A portrait of Adriana Galván

Neuroscientist Adriana Galván named dean of undergraduate education

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A portrait of Adriana Galván

Photo Courtesy of Adriana Galván

Neuroscientist Adriana Galván will become UCLA’s next dean of undergraduate education on July 1.

A member of the UCLA faculty since 2008, Galván is a professor of psychology, holds the Wendell Jeffrey and Bernice Wenzel Term Chair in Behavioral Neuroscience and is director of the Developmental Neuroscience Lab at UCLA.

Emily Carter, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost, announced the appointment in an email to the campus community today. “Chancellor [Gene] Block and I are confident that undergraduate education will continue to thrive under Adriana’s capable leadership,” she wrote.

Galván is a faculty affiliate of the UCLA Brain Research Institute and the UCLA Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, and is an executive committee member of the UCLA Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and co-director of the NICHD T32 Predoctoral Training Program in Adolescent Brain and Behavioral Development.

“I am tremendously excited to serve as UCLA’s next dean of undergraduate education,” Galván said. “During this extraordinary time in history I look forward to working with the high-caliber students who make UCLA a leading institution of higher education.

“I am honored to work with community members across campus to uphold the mission of this innovative public university and to help enrich our students with a transformative environment where they all have the tools and resources they need to thrive, grow and become engaged members of society.”

Her research focuses on adolescent brain development and behavior, particularly in the domains of learning, motivation, and decision-making. She is a board member and on the leadership team of the Center for the Developing Adolescent, a standing member of the NIH Child Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities Study Section, and a consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. She has been a member of the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Russell Sage Foundation Biological and Social Sciences Working Group, and the Society for Research on Adolescence Interdisciplinary Committee. She has also served as amicus curiae for numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases pertaining to youth behavior and development.

In addition to serving on the psychology department’s executive committee and academic personnel review committee, and as chair of the department’s 2018 strategic planning committee, she has been actively involved in the UCLA Academic Senate, having served on the executive committee, the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools, and the Undergraduate Council — mostly recently as the council’s chair from 2019 to 2020. She is also a member of the Life Sciences Diversity Advisory Committee and was on the University of California Committee on Educational Policy.

Among her many honors and awards are the American Psychological Association Boyd McCandless Early Career Award, the William T. Grant Scholars Award, the 2015 UCLA Psychology Department Distinguished Teaching Award, the 2016 APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions, the 2016 Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award and the 2019 Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences. In 2018, she was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Barcelona and in 2019 she was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering.

Galván earned a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and behavior at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a doctorate in neuroscience at Cornell University.

The position has been held since 2013 by Patricia Turner.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo montage of 2020 Virtual Celebration speakers. Top: George Takei, featured speaker during the UCLA College’s 2020 virtual celebration. Lower left: UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. Lower right: student speaker Kristie-Valerie Phung Hoang.

Graduates encouraged to envision and build a better future

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A photo montage of 2020 Virtual Celebration speakers. Top: George Takei, featured speaker during the UCLA College’s 2020 virtual celebration. Lower left: UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. Lower right: student speaker Kristie-Valerie Phung Hoang.

Top: George Takei, featured speaker during the UCLA College’s 2020 virtual celebration. Lower left: UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. Lower right: student speaker Kristie-Valerie Phung Hoang. (Photo Credit: UCLA)

UCLA’s class of 2020 celebrated their graduation today while scattered across the globe. For the first time, the university’s largest graduation celebration took place remotely, honoring the roughly 8,800 students of the UCLA College.

“Today we gather virtually to celebrate the conferral of your degrees in a uniquely 21st century high-tech way – but, rest assured, your hard-earned degrees will be real. You guys are so futuristic!” the graduates were told by actor, activist, alumnus and social media icon George Takei. The man who helped others imagine a brighter future through his role on “Star Trek” called on graduates to build a better world. “With the experience of the pandemic, challenge yourselves to imagine the unimagined. You have technology that dazzles the mind. Soar with it. Aspire as no others have.”

Though the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus means most students haven’t set foot at UCLA since March 13, classes continued remotely. While in-person ceremonies are planned once group gatherings are safe again, graduating students more than earned a celebration on what would have been their commencement day. Among the Centennial class, graduating at the close of UCLA’s first 100 years, nearly a third are first-generation college students, and more than 35 percent come from low-income households.

The ceremony opened with a moment of silence to recognize and honor victims of COVID-19 and also racial oppression. This was followed by a pledge by the six College deans to continue to fight social injustice.

“While we have all been affected by recent events, we have not all been affected equally,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of the division of social sciences. “We will continue to shine a light on inequality.”

Speakers borrowed from an array of real and fictional inspirational figures, quoting the words of activist author James Baldwin, historian Rebecca Solnit, wizard Albus Dumbledore, and Vulcan Starfleet officer Mr. Spock. The virtual celebration featured views of familiar buildings, fountains and hilltop vistas to soothe homesick Bruins, and senior Margaret Miller sang the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Students viewed the livestream or the later recording from couches with their parents, in apartments with roommates, or on laptops in empty rooms. Some added homemade pomp and circumstance by crafting their own mortarboards or using free graduation profile frames and yard signs from the Alumni Association they would soon join.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block praised the graduates’ resilience at completing their studies and acknowledged those who also found ways to get involved, whether by treating COVID-19 patients, making face masks to slow the spread of the virus, or joining the nationwide wave of protests against the murder of Black men and women by police.

“A global pandemic has upended our lives and prevented us from being together,” Block said. “We’re all reeling, once again, from the pain of racial injustice … The horrible killings of unarmed African Americans have reminded us of our society’s inequities, but strengthened our resolve to address them.”

History shows that catastrophic events can expose “the failings of the status quo” and lead to reforms, Block added, referencing Solnit before calling on the graduates to build a more resilient, compassionate and just society. Though in almost any year, graduates are asked to make the world a better place, current events added extra resonance to that plea.

“The imagination to envision better times, especially in hard times, is vital,” Block said. “James Baldwin wrote that ‘not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’ … Now is your time to envision the role you’ll play in changing our world and creating a new one.”

