Archive for category: Box 1

You are here: Home / Featured Stories / Box 1
Image of students in the UCLA Teaching KitchenPhoto credit: UCLA

UCLA food studies institute to tackle global food challenges

/in , , , /by
The institute will collaborate with a community of chefs and scholars in pursuit of a healthier population and planet
Image of students in the UCLA Teaching Kitchen

The chef-in-residence program that will begin this spring will expand the offerings of the UCLA Teaching Kitchen, which launched in 2019. Photo credit: UCLA

By Elizabeth Kivowitz

Increasingly, scholars are studying food — its production, preparation, sharing, consumption and disposal — to better understand and tackle global challenges such as climate change, health and social disparities and labor conditions, and to improve access to information.

Already a leader in the emerging field of food studies, UCLA has created an interdisciplinary institute devoted to research, teaching and policy about food, made possible by an anonymous $13.5 million gift.

The UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies will bring together faculty, staff, students, chefs and members of the community and house UCLA’s popular food studies minor and graduate certificate program. The gift will provide ongoing funding for research, curriculum and library resources, including the first endowed food studies librarian at a university, as well as hands-on experiential learning opportunities such as a new chef-in-residence program that would begin in spring 2022. It will expand the offerings of the UCLA Teaching Kitchen, launched in 2019, which helps students learn to cook healthy and affordable meals and which has operated remotely during the pandemic.

“Food is central to the human experience, and this new institute will play a leading role in examining aspects of our relationship with food as well as the ways in which food systems tie into larger issues like public health, sustainability and economic well-being,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “The institute exemplifies what UCLA does so well, which is bring communities together alongside experts from across the disciplines to address some of society’s most complex challenges.”

The institute bolsters the UC Office of the President’s Global Food Initiative, created in 2014 and focused on how to feed a world population expected to reach 8 billion by 2025.

“UCLA is uniquely positioned as a leader in food studies,” said biophysicist Amy Rowat, the inaugural holder of the Marcie H. Rothman Presidential Term Chair for Food Studies. “We are known for our strengths in the sciences and the arts, and have strong partnerships with community organizations dedicated to equal food access. We will also capitalize on UCLA’s location in one of the most diverse cities in the world, which is home to so many innovative chefs.”

Rowat, an associate professor of integrative biology and physiology in the UCLA College, is a pioneer in using food to introduce complex concepts in science to non-scientists. She is co-director of the UCLA Semel Healthy Campus Initiative EatWell pod and the founder and director of the Science and Food organization at UCLA. Rowat will spearhead many of the institute’s activities, including expanding her long-running science and food course and developing the chef-in-residence program, a 10-week interdisciplinary course in which chefs are paired with faculty to engage students on topics from food equity to the microbiome. Rowat’s lab will continue to develop sustainable options for food production.

Helping to advance the institute’s vision and Rowat’s work is UCLA Library’s new Rothman Family Food Studies Librarian. Alexandra Solodkaya is the first person to hold the position and she will curate a broad scope of food-related research and teaching services, materials and collections. Given the speed with which social media can amplify incorrect information, the food studies librarian will challenge students to think critically about sources.

“We are grateful for this gift — the largest in the division’s history — which will allow more of our students and faculty to delve into this growing area of inquiry,” said Adriana Galván, dean of the division of undergraduate education, who emphasized how the institute’s interdisciplinary approach would benefit students.

“Food can heal. The institute is looking at food from a system-based, interdisciplinary perspective to contribute to the health and well-being of the individual, community and the planet,” said Dr. Wendelin Slusser, associate vice provost of Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center at UCLA, whose work across campus and in Los Angeles helped build the foundation for the institute.

Food studies spans disciplines as disparate as anthropology, community health, life and physical sciences, genetics, and world arts and cultures. Popular courses include “Food and Health in Global Perspective,” “Food Studies & Food Justice in Los Angeles” and “Food Politics: Cultural Solutions to Political Problems.” In 2020, students in the course “Making Films About Food” documented the impacts of the pandemic on the lives of people involved in food supply chains, including mill operators, farm workers and truck drivers, as well as the paradox of food waste and global hunger. Capstone projects for the food studies minor include working with local organizations such as the Venice Family Clinic, the American Diabetes Association and the Garden School Foundation, or with policy centers in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

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

Image of Farwiza Farhan with baby elephantCourtesy of Farwiza Farhan

Farwiza Farhan wins UCLA’s Pritzker Award for environmental innovators

/in , , , /by

By David Colgan

Conservationist receives $100,000 for work to protect Indonesia’s species-rich Leuser Ecosystem

Image of Farwiza Farhan with baby elephant

Farhan works to protect the Leuser Ecosystem, the last place on Earth where tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans live together in the wild. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Farwiza Farhan

The UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability presented the 2021 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award to Farwiza Farhan, who seeks to conserve wildlife in ways that also sustain humans living on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Farhan was honored during an online ceremony on Nov. 18.

