UCLA breaks applications record, sees steep surge in California applicants

This year’s increase in freshman applications from Californians exceeded last year’s total growth in overall applications from in-state, out-of-state and international students combined.

UCLA professors Paul Barber, Robert Wayne to enhance undergraduate STEM education

The program will provide year-long support for underrepresented minority pre-med students and offer an innovative curriculum that includes seminars, filmmaking and bench research focused on environmental variables contributing to health disparities.

UCLA class turns downtown Los Angeles into a classroom

“We break the rules of a traditional college class by giving students access to senior faculty in a small interactive setting with 20 of their peers,” Hagos said.

In memoriam: Kathy O’Byrne, 65, director of the UCLA Center for Community Learning

A committed advocate for community-engaged scholarship, O’Byrne began her career at UCLA in 2001 as director of the Center for Experiential Education and Service Learning, which Chancellor Albert Carnesale renamed the Center for Community Learning in 2004.

Hydrogen cars for the masses one step closer to reality, thanks to UCLA invention

UCLA researchers have designed a device that can use solar energy to inexpensively and efficiently create and store energy, which could be used to power electronic devices, and to create hydrogen fuel for eco-friendly cars.

UCLA presents inaugural Pritzker Award to environmental economist Dan Hammer

Hammer is an environmental economist and data expert, and the co-founder of Earth Genome, a nonprofit that seeks to provide environmental data to decision makers.

UCLA receives $1 million for Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali postdoctoral fellowship in Iranian linguistics

Named for the renowned linguist Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali, the fellowship will promote research on the linguistic heritage of Iran, focused on Persian and Iranian languages.

UCLA professors of biology and chemistry honored as 2017 Packard fellows

Elaine Hsiao, UCLA assistant professor of integrative biology and physiology, and Hosea Nelson, UCLA assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, are among 18 outstanding young scientists in the U.S. to be awarded Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

In memoriam: Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, 88, renowned Indo-Europeanist and literary scholar

Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, a world renowned linguist, Indo-Europeanist, anthropologist and literary scholar who was a member of the UCLA community for the past quarter-century, died on October 7. He was 88.

Image by Rodrigo Fernandez

“He was one of the intellectual titans of the 20th century,” said Ronald Vroon, chair of UCLA’s Department of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures. “There probably isn’t a Slavist or Indo-Europeanist alive today who has not engaged with his work in some fashion.”

Ivanov joined the Department and the Program in Indo-European Studies in 1991 and was designated distinguished research professor following his retirement in 2015. He held many distinguished positions, including the director of the All-Union Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow, chairman of the Department of Structural Typology of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., and chairman of the Department of the Theory and History of World Culture and professor of the Philosophical Faculty at Moscow State University.  He also served as head of the Commission for the Complex Study of Creative Activity of the Scientific Council for the World Culture at the Academy of Sciences and as president of the artistic translation section of the Moscow division of the U.S.S.R. Writers’ Union.

Ivanov received numerous awards, including the Russian Presidential Prize for Contributions to Russian Art and Literature in 2004, and was a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as an honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America and fellow of the British Academy. He received doctorates from both Moscow State University and the University of Vilnius. He was the author of more than 15 books and 1,000 journal articles and was the editor in chief of Elementa: the Journal of Slavic Studies and Comparative Cultural Semiotics.

He is survived by his spouse Svetlana and his son Leonid.

UCLA receives $5 million to establish center for the study of Hellenic culture

The center, which will be housed in the UCLA College, will build on the university’s strengths in Hellenic studies and support research across disciplines ranging from archaeology and classics to languages and digital humanities.