UCLA Broadcast Studio

 

Filmed in an empty Royce Hall, student speaker Kristie-Valerie Phung Hoang grieved the loss of the students’ final months on campus, but reminded her fellow graduates that they have already begun to improve the world.

“It is at UCLA where we’ve felt compassion for each other, and drove our support toward undocumented students, first-generation students and immigrants working to make a better life of their own,” she said. “We poured our minds towards driving research in hopes of finding life-saving cures … We created paths towards a greener, healthier planet … We lived and breathed the spirit of equality.”

Though the campus’ graduation season shrank from the usual 60 or so ceremonies and celebrations to a little more than 30 virtual events because of the pandemic, UCLA awarded degrees to nearly 14,000 students from its undergraduate and graduate programs. Other speakers include guitarist Carlos Santana for the Herb Alpert School of Music, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for the UCLA School of Law, and California’s first surgeon general, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris for the David Geffen School of Medicine.

In introducing Takei, Block praised his activism in speaking up for Muslims, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community, and tied Takei’s activism to his days as an actor playing Mr. Sulu beginning in 1966.

“George made history on a multi-ethnic new TV show called ‘Star Trek,’” Block said. “The show premiered at the same time that the Vietnam War was fueling decades of anti-Asian bigotry. As a Japanese-American child during World War II, George had endured that bigotry first hand in America’s shameful internment camps. George’s presence as one of the heroes of the show was a rebuke to the prejudice of the time. Star Trek imagined a future in which all of Earth’s races lived together in peace.”

Sixty years after his own graduation from UCLA, Takei observed the highs and lows of the pandemic, from tireless medical and frontline workers, to unemployment and economic havoc.

“We live in a time of heroes and menaces,” Takei said. “And where we expect leadership, we find shocking dysfunction. It is a virtual dystopian state.”

But amidst this “dark moment,” he added, the air has cleared from the decreased use of fossil fuels for vehicles and factories, giving the world a glimpse of a cleaner planet. He urged the graduates to learn from it and find ways to improve the human condition.

“We look to you, the high-tech generation, to seize this moment,” Takei said. “Revitalize our civilization. Discover new challenges. Stretch as far as you can. Boldly go where no one has gone before. May the UCLA Centennial 2020 class live long and prosper.”

The virtual celebration closed with a bittersweet view of the Inverted Fountain, where graduating seniors traditionally take a dip to celebrate their years of hard work.

“Our 2020 graduates will be the class that persevered,” said Patricia Turner, vice provost and dean of undergraduate dducation. “Let this moment of adversity forge in you a strength to overcome, to persevere, to know that the world is inherently beautiful, and that your future has only just begun.”

A photo of the UCLA Court of Sciences.

More than 300 UCLA scientists condemn acts of racist violence

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A photo of the UCLA Court of Sciences.

UCLA Court of Sciences (Photo Credit: UCLA Newsroom)

UCLA Newsroom is committed to promoting UCLA news, including faculty members’ research and their appearances in outside media. We typically do not post letters from faculty about current issues or serve as an open forum of ideas. However, given the gravity of this moment, and out of a desire to illustrate how our community is united in showing support on these important issues, we have decided in this rare case to share the following letter from our faculty.

The full letter and a partial list of signers follows; the full list of signers, which has continued to grow, is posted here. 

Dear Students and Colleagues,

We are enraged and horrified at the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis. We are enraged and horrified at the murder of Breonna Taylor, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and the murder of Nina Pop, murders that have occurred amidst a pandemic that is disproportionately killing Black Americans. We are enraged at the extreme acts of racist violence on display and we are enraged at the everyday operations of a white supremacist society that precipitates and seeks to normalize pervasive suffering and harm targeting Black people.

As scholars dedicated to the study of the sciences, we know that there are intergenerational effects of trauma, and that the longstanding racism and injustice perpetrated against some of our citizens by police and by others in positions of power has worked to hobble the very nation we love. However, just as efforts to reverse the effect of trauma in individuals can reverse even epigenetic impacts, so we see hope for the possibility that dismantling the systems of oppression in our country – our counties, our neighborhoods, and our homes — will bring healing to “we the people” of all races, religions, and creeds.

We also know that complicity with these systems of oppression is deeply rooted in the origins of this country, from the expulsion and murder of Native Americans, the kidnapping and enslavement of Black peoples for almost 250 years, to generations of Black and Brown communities disregarded and destroyed by settler colonialism and the idea of white supremacy. We seek an immediate end to the perpetration of this injustice and a healing of our land.

In the face of recent acts of racist violence, we recommit ourselves to understanding that the wellbeing of all people is interdependent, and that science and our society are made better by a diversity of minds, viewpoints, and approaches participating as a team in a non-threatening, healthy, and welcoming environment. In the words of Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, “#BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important — it means that Black lives, which are seen as without value within White supremacy, are important to your liberation. Given the disproportionate impact state violence has on Black lives, we understand that when Black people in this country get free, the benefits will be wide-reaching and transformative for society as a whole.”

We want you to know that we share your pain, your grief, and your outrage. We will work to ensure that our classrooms and endeavors and workplaces engage and support struggles for racial justice on and off campus, and that our science and teachings will embrace the strength of our diversity.

For those who are looking for resources, we include several below this list of initial signatories.

Signed,

Gina R. Poe, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology

Alan D. Grinnell, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology

Barney A. Schlinger, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology

Ronald M. Harper, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Department of Neurobiology

Kelsey C. Martin, M.D., Ph.D., Dean and Professor, David Geffen School of Medicine

Stephanie Correa, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Integrative Biology and Physiology

Stephanie White, Ph.D., Professor, Integrative Biology and Physiology

Liz Koslov, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Department of Urban Planning

Aradhna Tripati, Ph.D., Associate Professor,  Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Departments of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences & Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, American Indian Studies Center, Center for Diverse Leadership in Science

Priyanga Amarasekare, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Jesse Rissman, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences

Deanna Needell, Ph.D., Professor, Mathematics

Michael Hill, Ph.D., Professor, Mathematics

Scott H. Chandler, Ph.D, Professor, Integrative Biology and Physiology

Felix E. Schweizer, Ph.D., Professor Neurobiology, Chair Graduate Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program

David Glanzman, Ph.D., Professor, Integrative Biology and Physiology, and Neurobiology

Mark Frye, Ph.D., Professor, Integrative Biology and Physiology. Department of Neurobiology.