Farhan works with communities and courts to protect the Leuser Ecosystem — the last place on Earth where tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans live together in the wild. She founded and leads a nonprofit organization called HAkA. The name stands for Hutan, Alam dan Lingkungan Aceh, or Forest, Nature and Environment of Aceh; its goal is to ensure sustainable development plans serve humans and wildlife in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

“My desire to protect the forest initially comes from my love of wildlife, but the force that keeps me going is the strength of the people I work with,” Farhan said.

The Pritzker award, which is presented annually, carries a prize of $100,000 that is funded through a portion of a $20 million gift to UCLA from the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation. It is the field’s first major honor specifically for innovators under the age of 40 — those whose work stands to benefit most from the prize money and the prestige it conveys.

Farhan, 35, fights ecological threats with teams who spend time living among communities around the Leuser Ecosystem to better understand their needs. Recently, she mobilized community leaders in the region to file a civil lawsuit against a development plan that could legitimize road and hydropower schemes, rights to farm oil palm trees and new settlements in the ecosystem.

She also oversees a team that patrols and intercepts would-be wildlife poachers. Since it began, the group has reduced poaching in the region by 95%.

The Pritzker Award is open to anyone working to solve environmental challenges through any lens — from science to advocacy to entrepreneurism. There were three finalists for the 2021 prize, and all are focused on regional or local challenges.

The other finalists were David Diaz, an advocate for active transportation and environmental health in California’s San Gabriel Valley, and Chook-Chook Hillman, who brings traditional Karuk tribal perspectives to bear on ecological problems in the Klamath River basin in Northern California and Oregon. A panel of UCLA faculty members selected the finalists from among 18 candidates who were nominated by an international group of environmental leaders.

Image of Farwiza Farhan in the field, holding binoculars

Farhan is the founder of HAkA, an organization dedicated to ensuring that sustainable development plans serve humans and wildlife in Indonesia’s Aceh province. Photo credit: Courtesy of Farwiza Farhan

Farhan was chosen as the 2021 honoree by a panel of five distinguished judges: Kara Hurst, head of worldwide sustainability at Amazon; Anousheh Ansari, CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation; Chanell Fletcher, executive officer of environmental justice at the California Air Resources Board; Los Angeles City Council member Kevin De Léon; and Lori Garver, CEO of the philanthropic organization Earthrise Alliance.

“Today we are in the midst of an existential crisis that human beings have never experienced before,” De Léon said in a video message to Farhan. “Your work as a researcher and forest conservationist is crucial to reversing the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss.”

The announcement of Farhan as the winner was made by Tony Pritzker, who founded the award and is a member of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability’s advisory board.

“Congratulations to David, Farwiza and Chook-Chook for having the courage to lead your communities and the next generation of environmental leaders,” Pritzker said.

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

TV shows with diverse writers rooms, casts resonated with pandemic audiences

/in , , /by

By Jessica Wolf

The latest UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, published today, reveals that television viewers during the COVID-19 pandemic leaned into content that came out of diverse writers rooms and that featured diverse casts.

“We have seen this appetite for diverse content repeated over the history of our analyses,” said Darnell Hunt, co-author of the report and UCLA’s dean of social sciences. “The fact that shows with diverse writers rooms did well last year also illustrates that audiences are looking for authentic portrayals.”

The report, which covers statistics for the 2019–20 TV season, tracks racial and gender diversity among key job categories, as well as ratings and social media engagement for 461 scripted shows across 50 broadcast, cable and streaming providers.

The new study found a continued correlation between the racial makeup of shows’ writers and TV ratings. For example, among households of all races in 2019–20, the scripted broadcast shows that earned the highest ratings were those in which people of color made up between 31% and 40% of the credited writers.

Overall, racial diversity improved in almost every job category tracked by the report, and representation among women improved in about half of the job titles.

And for the first time in the report’s history, people of color had a higher percentage of scripted broadcast TV acting roles, 43.4%, than their overall percentage of the U.S. population.

Across all three platform types, there were more people of color credited as writers than in the previous report. Overall, people of color made up 26.4% of the credited writers for broadcast series last season (up from 23.4%), 28.6% of credited writers for cable (up from 25.8%) and 24.2% of credited writers for streaming (up from 22.8%). Most of those modest gains were recorded by women, according to the study.

But people of color are still largely underrepresented among TV writers, given that 42.7% of Americans are nonwhite.

