy of The Walt Disney Studios.

Felipe Zapata taps into his life’s work, as well as childhood memories, to give the animated film its distinctive flora

By Madeline Adamo

Felipe Zapata, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA

Felipe Zapata can vividly recall driving from Bogota, where he grew up, to Colombia’s Cocora Valley as a child to spend holidays and summers with family. He remembers crossing the rugged terrain of the Andes mountains as well as the descent into the warmer valleys marked by coffee plantations and greener tropical plants with blooms of many colors. The sudden appearance of wax palms, the tallest palm tree in the world, would signal to Zapata and his family that their destination was near.

It was those drives and the beauty of Colombia’s biodiversity — which includes staples such as the platanilla, a close relative of the banana tree; guadua, a neotropical bamboo; the guayacán, a tree with yellow flowers similar in form to the purple jacaranda tree; the yarumo, an umbrella-like tree with impressive leaves; and the presence birds like the great kiskadee and the parrot — that inspired Zapata, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the UCLA College, to become a botanist.

What he didn’t expect was that his research and lived experiences would influence the distinctive landscapes of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Encanto,” a film that tells the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia in a magical house adjacent to a vibrant town.

“Initially, it was going to be mainly about the wax palm,” said Zapata of his early advising on the film. But it quickly sprouted into much more. “All of a sudden it became an exploration of basically all the ecosystems in Colombia, and looking for key plants that you can identify and that they can easily draw.”

Image from “Encanto” of the character Mirabel standing in front of cloud forests

“There’s a kind of magic in these places,” said Felipe Zapata of the wax palms and cloud forests characteristic of the region where “Encanto” takes place.

Zapata, who specializes in the evolution of biological diversity, was soon bringing in his old field guides to familiarize filmmakers and artists with the region (also known as the country’s coffee region) and identifying birds, and native plants that people there would eat. Zapata enjoyed seeing some of his suggestions come to life in the film, from the herbs such as yerba buena and guasca that the character Julieta, who has the power to heal through food, wears in her apron, to the rendering of hummingbirds and toucans that frequent the vivid landscapes that provide part of the visual lushness of the film.

Zapata said he can’t choose one thing he’s most proud of, but that it might be how the representations of the wax palms and cloud forests set the tone for the film’s fantastical theme.

“There’s a kind of magic in these places,” said Zapata, whose Zoom background is wax palms and cloud forests on a cascading Colombian mountainside.

Zapata, who is also on the advisory committee of the UCLA Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden, said that he was initially contacted by Disney Animation after the garden’s former assistant director mentioned his name to Disney. The studio had asked if a Colombian researcher at UCLA could consult on biodiversity for the film.

Fast-forward about three years, and Zapata found himself sitting in the Hollywood premiere for “Encanto” among the filmmakers and stars such as Stephanie Beatriz (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), Diane Guerrero (“Orange is the New Black”), John Leguizamo (“Ice Age”) and María Cecilia Botero (“Enfermeras”). Also in the audience were members of the Colombian Cultural Trust, a group of Colombian experts who advised the filmmakers throughout the production.

“That was the first time that I saw the movie from beginning to end on a big screen, with the loud music and with multiple people from Colombia,” said Zapata, who is also a member of the UCLA Latin American Institute. “It was really, really exciting to see it.”

Members of the trust consulted on culture, anthropology, costume design, botany, music, language and architecture, as well as many other aspects of the film; the setting was inspired by the Cocora Valley in the early 20th century. Amongst the trust’s 10 members, Zapata was the only botanist.

“Encanto,” which has nabbed three Academy Award nominations, has made quite an impression on Zapata’s family back in Colombia, who went to see it in theaters after its November 2021 release, he said.

“They were so excited. My little cousins were looking for me in the movie — they thought that I was in it,” said Zapata, who was not able to talk about his role with the movie or in the Colombian Cultural Trust until after the film’s release.

Zapata said that filmmakers portrayed Colombia accurately, so much so that he got nostalgic when he saw the film for the first time. One of his favorite parts of the film, besides the complex narrative of the family, was seeing the small detail of the bamboo support beams within the walls of the Madrigals’ home. For Zapata, it evoked memories of the old houses he frequented during his memorable summers in the Cocora Valley.

Zapata, who was able to return home to Colombia last November, says that he’s happy to be able to share his line of work on such a creative platform.

“I always wanted to be able to engage the public and people who are not necessarily biologists,” Zapata said. “I was always looking for opportunities to do it, and this was amazing.”

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

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