Shanna Shaked, Ph.D., M.A.T., Senior Associate Director, Center for Education Innovation and Learning in the Sciences

Robert Eagle, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Stephanie Pincetl, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Roy Wollman, Associate Professor, Departments of Integrative Biology and Physiology and Chemistry and Biochemistry

Caroline Beghein, Associate Professor, Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences

Rebecca Shipe, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Deepak Rajagopal, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Department of Urban Planning

Thomas B. Smith, Ph.D., Professor,Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Department of Ecology and Evolution

Alan Barreca, Associate Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Karen McKinnon, Assistant Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and Department of Statistics

Jacob Bortnik, Professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

Avital Harari, M.D., M.Sc., Associate Professor, Department of Surgery

Larone Ellison, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology

Justin Wagner, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery

Brian E. Kadera, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery

Kevin Y. Njabo, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Tonya Kane, Ph.D., Lecturer, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Marco Iacoboni, M.D. Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Chao Peng, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology

Dean Buonomano, Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Neurobiology and Psychology

Jack L. Feldman, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Neurobiology

Weizhe Hong, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Departments of Biological Chemistry and Neurobiology

Zili Liu, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology

Dr. Hasan Yersiz, David Geffen School of Medicine, Department of Surgery, Division of Liver and Pancreas Transplant

Rachel Kennison, Ph.D., Interim Director, Center for Education, Innovation and Learning in the Sciences

Daniel T. Blumstein, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Morgan W. Tingley, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Lawren Sack, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

William Boyd, J.D., Ph.D, Professor, UCLA School of Law, and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Guido Eibl, M.D., Professor, Department of Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine

Pablo Saide, Assistant Professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Jasper Kok, Associate Professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

Marco Velli, Professor of Space Physics Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences

Elaine Y. Hsiao, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology

Patricia E. Phelps, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology

Pavak K Shah, Ph.D, Assistant Professor, Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology

Hakwan Lau, D.Phil, Professor, Department of Psychology

Andrew Wikenheiser, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Psychology

X. William Yang, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science

Yi-Rong Peng, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Ophthalmology and Stein Eye Institute

Michael S Fanselow, Distinguished Professor, Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry.

Gal Bitan, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Neurology.

Catia Sternini, M.D., Professor, Division of Digestive Diseases, Departments of Medicine and Neurobiology

Vickie M. Mays, Ph.D., MSPH, Distinguished Professor, Departments of Psychology and Health Policy & Management and Director, UCLA BRITE Center for Science, Research & Policy

Nicholas Brecha, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Departments of Neurobiology, Ophthalmology and Medicine.

Kate Wassum, Ph.D., Psychology

Riccardo Olcese, Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology and Physiology

Pamela Kennedy, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Dept of Psychology

Nanthia Suthana, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Departments of Psychiatry, Neurosurgery, Psychology, and Bioengineering

M. Belinda Tucker, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences

Mark S. Cohen, Ph.D., Professor, Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Departments of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Neurology, Radiology, Biomedical Physics, Psychology and Bioengineering.

Catherine M Cahill, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Daniel H Geschwind M.D., Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Senior Associate Dean and Associate Vice Chancellor, Precision Health

Christopher C. Giza, M.D., Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Neurosurgery, Interdepartmental Programs for Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering

Onyebuchi A. Arah, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Epidemiology

Tracy Johnson, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology

Brenda Larison, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Allen Gehret, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Michael J. Andrews, Ph.D., PIC, Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Albert J. Courey, Professor, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry

Michelle Basso, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Jerome Engel Jr. M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Neurology, Neurobiology, and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Robert M. Bilder, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and Psychology; Co-Lead, MindWell pod, Semel UCLA Healthy Campus Initiative

Larry Zipursky, Ph.D., Department of Biological Chemistry

Igor Spigelman, Ph.D., Professor & Chair, Section of Oral Biology, School of Dentistry

Emeran A. Mayer, M.D., Distinguished Professor, Departments of Medicine, Physiology and Psychiatry

Gaston M. U. Pfluegl, Ph.D., Director Life Sciences Core Education Laboratory

Peyman Golshani, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Neurology and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior,

Ye Zhang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral sciences.

Abby Kavner, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences

Nader Pouratian, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Neurosurgery

Melissa Sharpe, Ph.D, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Lara Ray, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry

Pamela Yeh, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Michael Alfaro, PhD, Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Mikhail Hlushchanka, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Michael Gandal, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Ron Brookmeyer, Ph.D., Dean and Professor, Fielding School of Public Health

Van Savage, Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Computational Medicine and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Marilyn Raphael, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Geography

Ladan Shams, Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Psychology and BioEngineering

Laura DeNardo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Physiology

Diane M. Papazian, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Physiology

Rolando de Santiago, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Instructor and UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Mathematics

Alison Lipman, Ph.D., Lecturer, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Greg Grether, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Elissa Hallem, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

Palina Salanevich, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Marcelo Chamecki, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

Jeffrey Donlea, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Neurobiology

William I. Newman, Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences; Physics and Astronomy; and Mathematics

Howard C. Jen, M.D., M.S., Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery

Diana G. Rickard, M.D., M.S., Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics

Thomas J. O’Dell, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Physiology

Gregory A. Miller, Distinguished Professor, Psychology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Xian-Jie Yang, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Ophthalmology

Diana Azurdia, Ph.D., Director for Inclusion, Graduate Programs in Bioscience

Bogdan Pasaniuc, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Human Genetics, Computational Medicine.

Kirk E. Lohmueller, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Sylvester Eriksson-Bique, Ph.D., NSF Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Asgar Jamneshan, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics

Artem Chernikov, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics

Ricardo Salazar, Ph. D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics.