Lagging representation among Latino actors, directors

Latino representation in all job categories remained flat from the previous year, and Latinos hold far fewer TV jobs than their share of the U.S. population overall would predict. Latino actors held just 6.3% of broadcast TV roles, 5.7% in cable and 5.5% in streaming. Meanwhile, Latino directors were responsible for only 5.4% of broadcast TV episodes, 3.5% of cable episodes and 3.0% of streaming episodes.

“This UCLA report clearly demonstrates that more work is necessary to achieve more accurate representation and truly authentic portrayals in American television,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas. ”I hope this report encourages entertainment executives to reevaluate their systems for recruiting, retaining, and promoting Latinx talent, work in earnest to make changes, and create a more inclusive culture.”

According to the report, a significant proportion of 2019–20 TV content — 35% of broadcast shows, 22.9% of cable and 25.7% of streaming — was made in Los Angeles, where census data shows that 48.6% of the population is Hispanic or Latino.

“Diversifying the workforce means bringing equity to the economy and ensuring inclusionary practices in Hollywood,” said California State Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo. “As Latinos make up the largest population in the state of California, yet only a dismal percentage in Hollywood, I’m looking forward to ensuring the Latinx community is not subsidizing its own exclusion via California’s Film Tax Credit Program, which the legislature oversees.”

The Hollywood Diversity Report recently received funding from the state of California that will enable UCLA researchers to continue to support such progress.

Diversity in acting

Over the decade since the Hollywood Diversity Report began, diversity has improved the most among acting jobs, especially in TV, compared with all other TV and movie job types. In 2019–20, television shows with majority-nonwhite casts were more prevalent than ever.

For the first time since the researchers began tracking data, a plurality of shows on cable (28.1%) and streaming platforms (26.8%) featured casts in which the majority of actors were nonwhite. And 32.1% of broadcast shows had majority-nonwhite casts, up from just 2.0% in the first report, which covered the 2011–12 season.

Photo of Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramón

Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramón. Photo: Mike Baker

The new report provides further support for the fact that audiences favor shows with diverse casts. During 2019–20, among white households, ratings for scripted broadcast shows were highest for shows whose actors were 31% to 40% nonwhite. Among Black households, scripted broadcast shows with the highest ratings where those in which casts were more than 50% nonwhite.

For streaming programming, which is dominated by Netflix, ratings among white, Black and Asian households were highest for shows with casts that were from 31% to 40% nonwhite.

The report’s authors also analyze audiences’ interaction with TV programs on social media, and how those trends correspond with cast diversity. For scripted cable shows during 2019–20, for example, they found that programs with majority nonwhite casts had the highest engagement on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And for streaming shows, audience engagement on Twitter specifically was highest for programs with majority nonwhite casts.

Mixed progress among show creators

Another area in which diversity improved was among show creators. That’s an important datapoint because show creators have influence over which stories are developed, whose stories they represent and how they’re told, said Ana-Christina Ramón, co-author of the report and the director of research and civic engagement in the UCLA Division of Social Sciences.

Women made up 29.0% of the creators of scripted cable shows, up nearly 7 percentage points over the prior season, marking the largest one-year gain for women in that job category since the report began. And people of color made up 20.6% of scripted cable show creators in 2019–20, up from 14.5% the previous season and nearly triple the share (7.4%) from 2011–12.

However, women held creator positions for fewer broadcast shows in 2019–20 (24.1%) than they did the prior year (28.1%) — and even fewer than women held in 2011–12 (26.5%).

“We also see that when women and people of color hold high-level creative positions, there is greater diversity down the line in casting and likely for crew hiring,” Ramón said. “Women and people of color are still very underrepresented in these and other behind-the-camera jobs, which is why this report continues to exist.”

Other takeaways:

  • The number of acting roles for women in 2019–20 was nearly equal to those of men across all three platform types. Women made up 46.3% of total cast in scripted broadcast shows, 45.3% in cable and 46.9% in streaming.
  • Trans and nonbinary actors were virtually absent across all platforms.
  • Out of a total 2,932 credited actors, just 13 were Native people, including just three Native women.
  • People of color directed 25.8% of broadcast episodes, 27.2% of cable and 21.4% of streaming, up from 24.3% and, 22.9% and 18.2% in the 2018–19 season.
  • Women directed 30.6% of broadcast episodes, 31.3% of cable and 33.4% of streaming, up from 29.3%, 29.7% and 29.1% the prior season.
  • Latinos made up just 4.8% of the credited writers for broadcast programs, 4.7% in cable and 4.3% in streaming.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Barbra Streisand to fund forward-looking institute at UCLA focused on solving societal challenges

/in , /by
Picture of Barbra Streisand

Courtesy of Barbra Streisand

“Building upon her decades of work as an artist and activist, Barbra Streisand’s visionary act of generosity will enable UCLA scholars from many different fields to collaborate on research that will move society forward,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said.