Nicholas Ramsey, Hedrick Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Alan Garfinkel, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine and Integrative Biology and Physiology

Jorge Torres, Ph.D., Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Hangjie Ji, Ph.D., PIC Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Susan D. Cochran, Ph.D., M.S., Professor, Epidemiology and Statistics

Stefano Filipazzi, Ph.D., Hedrick Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Daniel Hoff, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Allison Carruth, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of English, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability

Nina Otter, PhD, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Benjamin Harrop-Griffiths, Ph.D., Hedrick Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Peter Petersen, Professor, Department of Mathematics.

Gregory S. Payne, Ph.D., Professor, Biological Chemistry

Clover May, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Jochen Stutz, Professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

Terence Tao, James and Carol Collins Chair, Department of Mathematics

Paul Micevych, Plumb Professor and Chair, Department of Neurobiology

Wilfrid Gangbo, Professor, Department of Mathematics

Heather Zinn Brooks, Ph.D., CAM Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Daniele Bianchi, Assistant Professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

James Bisley, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Neurobiology

Daniel McKenzie, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Leif Zinn-Brooks, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Joshua Trachtenberg, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Neurobiology

Matt Jacobs, Ph. D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics.

TIm Austin, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Mathematics

Anna Lau, Professor, Department of Psychology

Ziva Cooper  Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Melissa Paquette-Smith, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Department of Psychology

Jennifer Sumner, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Alicia Izquierdo, Professor, Department of Psychology

Jennifer Silvers, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

James Cameron, Ph.D., Hedrick Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Craig Enders, Professor, Department of Psychology

Bridget Callaghan, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Jonathan C King, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery

Adriana Galvan, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology

Sorin Popa, Professor, Mathematics

Noah White, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Michelle G. Craske, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology & Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences

Theodore F. Robles, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology

Samy Wu Fung, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Douglas Black, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

Noa Pinter-Wollman, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Roger Woods, M.D., Professor, Departments of Neurology and of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Paul Mathews, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in Residence, Department of Neurology and The Lundquist Institute

Matthias Wink, DPhil, Hedrick Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Samantha Butler, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Neurobiology

Bennett Novitch, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Neurobiology

Jonathan Mitchell, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences

Lauren Ng, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Stan Schein, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology

Carolyn Houser, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Neurobiology

Katherine Karlsgodt, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Yiannis N. Moschovakis, Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Mathematics

Carrie E Bearden Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and Psychology

Steve S. Lee, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology

Istvan Mody, Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Neurology and Physiology

Tina Treude, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Science, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science

Carole H. Browner, Distinguished Research Professor, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and Departments of Anthropology and Gender Studies

Karen H. Gylys, Ph.D., R.N., Professor, School of Nursing

Christina Palmer, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Department of Human Genetics, Institute for Society and Genetics

Jessica Gregg, M.Ed., Associate Director for Educational Development, Center for Education Innovation and Learning in the Sciences (CEILS)

Katherine Narr, Professor, Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Alex Hall, Professor, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

Baljit S. Khakh, Ph.D., Professor of Physiology

Sandra K. Loo, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Mackenzie Day, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences

Ursula K. Heise, Professor and Chair, Department of English

Carolyn Parkinson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology

Marcia Meldrum, Ph.D., Adjunct Associate Professor, Center for Social Medicine and the Humanities, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences

Joel Braslow, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and History, Center for Social Medicine and Humanities

Laura Cladek, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Mathematics

Joseph DiNorcia, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery

Minna K. Lee, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery

Michael Willis, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Yuen Huo, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology

Thomas Bradbury, Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology

Marco Marengon, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Mathematics

Wotao Yin, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Mathematics

Nathan Kraft, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Ippolytos Kalofonos, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Center for Social Medicine and Humanities, International Institute, West LA VAMC

Please see this webpage for the full, current list of signers. The page also includes links to books, websites and articles chosen by the authors about racism. It also lists resources for members of the UCLA campus community:

●      UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services (310-825-0768)

●      For mental health related concerns, consider signing up for STAND. An online questionnaire is followed by professional care if necessary.

●      Wellness resources for UCLA graduate students

●      Behavioral Wellness Center for confidential counseling for biosciences graduate students (310-825-9605)

The faculty members also provide links for donating to the NAACP, ACLU, and SPLC.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of a Covid-19 fence sign.

Voters in both parties favor caution as cities begin to reopen

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A photo of a Covid-19 fence sign.

“Our research has revealed a nation largely in agreement on everything from preventive measures to thoughts about returning to normal activities,” said UCLA political science professor Lynn Vavreck. (Photo Credit: Sean Brenner)

Over the weekend of May 9–10, many states, including California, began to ease safer-at-home restrictions, allowing some businesses to reopen under strict conditions, and opening some public spaces, including hiking trails and beaches.

Now, a weekly survey co-led by UCLA political science professors Lynn Vavreck and Chris Tausanovitch has found that Democratic and Republican voters favor the restrictions that were enacted to slow the spread of COVID-19. And by and large, people prefer a cautious approach to getting life back to normal.

The UCLA + Democracy Fund Nationscape survey began adding COVID-19–related questions in March, shortly after businesses, schools and events began shutting down. Topics include Americans’ beliefs, worries and behaviors related to the pandemic. The survey will post results each week on a new coronavirus-specific page of its website.

“Our research has revealed a nation largely in agreement on everything from preventive measures to thoughts about returning to normal activities,” Vavreck said. “Far from the partisan division that has described the last several years, nearly everyone has incorporated precautions against the virus into their daily lives and most people support government interventions to stop its spread.”

The study was quickly noticed by government leaders. Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland referenced the findings during remarks on the Senate floor on May 13.

A graphic of the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Survey.

A majority of voters surveyed agree with measures local and state governments have implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19. (Faded dots represent results from previous weeks. Data collected March 19 through April 29, 2020.) (Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Survey)

Researchers also surveyed respondents about the economic pain caused by COVID-19. Of respondents who earn less than $25,000 per year, 26% reported that their income has been reduced significantly due to the crisis, and 24% have lost their primary source of income entirely. Among those earning more than $85,000 annually, 23% reported significant income loss but just 8% indicated that they had lost their income entirely.