The Barbra Streisand Institute includes 4 research centers that address her concerns:

the Center for Truth in the Public Sphere
the Center for the Impact of Climate Change
the Center for the Dynamics of Intimacy & Power Between Women & Men
the Center for the Impact of Art on the Culture

These centers will be housed in UCLA’s Division of Social Sciences.

Widely recognized as an icon in multiple entertainment fields, Streisand has attained unprecedented success as a recording artist, actor, director, producer, screenwriter, author and songwriter. She is the first woman to direct, produce, write and star in a major motion picture, the first woman composer to receive an Academy Award, the only recording artist who has achieved No. 1 albums in six consecutive decades, and the first woman to receive a Golden Globe Award for Best Director.

Alongside these achievements, Streisand has long been a staunch supporter of civil rights, gender equality, and upholding democracy. She has also been a leading environmental activist, funding some of the earliest climate change research at the Environmental Defense Fund beginning in 1989.

“It is my great pleasure to be able to fund an institute at UCLA, one of the world’s premier universities,” Streisand said. “This will be a place where future scholars can discuss, engage and argue about the most important issues of the day; where innovators will speak truth to power, help save our planet, and make glass ceilings for women an anachronism; and in the process give us a chance to have a brighter, more promising future.”

Streisand has been awarded two Oscars, five Emmys, 10 Grammys including the Legend Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award, a Tony Award, 11 Golden Globes including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and two Best Picture Awards for “Yentl” and “A Star Is Born,” three Peabody Awards, and the Director’s Guild Award for her concert special — the only artist to receive honors in all of those areas. Streisand also received the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given to artists by the U.S. government, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

A devoted philanthropist, Streisand has supported cardiovascular research and education at Cedars-Sinai since 2007, and in 2012, the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai was renamed in her honor.

Streisand also established the Streisand Chair in Cardiology at UCLA in 1984. In 2014, the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Health Program was established at the university, where the latest research examines stress and the connection between the heart and the mind.

“The future Barbra Streisand Institute will bring to bear the full range of UCLA’s social sciences expertise on the most pressing societal issues of the day, guiding policy and informing solutions to benefit all,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences in the UCLA College.

Ahead of the formal establishment of the institute, which will occur when the full gift amount is received, the work will be housed at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. The center is internationally renowned for research in areas including women’s empowerment, environmental sustainability, women’s health, public policy and politics, and arts, culture and narrative storytelling. Streisand’s gift extends the center’s robust research on critical issues that affect women and society overall.

“This incredible gift will have an impact on our university for generations, and it is an auspicious moment for us to mark the second century for UCLA,” said Dr. Eric Esrailian, UCLA faculty member, co-chair of the UCLA Second Century Council and longtime friend of Streisand who will be collaborating on programming for the Barbra Streisand Institute.

The first area of study and advocacy will focus on truth in the public sphere, a subject which Streisand is especially passionate about. Speakers and research will delve into urgent and existential threats to democracy, and examine how lies and the proliferation of disinformation can destroy a civic sense of decency, as well as entire countries.

Streisand says, “While it’s easy to reflect on the past, I can’t stop thinking about the future and what it holds for our children, our planet and our society. The Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA will be an exploration into vital issues that affect us all…and the fact that my father, Emanuel Streisand, was an educator makes this Institute even more meaningful to me.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

UCLA No. 1 rankings U.S. News & World Report.

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

/in , /by

UCLA No. 1 rankings U.S. News & World Report.

UCLA has again been named the nation’s top public university in U.S. News & World Report’s annual “Best Colleges” rankings, which were published today.

This is the fifth year in a row UCLA has been ranked No. 1.

“UCLA’s ranking as the top public university in the country five years running reaffirms what we already know: that this is a place where students of all backgrounds can thrive, where we invest in and support excellent teaching and where we set students up for success after graduation,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

Since Block became chancellor in 2007, UCLA has risen from the No. 4 public university in the United States to the top of the U.S. News rankings.

“I hope every member of our community takes pride in what this ranking represents,” the chancellor said.

UCLA was the only school among the top 20 national universities overall to be ranked highly in social mobility, which measures the number of Pell Grant recipients and the six-year graduation rate for these students.

In addition, UCLA was named the No. 1 public institution among the best colleges for veterans.

Five other UC campuses were among the top 10 public universities in the overall rankings: UC Berkeley (No. 2), UC Santa Barbara (5, tied), UC San Diego (8), UC Irvine (9) and UC Davis (10, tied).

The U.S. News & World Report rankings are based on 17 measures, including graduation rates, student-faculty ratio, social mobility 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.

Why UCLA is ranked No. 1 year after year​​​​

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Yuri Shprits, a UCLA research geophysicist, said limiting the duration of a round trip to the red planet would help reduce the amount of dangerous radiation to which astronauts are exposed.

Will it be safe for humans to fly to Mars?

/in , /by
Mission would be viable if it doesn’t exceed four years, international research team concludes
By Stuart Wolpert
Yuri Shprits, a UCLA research geophysicist, said limiting the duration of a round trip to the red planet would help reduce the amount of dangerous radiation to which astronauts are exposed.

Yuri Shprits, a UCLA research geophysicist, said limiting the duration of a round trip to the red planet would help reduce the amount of dangerous radiation to which astronauts are exposed. Photo Credit: NASA

 

Sending human travelers to Mars would require scientists and engineers to overcome a range of technological and safety obstacles. One of them is the grave risk posed by particle radiation from the sun, distant stars and galaxies.

Answering two key questions would go a long way toward overcoming that hurdle: Would particle radiation pose too grave a threat to human life throughout a round trip to the red planet? And, could the very timing of a mission to Mars help shield astronauts and the spacecraft from the radiation?

In a new article published in the peer-reviewed journal Space Weather, an international team of space scientists, including researchers from UCLA, answers those two questions with a “no” and a “yes.”

That is, humans should be able to safely travel to and from Mars, provided that the spacecraft has sufficient shielding and the round trip is shorter than approximately four years. And the timing of a human mission to Mars would indeed make a difference: The scientists determined that the best time for a flight to leave Earth would be when solar activity is at its peak, known as the solar maximum.

The scientists’ calculations demonstrate that it would be possible to shield a Mars-bound spacecraft from energetic particles from the sun because, during solar maximum, the most dangerous and energetic particles from distant galaxies are deflected by the enhanced solar activity.

A trip of that length would be conceivable. The average flight to Mars takes about nine months, so depending on the timing of launch and available fuel, it is plausible that a human mission could reach the planet and return to Earth in less than two years, according to Yuri Shprits, a UCLA research geophysicist and co-author of the paper.

“This study shows that while space radiation imposes strict limitations on how heavy the spacecraft can be and the time of launch, and it presents technological difficulties for human missions to Mars, such a mission is viable,” said Shprits, who also is head of space physics and space weather at GFZ Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany.

The researchers recommend a mission not longer than four years because a longer journey would expose astronauts to a dangerously high amount of radiation during the round trip — even assuming they went when it was relatively safer than at other times. They also report that the main danger to such a flight would be particles from outside of our solar system.

Shprits and colleagues from UCLA, MIT, Moscow’s Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and GFZ Potsdam combined geophysical models of particle radiation for a solar cycle with models for how radiation would affect both human passengers — including its varying effects on different bodily organs — and a spacecraft. The modeling determined that having a spacecraft’s shell built out of a relatively thick material could help protect astronauts from radiation, but that if the shielding is too thick, it could actually increase the amount of secondary radiation to which they are exposed.

The two main types of hazardous radiation in space are solar energetic particles and galactic cosmic rays; the intensity of each depends on solar activity. Galactic cosmic ray activity is lowest within the six to 12 months after the peak of solar activity, while solar energetic particles’ intensity is greatest during solar maximum, Shprits said.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A school of kelp bass. A new database created by scientists from UCLA and other institutions covers about 70% of all animals that live in the California Current, off of the west coast of North America.Photo Credit: Zack Gold

Scientists create genetic library for mega-ecosystem in Pacific Ocean

/in , /by

UCLA-led research improves value of environmental DNA for fisheries and conservation along the California Current

By David Colgan

A school of kelp bass. A new database created by scientists from UCLA and other institutions covers about 70% of all animals that live in the California Current, off of the west coast of North America.

A school of kelp bass. A new database created by scientists from UCLA and other institutions covers about 70% of all animals that live in the California Current, off of the west coast of North America. Photo Credit: Zack Gold

The California Current extends nearly 2,000 miles from Canada’s Vancouver Island to the middle of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. It brings cold water from the North Pacific Ocean to the west coast of North America and is home to numerous and abundant species because of the upwelling of deep nutrient-rich waters.

The current supports a large marine ecosystem that is home to species ranging from orcas to abalone. It is the basis for $56 billion in annual economic output and more than 675,000 jobs.

Now, UCLA ecologist Paul Barber and colleagues from UCLA and three other institutions have created a library of DNA “barcodes” that identify 605 species in the California Current, including 275 that had not previously been catalogued. The database covers about 70% of all animals that live there, including 99.9% of monitored species that are important to conservation and fisheries.