► Read more about UCLA + Democracy Fund Nationscape

Vavreck is an expert on presidential elections; her previous research has shown that a good economy is often critical to a president’s reelection chances.

“As we head into the presidential election, we will continue to chart how the government’s response to the pandemic will affect the way voters view an incumbent president presiding over an unexpected downturn in the American economy,” Vavreck said.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of UCLA professor Renee Tajima-Peña.

PBS series on Asian Americans features work of UCLA filmmakers and scholars

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A photo of UCLA professor Renee Tajima-Peña.

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

n 1982, a young Chinese American man named Vincent Chin was beaten to death as he was out celebrating his bachelor party in Highland Park, Michigan, near Detroit. America was fraught and tense, in the middle of a recession that had hit automakers particularly hard, given the rise of economically desirable Japanese cars. Racial animosity toward Asian Americans was running high.

Chin’s death and the relatively lenient sentence laid upon his two white attackers — one a recently laid-off autoworker in the city — were a shock to Asian American communities and sparked a wave of civil rights activism.

“There were lot of people at the time who thought, ‘I’m OK, I’ve made it, everything is OK,’ and then they were really awakened by the case,” said Renee Tajima-Peña, a UCLA professor and director of the Center for EthnoCommunications in the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Chin’s story is just one of many told in “Asian Americans” a five-part series that airs on PBS over two nights, May 11 and 12. It’s a story that Tajima-Peña knows well. She co-directed an Academy Award–nominated documentary about Chin’s murder.

A photo of Vincent Chin, who was murdered in Michigan in 1982.

Vincent Chin, who was murdered in Michigan in 1982. (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Tajima-Peña also served as series producer for “Asian Americans.” And, while she has been working on the project for nearly two years, the timing of its release feels particularly potent, and unfortunately familiar, given the hate speech and even physical attacks that have been levied at people who might look Chinese in the wake of the crippling economic and health crises brought about by the spread of COVID-19.

“We’ve seen all of this before, but the question is, what’s our takeaway from this history?” she said. “To me, the takeaway is for people to find a way to support each other. The series is really future-oriented, even though it’s about history. The U.S has become more diverse yet more divided. When that happens, you’ve got to figure things out because we can’t move forward divided in this country.”

It’s also a personal history for Tajima-Peña, whose ancestors came to the United States from Japan in the early 1900s, a time when national law prevented the immigration of certain Asian groups. “My family arrived during the exclusion, they were on skid row during the Depression, they were incarcerated during World War II,” she said.

Her family’s story dovetails with the stories of subsequent generations of Asian Americans who came to the U.S. as immigrants and as refugees from the Korean and Vietnam wars. “People found a way to thrive,” she said. “And Asian Americans have been a part of moving this democracy forward throughout its history.”

Showcasing this reality is one of the overarching goals of the series. The episodes include a wealth of interviews with artists, activists and scholars.

It also quickly became 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 served as crew 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.

“As an epicenter of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and arguably the most diverse city in the world, the greater Los Angeles area is a generative space,” Yoo said. “This is not new for AAPIs and other communities, and many legacies are reflected in the series, including the remarkable contributions of UCLA Asian American studies, in terms of our students, alumni, staff, faculty and programs like EthnoCommunications, which has produced so many talented filmmakers.”

Solidarity is a running theme within the series. The Asian American community is itself the most diverse of any racial group and has faced internal racial conflicts, Tajima-Peña pointed out. But, she said, civil rights leaders past and present recognize that the struggle must always include other marginalized groups within the prevailing racial tensions of America.

“Asian American history is a history of solidarity,” she said. “People may see us as the model minority, but Asian Americans have been fighting from the very beginning. The biggest labor strike in the 1860s was by Chinese railroad workers.”

Tajima-Peña was delighted to find footage of Hawaiian-born Patsy Mink, the first female U.S. congressperson of color, speaking to the Democratic National Convention in the 1960s. Mink urged delegates to stay firm on a civil rights platform.

“What we wanted to lead to in the series is really the question of today, when we are a larger population with a greater presence in society — to quote from Richard Pryor, does justice mean ’just us?’” Tajima-Peña said. “That’s what we need to focus on, because people really want to get to work.”

Yoo said he hopes viewers will be inspired by the stories of civil rights efforts from the 1960s and 1970s. “The activism, struggle and creativity of that era set into motion remarkable efforts for social justice that provide a foundation which we can draw upon to engage the concerns of today,” he said.

The series is organized around personal stories, ones that will hopefully engender empathy and connection.

“These stories we are telling are personal stories around tipping points in history, and at these points, Asian Americans have found a way to work amongst themselves or work across ethnicities,” Tajima-Peña said. “You don’t have to be Asian yourself to see yourself in these stories.”

A photo of Wong Kim Ark, whose U.S. Supreme Court case led to a change in citizenship laws.

Wong Kim Ark, whose U.S. Supreme Court case led to a change in citizenship laws. (Photo: Public domain)

When Tajima-Peña thinks of hope, she thinks of young Asian Americans, some of whom might be experiencing the effects of racism for the first time. She thinks of their potential. She thinks of the stories of other young Asian Americans that came before and brought hope with them.

The series is bookended by two of their stories.

Wong Kim Ark was the son of Chinese railroad workers. He was born in San Francisco, where his parents legally resided at the time of his birth. In 1880, after a trip to China, he was denied entry back into the country on the grounds that he was not a citizen. Just 21 years old, he chose to fight — and took his struggle all the way to the Supreme Court. The landmark 1898 ruling in his favor established birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to parents who were not citizens.

“Asian Americans” also tells the story of Tereza Lee, who migrated from South Korea with her parents. Known as the first “Dreamer,” in the late 1990s, she fought for herself and other undocumented children through the DREAM Act, which ultimately failed to pass Congress after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed political thinking around immigration.

“She kept on fighting and joined a movement of other undocumented young people,” Tajima-Peña said. “And my own parents are citizens because of Wong Kim Ark. The inspiration of those two ends of the Asian American story is what will take us into the future.”

 

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

A photo of a storefront with a sign that says "We are closed temporarily."

California Unemployment Insurance Claims During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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A photo of a storefront with a sign that says "We are closed temporarily."

A new analysis of initial Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims by the California Policy Lab at UCLA and the Labor Market Information Division at the California Employment Development Department provides an in-depth and near real-time look at how the COVID-19 crisis is impacting various types of workers, industries and regions throughout California.

“It’s clear that California workers who are the least able to afford it are being the most impacted by COVID-19,” explains Till von Wachter, a co-author of the analysis, UCLA economics professor and faculty director at the California Policy Lab. “While the rise in initial UI claims and their potential implications for unemployment are alarming, we also see some positive signs: besides a slight leveling off of new claims in the most recent two weeks in April, we see a much higher percent of people claiming UI benefits are reporting that they expect to return to their former employers. Given these findings, policymakers should consider how best to support employers to stay afloat and rehire their employees, and how to target relief to the groups of workers who have been most severely impacted.”

Key research findings:
– Almost 90% of Californians who filed initial UI claims in the first two weeks of April reported that they expected to be recalled to their prior jobs, a substantial increase from the 40% of claimants who reported this before the crisis.

– Younger, lower-wage, and lower-educated workers and women have been disproportionately impacted by unemployment in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Since the start of the Covid-19 crisis in the labor market (in mid-March), among those in the labor force, 1 in 3 high school graduates, 1 in 4 aged 20-23, and 1 in 6 women filed initial UI claims.

– Since mid-March 14.4% of the California labor force has filed initial UI claims. If none of these initial UI claimants have returned to work, this implies a rise in the unemployment rate to close to 20% from the 5.3% prevailing in mid-March.

– Almost 1 in 3 workers in Food and Accommodations and 1 in 5 workers in Retail Sales filed new initial claims. Several other large sectors experienced substantial increases in initial UI claims since mid-March, including Health Care and Social Services; Manufacturing; Construction; Other Services; and Administrative Support, Waste Management, and Remediation.

– All counties in California have experienced substantial growth in initial UI claims, but the rise has been more pronounced in several of the usually economically strong areas of the state, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Southern California.

This analysis will be updated on a weekly basis with new data on initial Unemployment Insurance claims to provide a timely and detailed analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on California’s labor market.

Methodology
The analysis is based on comparing initial unemployment insurance claims in February 2020 (before the COVID-19 crisis impacted the labor markets); the start of the employment crisis in mid-March (when initial UI claims increased dramatically); and more recently the first 11 days of April.

The analysis complements traditional survey-based indicators on the labor market, which have detailed information but large time lags and which are released not as frequently, and to weekly publications of the number of total UI claims, which have minimal time lags but which lack the detail available in this analysis.

The California Policy Lab creates data-driven insights for the public good. Our mission is to partner with California’s state and local governments to generate scientific evidence that solves California’s most urgent problems, including homelessness, poverty, crime, and education inequality. We facilitate close working partnerships between policymakers and researchers at the University of California to help evaluate and improve public programs through empirical research and technical assistance.

The Labor Market Information Division (LMID) is the official source for California Labor Market Information. The LMID promotes California’s economic health by providing information to help people understand California’s economy and make informed labor market choices. We collect, analyze, and publish statistical data and reports on California’s labor force, industries, occupations, employment projections, wages and other important labor market and economic data.

This article originally appeared on the California Policy Lab website.

A photo of Dr. Steven Jonas, Jason Belling and Paul Weiss of UCLA .

A step toward a more efficient way to make gene therapies to attack cancer, genetic disorders

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A photo of Dr. Steven Jonas, Jason Belling and Paul Weiss of UCLA .

(From left) Dr. Steven Jonas, Jason Belling and Paul Weiss of UCLA (Photo Credit: Reed Hutchinson)

A UCLA-led research team today reports that it has developed a new method for delivering DNA into stem cells and immune cells safely, rapidly and economically. The method, described in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could give scientists a new tool for manufacturing gene therapies for people with cancer, genetic disorders and blood diseases.

The study’s co-senior author is Paul Weiss, a UCLA distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry, of bioengineering and of materials science and engineering. “We are figuring out how to get gene-editing tools into cells efficiently, safely and economically,” he said. “We want to get them into enormous numbers of cells without using viruses, electroshock treatments or chemicals that will rip open the membrane and kill many of the cells, and our results so far are promising.”

In current practice, cells used for genetic therapies are sent to specialized labs, which can take up to two months to produce an individualized treatment. And those treatments are expensive: A single regimen for one patient can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“We hope our method could be used in the future to prepare treatments that can be performed at the patient’s bedside,” Weiss said.

The method could be used with CRISPR, the genetic engineering technique that enables DNA to be edited with remarkable precision. However, using CRISPR efficiently, safely and economically in medical therapies has proven to be a challenge — one this new method may be able to solve.

The technique uses high-frequency acoustic waves coupled with millions of cells that flow through an “acoustofluidic device” in a cell culture liquid. The device was invented by the research team as part of the study; inside of it are tiny speakers that convert electrical signals to mechanical vibrations that are used to manipulate the cells.

That procedure opens up pores along the cells’ membranes that allow DNA and other biological cargo to enter the cells, and it enables the researchers to insert the cargo without the risk of damaging the cells by contacting them directly.

Dr. Steven Jonas, the study’s co-senior author and a UCLA clinical instructor in pediatrics, likened the soundwaves’ ability to move cells to the experience when audience members actually feel the sound at a concert.

“At a concert hall, you can feel the bass — and if you can feel the sound, the cell can feel the acoustic wave,” said Jonas, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA. “We can engineer the acoustic waves to direct the cells as needed.”

The researchers delivered short strands of DNA called plasmids into human blood cells and blood-forming stem cells that were intended specifically for laboratory research, and pumped millions of such cells through the acoustofluidic device. Once inside a cell, a plasmid can be made into a protein that may be missing or damaged, or it can give the cell new capabilities.