The barcodes aren’t actual black-and-white stripe patterns like the ones on food packaging in grocery stores. Rather, they are sequences of letters (A, T, C, and G) that spell out the unique order of amino acids (adenosine, thymine, cytosine and guanine) that identify each species’ DNA.

The research is published today in Molecular Ecology Resources.

The new database will enable researchers, conservationists, fisheries and wildlife managers to understand what is happening to species and ecosystems much more quickly and cost-effectively than current methods. It can be used to identify hotspots where certain species need to be better protected; and it might help authorities better police the fishing industry for catching species that are illegal to harvest.

The resource is based on the use of environmental DNA, or eDNA. Environmental DNA is genetic material that organisms shed into their environment. Using emerging and fast-improving methods, researchers can collect a sample of ocean water and find out what species are around by the DNA they leave behind. To do so, they need to be able to match that DNA to already-identified samples, said Barber, the study’s senior author.

“It’s like a crime scene where there is lots of forensic evidence, like blood or hair,” he said. “It isn’t useful unless you have a potential match in a database.”

To date, species have mostly been detected manually — scuba divers swim through the waters to count animals by hand; fish eggs and larvae are counted under a microscope — and researchers must identify species by their physical characteristics.

That labor-intensive process can limit research and delay action that might be needed to protect marine ecosystems and fisheries. With eDNA and a robust genetic library, researchers can identify species with scoops of water that can be analyzed in a couple of weeks, said Zack Gold, a former UCLA doctoral student who is now a researcher at the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Plus, the technique keeps divers out of harm’s way.

The new genetic library could be a boon for managing fisheries. Samples of eDNA can be used to determine how many eggs are being produced by important species of fish so a healthy population can be maintained. Many fish eggs can’t be identified without genetics.

It also could even be used to make sure people are getting what they order when they go out to eat. Previous research by Barber and others found that 47% of sushi in Los Angeles restaurants is mislabeled, meaning that diners are occasionally eating endangered species instead of the fish they believed they were buying.

Although eDNA databases must be tailored to individual ecosystems and species, the new paper lays out best practices for future libraries around the world. Such libraries will become even more important to scientists as eDNA research becomes more sophisticated. Currently, one limitation of the practice is that while scientists can use the samples to determine which species are present, it’s not clear whether they can use it to determine how many individuals of each species are present — a measure called “abundance” — in any given area.

That may soon change.

“We have pretty good evidence that we’ll soon be able to use eDNA to measure abundance, accounting for the little differences for each species,” Gold said.

Barber said measuring abundance would be especially useful for fisheries.

“By developing this database, we now have an effectively complete set of genetic sequences for most of the commercially harvested species,” he said. “Without that, you can’t even ask questions of abundance.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Professor Barbara Fuchs speaks with Pedro Sánchez, the president of Spain, on UCLA’s campus

Spanish government to honor UCLA professor for promoting language and culture

/in , , , /by
Professor Barbara Fuchs speaks with Pedro Sánchez, the president of Spain, on UCLA’s campus

Professor Barbara Fuchs speaks with Pedro Sánchez, the president of Spain, on UCLA’s campus

The Cervantes Institute, a Spanish government agency dedicated to promoting Spanish around the world, has chosen Barbara Fuchs, UCLA professor of Spanish and English, to receive its inaugural Ñ Prize, honoring her work disseminating Spanish language and culture through theater and literature.

The president of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, will join Fuchs on July 22 at UCLA as part of an event to announce the first Instituto Cervantes branch in Los Angeles, which will be the seventh such center in the United States. In October, Spain’s King Felipe VI will present the bronze Ñ Prize to Fuchs in person in Madrid.

Fuchs, a professor in the Spanish & Portuguese department and also the English department, currently serves as president of the Modern Language Association. She has served as the director of the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies and UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. In 2014, she founded Diversifying the Classics, an initiative to promote awareness and appreciation of Hispanic classical theater.

“In a region with 4 million Spanish speakers, there was nevertheless a sense that ‘the classics’ still primarily meant Shakespeare,” Fuchs said. “But the classics come in different flavors. In addition to Shakespeare in the park, we can have Lope in the park and Sor Juana in the park. It will be incredible to have a partner like the Instituto Cervantes to collaborate with in Los Angeles.”

The July 22 event will be opened by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

“I am proud of the rigorous and creative work of Professor Fuchs,” Block said. “She has brought much-needed awareness of the richness and depth of Hispanic classical theater and helped make that important cultural heritage accessible to our communities.”

Diversifying the Classics includes a collaborative translation workshop that makes Hispanic classical plays available in English. In 2018, the program launched the biennial La Escena festival, the first Hispanic classical theater festival in Los Angeles. The project also sponsors Golden Tongues, an adaptation initiative that pairs Los Angeles writers with Spanish source texts.