“When combined with new gene-editing approaches, the method enables us to correct a DNA sequence that is miscoded in a disease,” said Weiss, who also is a member of CNSI.

Plasmids used as templates for gene editing can make the correction because they have the right coded sequence for the desired protein, he explained.

Lead author Jason Belling, a UCLA graduate student in chemistry and biochemistry, was able to insert plasmids into the model cells used for testing about 60% of the time, without using any chemical and physical treatments.

“The viability is very high compared with other techniques,” Weiss said, “but we still want higher efficiencies and are working toward that.”

Jonas — whose expertise is in treating childhood cancer and blood disorders — said the research has the potential to benefit adults and children with cancer, immune system disorders and genetic diseases.

“If the delivery works, and it seems to, this research is an important step toward bringing new therapies more broadly to the patients who need them,” Jonas said. “Traditionally, we have treated cancers with chemotherapy, surgery, radiation and bone marrow transplantations. Now, we’re at an amazing era of medicine, where we can use different types of gene therapies that can train the immune system to fight cancer.”

A photo of a prototype of the acoustofluidic device developed by UCLA researchers.

A prototype of the acoustofluidic device developed by UCLA researchers. (Photo Credit: Reed Hutchinson)

Jonas said some existing treatments can take a patient’s T cells and adapt them with a gene that encodes for a receptor that allows it to target the cancer.

“We want to be the delivery service that gets these therapeutic packages to the cells,” he said. “I want to treat my patients with cells that are engineered in this way.”

For the technique to lead to viable treatments for disease, it would need to allow doctors  to process at least a couple hundred million cells — and in some cases, billions of cells — safely, rapidly and cost-effectively for each patient.

The new approach is still the subject of research and is not available to treat human patients.

The study’s other co-authors include Duke University professor Tony Huang, a pioneer of acoustofluidics and a UCLA alumnus; Dr. Stephen Young, distinguished professor of medicine and human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; and Dr. Satiro De Oliveira, a UCLA assistant professor of pediatrics.

The study was funded in part through a National Institutes of Health Director’s Early Independence Award for Jonas; the University of California Center for Accelerated Innovation; and Belling’s predoctoral fellowship through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Jonas also has received young investigator awards from the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research, Hyundai Hope on Wheels Foundation for Pediatric Cancer Research, and the Tower Cancer Research Foundation. UCLA’s Technology Development Group Innovation Fund also provided funding.

Weiss’ research group has applied for patents on the acoustofluidic device and related devices, working with the Technology Development Group.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

An image of dust over the Sahara Desert.

Earth’s atmosphere far dustier than previously believed

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An image of dust over the Sahara Desert.

Dust over the Sahara Desert (Photo Credit: NASA GSFC)

Dust is a key component of Earth’s climate system. When it interacts with clouds, oceans and the sun’s radiation, it has an overall impact on our planet’s living systems, affecting everything from weather and rainfall to global warming.

There are two types of dust in the atmosphere, both kicked up by high-velocity winds in dry areas. Fine dust tends to cool because it scatters sunlight, much like clouds do. Coarse dust, which is larger in size and originates in places like the Sahara Desert, tends to warm the atmosphere, much like greenhouse gases.

Knowing precisely how much coarse dust is in the atmosphere is essential for understanding not only the atmospheric phenomena that dust influences but also the degree to which dust may be warming the planet.

Now, UCLA scientists report that there is four times the amount of coarse dust in Earth’s atmosphere than is currently simulated by climate models. Their findings appear in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers found that Earth’s atmosphere contains 17 million metric tons of coarse dust — equivalent to 17 million elephants or the mass of every person in America put together.

“To properly represent the impact of dust as a whole on the Earth system, climate models must include an accurate treatment of coarse dust in the atmosphere,” said the study’s first author, Adeyemi Adebiyi, a postdoctoral researcher in UCLA’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a recipient of the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship.

By plugging this amount of missing coarse dust into models, Adebiyi said, it increases the likelihood that the net amount of dust overall — both fine and coarse — is warming rather than cooling the Earth’s climate system, from air to oceans.

Coarse dust particles warm the Earth’s entire climate system by absorbing both incoming radiation from the sun and outgoing radiation from the Earth’s surface. These particles can impact stability and circulation within our atmosphere, which may affect atmospheric phenomena like hurricanes.

Adebiyi worked with Jasper Kok, a UCLA associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, to determine the actual amount of coarse dust in the atmosphere by analyzing dozens of published aircraft-based observations, including recent measurements taken over the Sahara Desert, and comparing those with half a dozen widely used global atmospheric model simulations.

“When we compared our results with what is predicted by current climate models, we found a drastic difference,” Kok said. “State-of-the-art climate models account for only 4 million metric tons, but our results showed more than four times that amount.”

In addition, Adebiyi and Kok found that coarse dust leaves the atmosphere less quickly than current climate models predict. Air has a tendency to mix more turbulently when dust is present. In the case of the Sahara, air and dust mix in ways that push the dust upward, which can work against gravity and keep the dust in the air much longer, they said.

The scientists’ findings also show that because dust particles stay in the atmosphere longer, they are ultimately deposited further from their source than has been predicted by these models or explained by current theory. Dust particles blown from the Sahara, for example, can travel thousands of miles in the atmosphere, reaching as far as the Caribbean and the United States.

When desert dust ends up in oceans, it may stimulate the productivity of ocean ecosystems and increase the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans.

Due to the way coarse dust interacts with the sun’s energy and clouds, it can also have a major impact on the timing of precipitation, as well as how much, or how little, rain falls.

“Models have been an invaluable tool for scientists,” said Adebiyi, “but when they miss most of the coarse dust in the atmosphere, it underestimates the impact that this type of dust has on critical aspects of life on Earth, from precipitation to cloud cover to ocean ecosystems to global temperature.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Photo of Alain Mabanckou.

UCLA professor named one of 2019’s 100 most influential Africans

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Photo of Alain Mabanckou.