“We’ve offered performances after which a Latinx student will ask us, ‘Why did I never hear of this in high school?’ That’s heartbreaking,” Fuchs said. “Spanish isn’t just the everyday language for the home, it’s also the language of art and culture. In the U.S., conversations about diversity in theater and the classics have primarily been about who performs the plays, but they should extend to what plays are presented.”

The Cervantes Institute’s Ñ Prize is granted to individuals or institutions that have promoted Spanish in the world or have a career of special dedication to its international dissemination.

Fuchs’ research played a vital role in a 2019 Instituto Cervantes exhibition in Madrid, said the institute’s director, Luis García Montero. The exhibition featured women writers during the Spanish Golden Age in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Montero praised Fuchs’ historical research as a “fundamental reference” for the exhibition.

“Looking back has allowed Barbara Fuchs to teach us a lot about our theater, the benefits and difficulties of multiculturalism, our relations with the Anglo-Saxon culture, the picaresque and the presence of women — an essential look to complete the truth of our history,” Montero said.

Fuchs’ publications include “Passing for Spain: Cervantes and the Fictions of Identity,” “Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain,” and “Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World.” She is co-editor of “The Golden Age of Spanish Drama” and “Representing Imperial Rivalry in the Early Modern Mediterranean,” among other works. She has translated into English 11 comedias, eight of them with the UCLA Working Group on the Comedia in Translation and Performance. She is also the author of multiple articles on the literature and culture of early modern Europe, with a transnational focus.

In addition to her work as a translator, she has served as editor of Hispanic Review and, since 2017, as editor of the series, “The Comedia in Translation and Performance.” Fuchs taught previously at the University of Washington and at the University of Pennsylvania, and has received numerous fellowships, including from the Guggenheim and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations.

Editor’s note: This story was updated July 22 with pictures from the event.

This article, written by Alison Hewitt, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of UCLA professor Renee Tajima-Peña.

Renee Tajima-Peña wins Peabody for ‘Asian Americans’ docuseries

/in , , /by
A photo of UCLA professor Renee Tajima-Peña.

UCLA professor Renee Tajima-Peña, series producer of “Asian Americans.” (Photo Credit: Claudio Rocha)

“Asian Americans,” the five-part miniseries created for PBS by Renee Tajima-Peña, UCLA professor of Asian American studies, has received a Peabody Award.

The series, which aired in spring 2020, tells stories of struggle, progress and solidarity from the perspectives of multiple Asian American communities, highlighting their national, ethnic, religious, political, linguistic and cultural diversity.

Tajima-Peña’s production company shares the Peabody with the Center for Asian American Media, public broadcaster WETA-TV, postproduction house Flash Cuts and the Independent Television Service. The series was honored by the Peabody Awards for “its revelatory storytelling as a demonstration of activism and solidarity in the American story and fight for justice and dignity.”

“We’re all thrilled not only by the award, but the recognition that this history matters, at a time when we’re in the throes of a backlash to ethnic studies and to a perspective of American history that acknowledges the central role of systemic racism,” said Tajima-Peña, who is also the director of the UCLA Center for Ethnocommunications.

An Academy Award–nominated film director (“Who Killed Vincent Chin?”), she said she also feels like the current moment is powerful in the fight for racial justice and equity.

“Other people are really hungry to understand who we are today by understanding our past,” Tajima-Peña said. “Over the last 15 months, we’ve seen stereotypes of Asian Americans weaponized, as either the perpetual foreigner and walking virus, or the model minority deployed as a wedge against other people of color. In all the episodes of ‘Asian Americans,’ we tried to connect those fault lines from our arrival as immigrants to the current moment, and to center the resilience and activism of Asian Americans in resisting systemic racism.”

Watch award-winning actress Sandra Oh announce the Peabody recognition for “Asian Americans.”

Two years in the making, “Asian Americans” was a very UCLA-centric project. Grace Lee, an alumna of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, directed two of the episodes. Several other alumni were crew members on multiple episodes. And David Yoo, a professor of Asian American studies and history and vice provost of the UCLA Institute of American Cultures, served as lead scholar on the project.

Respected for its integrity and revered for its standards of excellence, the Peabody represents a high honor for creators of television, podcast/radio and digital media. Chosen each year by a diverse board of jurors through unanimous vote, Peabody Awards are given in the categories of entertainment, documentary, news, podcast/radio, arts, children’s and youth, public service and multimedia programming. Founded in 1940 at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, the Peabody Awards are based in Athens, Georgia.

This article, written by Jessica Wolf, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of UCLA physical sciences Centennial Award winners.

UCLA Division of Physical Sciences’ Centennial Awards honor faculty, alumni

/in , , , /by
A photo of UCLA physical sciences Centennial Award winners.

UCLA
Clockwise from top left: Stuart Brown, professor of physics and astronomy; Mahtash Esfandiari, professor of statistics; Tommaso Treu, professor of physics and astronomy; Robin Garrell, former vice provost for graduate education and professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Vassilis Angelopoulos, professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences; and Will Conley, professor of mathematics (Photo Credit: UCLA)

The UCLA Division of Physical Sciences will honor scientific excellence and commitment to education during the inaugural Centennial Awards celebration on May 26. The online event, which will feature a special welcome from Chancellor Gene Block and UCLA alumnus and actor Kal Penn, will honor faculty and alumni who have made significant contributions to their fields and the UCLA community.

“Through world-class research, leadership, mentorship and teaching, these awardees have demonstrated the level of excellence and service that UCLA is known for,” said Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the physical sciences division. “Every day they better the world around them, from students to faculty colleagues to the commercial sector and public at large. We are proud to celebrate them as part of the physical sciences family.”

Below are this year’s faculty awardees, who were nominated by their department.

Excellence in Education Award, which recognizes a faculty member who makes a broad impact on classroom inclusivity and demonstrated learning excellence:

  • Will Conley, professor of mathematics. Conley was recognized for his outstanding work teaching and promoting equity in the mathematics department’s introductory calculus sequence. His primary research interests are representation theory and algebraic number theory.
  • Mahtash Esfandiari, professor of statistics. Esfandiari is the director of the Statistical Consulting Center and the assistant director of the Center for the Teaching of Statistics. Her areas of interest include statistics education and statistical consulting.

Leadership Award, which acknowledges a member of the physical sciences division who has made extraordinary contributions through their service to UCLA or the national and/or international academic communities:

  • Robin Garrell, former vice provost for graduate education and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA. Garrell is now president of the graduate center at the City University of New York. Her research interests span vibrational spectroscopy and surface chemistry.

Mentorship Award, which recognizes a faculty member who has demonstrated a commitment to and success in mentoring research students from diverse backgrounds:

  • Vassilis Angelopoulos, professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences. As principal investigator of NASA’s THEMIS and ARTEMIS missions, Angelopoulos has led the development of five satellites and 20 ground-based observatories. He has also overseen the launch and operation of the first satellites built entirely at UCLA.
  • Stuart Brown, professor of physics and astronomy. Brown is a condensed matter experimentalist whose research focus is mostly on the phases and properties of correlated electron systems.

Outstanding Discovery Award, which honors physical sciences faculty who are leading their research fields with contributions from the most creative, productive and talented students, postdoctoral research fellows and researchers:

  • Tommaso Treu, professor of physics and astronomy. Treu is a member of the Hubble Telescope observing team. He is interested in understanding what the universe is made of, in particular the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and in understanding how galaxies and supermassive black holes form and evolve.

The Centennial Luminary Awards are presented to alumni in recognition of their contributions to UCLA and a career that exemplifies the values of research and education. The award recipients are:

– Leopold Andreoli, who received his doctorate in atmospheric sciences in 1980, will receive the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Luminary Award. Andreoli is a former Air Force colonel who led the development of critical intelligence technology.

– Amy Braverman, who received her master’s in mathematics in 1992 and her doctorate in statistics in 1999, will receive the Statistics Luminary Award. Braverman is principal statistician at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Her work focuses on the use of remote sensing data.

– Kirk Dunn, who received his bachelor’s in mathematics in 1983, will receive the Mathematics Luminary Award. Dunn is the chief operating office at Cloudera, where he uses his technology engineering, marketing, sales and management experience to oversee business operations.

– Myung Ki Hong, who received his bachelor’s in chemistry in 1959, will receive the Chemistry & Biochemistry Luminary Award. Known for his expertise in resin and coatings, Hong founded Dura Coat Products in 1986.

– Nathan Myhrvold, who received his bachelor’s in mathematics and his master’s in geophysics and space physics in 1979, will receive the Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences Luminary Award. Myhrvold is a prominent scientist, technologist, inventor, author and food photographer.

– Howard Preston, who received his bachelor’s in physics in 1965 and his doctorate in physics in 1974, will receive the Physics and Astronomy Luminary Award. Preston is president of Preston Cinema Systems, a motion picture camera equipment company based in Santa Monica.

– Benedict Schwegler, who received his doctorate in environmental science and engineering in 1999, will receive the Environment and Sustainability Luminary Award. Schwegler is currently chief scientist at Engie China Research Lab and an adjunct professor at Stanford University.

In addition, the Centennial Visionary Award will be presented to Mani Bhaumik, whose time as a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA led him to become one of the physical sciences division’s strongest supporters.

Visit the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences website for more information.

This article, written by Max Gordy, originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.