Alain Mabanckou, professor of French and Francophone studies at UCLA. Credit: UCLA

Alain Mabanckou, literature professor in the UCLA Department of French and Francophone Studies, has been named one of 2019’s 100 most influential Africans by leading politics and culture magazine, “New African.”

A renowned novelist, poet and professor, Mabanckou is recognized for his contributions to the global literary scene. Known for his novels and non-fiction writing depicting the experience of contemporary Africa and the African diaspora in France, he is among the most recognized writers of Franco African contemporary literature. His most recent novel, “Black Moses,” winner of the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, follows the story of an orphan navigating his way through a poor and corrupt society.

The list recognizes Africans who have made large contributions to the continent and its culture, from reform-leading political figures to business pioneers and record-breaking athletes. The list includes the likes of Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed and Kenyan world record breaking marathon runner, Eliud Kipchoge. According to “New African,” those chosen to be on the list exemplify how African talent is impacting the world.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Photo of orbits of the G objects at the center of our galaxy

Astronomers discover class of strange objects near our galaxy’s enormous black hole

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Photo of orbits of the G objects at the center of our galaxy

Orbits of the G objects at the center of our galaxy, with the supermassive black hole indicated with a white cross. Stars, gas and dust are in the background. Photo: Anna Ciurlo, Tuan Do/UCLA Galactic Center Group

Astronomers from UCLA’s Galactic Center Orbits Initiative have discovered a new class of bizarre objects at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. They published their research in the Jan. 16 issue of the journal Nature.

“These objects look like gas and behave like stars,” said co-author Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics and director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group.

The new objects look compact most of the time and stretch out when their orbits bring them closest to the black hole. Their orbits range from about 100 to 1,000 years, said lead author Anna Ciurlo, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher.

Ghez’s research group identified an unusual object at the center of our galaxy in 2005, which was later named G1. In 2012, astronomers in Germany made a puzzling discovery of a bizarre object named G2 in the center of the Milky Way that made a close approach to the supermassive black hole in 2014. Ghez and her research team believe that G2 is most likely two stars that had been orbiting the black hole in tandem and merged into an extremely large star, cloaked in unusually thick gas and dust.

“At the time of closest approach, G2 had a really strange signature,” Ghez said. “We had seen it before, but it didn’t look too peculiar until it got close to the black hole and became elongated, and much of its gas was torn apart. It went from being a pretty innocuous object when it was far from the black hole to one that was really stretched out and distorted at its closest approach and lost its outer shell, and now it’s getting more compact again.”

“One of the things that has gotten everyone excited about the G objects is that the stuff that gets pulled off of them by tidal forces as they sweep by the central black hole must inevitably fall into the black hole,” said co-author Mark Morris, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. “When that happens, it might be able to produce an impressive fireworks show since the material eaten by the black hole will heat up and emit copious radiation before it disappears across the event horizon.”

But are G2 and G1 outliers, or are they part of a larger class of objects? In answer to that question, Ghez’s research group reports the existence of four more objects they are calling G3, G4, G5 and G6. The researchers have determined each of their orbits. While G1 and G2 have similar orbits, the four new objects have very different orbits.

Ghez believes all six objects were binary stars — a system of two stars orbiting each other — that merged because of the strong gravitational force of the supermassive black hole. The merging of two stars takes more than 1 million years to complete, Ghez said.

“Mergers of stars may be happening in the universe more often than we thought, and likely are quite common,” Ghez said. “Black holes may be driving binary stars to merge. It’s possible that many of the stars we’ve been watching and not understanding may be the end product of mergers that are calm now. We are learning how galaxies and black holes evolve. The way binary stars interact with each other and with the black hole is very different from how single stars interact with other single stars and with the black hole.”

Ciurlo noted that while the gas from G2’s outer shell got stretched dramatically, its dust inside the gas did not get stretched much. “Something must have kept it compact and enabled it to survive its encounter with the black hole,” Ciurlo said. “This is evidence for a stellar object inside G2.”

“The unique dataset that Professor Ghez’s group has gathered during more than 20 years is what allowed us to make this discovery,” Ciurlo said. “We now have a population of ‘G’ objects, so it is not a matter of explaining a ‘one-time event’ like G2.”

The researchers made observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and used a powerful technology that Ghez helped pioneer, called adaptive optics, which corrects the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere in real time. They conducted a new analysis of 13 years of their UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative data.

In September 2019, Ghez’s team reported that the black hole is getting hungrier and it is unclear why. The stretching of G2 in 2014 appeared to pull off gas that may recently have been swallowed by the black hole, said co-author Tuan Do, a UCLA research scientist and deputy director of the Galactic Center Group. The mergers of stars could feed the black hole.

The team has already identified a few other candidates that may be part of this new class of objects, and are continuing to analyze them.

Ghez noted the center of the Milky Way galaxy is an extreme environment, unlike our less hectic corner of the universe.

“The Earth is in the suburbs compared to the center of the galaxy, which is some 26,000 light-years away,” Ghez said. “The center of our galaxy has a density of stars 1 billion times higher than our part of the galaxy. The gravitational pull is so much stronger. The magnetic fields are more extreme. The center of the galaxy is where extreme astrophysics occurs — the X-sports of astrophysics.”

Ghez said this research will help to teach us what is happening in the majority of galaxies.

Other co-authors include Randall Campbell, an astronomer with the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii; Aurelien Hees, a former UCLA postdoctoral scholar, now a researcher at the Paris Observatory in France; and Smadar Naoz, a UCLA assistant professor of physics and astronomy.

The research is funded by the National Science Foundation, W.M. Keck Foundation and Keck Visiting Scholars Program, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, Lauren Leichtman and Arthur Levine, Jim and Lori Keir, and Howard and Astrid Preston.

In July 2019, Ghez’s research team reported on the most comprehensive test of Einstein’s iconic general theory of relativity near the black hole. They concluded that Einstein’s theory passed the test and is correct, at least for now.

► Watch a four-minute film about Ghez’s research

►View an animation below of the orbits of the G objects, together with the orbits of stars near the supermassive black hole. Credit: Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.