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UCLA Fulbright winners collage

Graduate students selected for Fulbright-Hays Fellowship

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UCLA Fulbright winners collage

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

Vania Sciolini | 

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

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

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

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

The 2022 awardees are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UCLA alumnus Yoon Jae (Eric) Lim

Yoon Jae (Eric) Lim ’16 named UCLA’s fourth Schwarzman Scholar

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UCLA alumnus Yoon Jae (Eric) Lim

UCLA alumnus Yoon Jae (Eric) Lim has been named a Schwarzman Scholar and will study in Beijing next year.

UCLA alumnus Yoon Jae (Eric) Lim ’16 has been named a Schwarzman Scholar, receiving one of the world’s most prestigious graduate awards. As part of a cohort of 151 distinguished young candidates selected from nearly 3,000 applicants worldwide, Lim will receive a fully funded scholarship to complete a one-year master’s degree and leadership program in global studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

Established in 2016 by Stephen A. Schwarzman of Blackstone and inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship, the Schwarzman Scholars program seeks to prepare future leaders from a variety of fields and backgrounds to respond to pressing geopolitical challenges and to foster cross-cultural understanding between China and the rest of the world.

“I am excited and grateful for this amazing opportunity,” said Lim, who studied political science at UCLA and hails from South Korea and the U.S. “China has one of the world’s most developed fintech economies, its economy is largely cashless, and its technology ecosystem has grown at an incredible rate. My goal is to leverage the expansive Schwarzman Scholar and Tsinghua network to learn as much as I can about the technological innovation happening in China.”

As an immigrant, entrepreneur and product leader in fintech, Lim hopes to leverage financial technology to better lives. After graduating from UCLA, he cofounded the blockchain company DApperNetwork, building a community of students and mentors that have gone on to create enormous value in blockchain protocols and applications. Currently a director of product at Sure, a top 100 fintech company, he previously served as a crypto entrepreneur-in-training at FJ Labs. He is a Riordan Fellow with the UCLA Anderson School of Management and has served as an advisor to UCLA’s blockchain lab.

Lim is the fourth UCLA graduate to be named a Schwarzman Scholar. He will enroll in August 2023 as part of the program’s 2023–2024 cohort, which comprises candidates from 36 countries and 121 universities around the world. Each year, Schwarzman Scholars are selected based on a variety of factors including “their leadership qualities and the potential to understand and bridge cultural and political differences,” according to the program’s website; the program’s international network of scholars now includes more than 1,000 members.

“I’m proud to be a UCLA alumnus — the communities and education I got access to during my time as a student have been formative building blocks for me,” Lim said. “Many years ago, UCLA was a launchpad for my entrepreneurial journey, and I am excited to represent my alma mater at such a renowned program as I continue on that journey.”

For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Portraits of Marinza Marzouk - Monica Soliman - Samuel Zamora

3 UCLA undergrads receive prestigious NIH scholarships

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Portraits of Marinza Marzouk - Monica Soliman - Samuel Zamora

Marinza Marzouk (left), Monica Soliman and Samuel Zamora will complete summer internships in NIH labs and have full-time jobs there upon graduation. | UCLA

Jonathan Riggs | November 3, 2022

Only 16 students nationally were chosen to receive prestigious National Institutes of Health undergraduate scholarships for 2022–23.

And three of them are Bruins.

Fourth-year students Marinza Marzouk of Covina, California, and Monica Soliman of Los Angeles, and third-year student Samuel Zamora of San Diego were chosen from a national pool of applicants. The scholarship is meant to encourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue education and career opportunities in biomedical research.

Each of the UCLA honorees will receive up to $20,000 per year for up to four years. In exchange, they will complete 10-week, paid summer internships in NIH laboratories and, after they graduate from UCLA, work as full-time employees in NIH labs for one year per year of scholarship support they receive.

“I am proud of these three remarkable students and all they have accomplished thus far,” said Adriana Galván, UCLA’s dean of undergraduate education. “This scholarship is an inspiring vote of confidence on the national stage for their future potential, and I have no doubt they will exceed all expectations.”

Marzouk is a neuroscience major who transferred to UCLA from Pasadena City College. She moved with her family to the U.S. from Egypt when she was 13.

“It was very overwhelming, especially with the language barrier, and I had a lot of self-doubt — I never even thought I could dream of going to UCLA,” Marzouk said. “But I kept challenging myself to get here.”

Marzouk volunteers in the research lab of Professor Edythe London, a UCLA psychiatrist and biobehavioral scientist. She hopes to continue her studies in medical school, with the goal of becoming a psychologist or neurologist.

“It means a lot to me to have gotten this scholarship,” she said. “I still cannot process that I am where I am, and doing what I am doing, but I am just so happy to be making my parents and myself proud. My parents sacrificed a lot for me, and this scholarship shows them that their efforts were not in vain and that I am taking advantage of all the opportunities available to me here in America.”

Soliman is majoring in human biology and society and minoring in Arabic studies. Like Marzouk, she came to the U.S. from Egypt at a young age; Soliman was 10, and her family was seeking religious asylum after the 2011 revolution there.

“Coming from a country where women do not always have the opportunity to pursue higher education, I was determined to become one of the first in my family to receive a college degree,” she said. “Coming to UCLA helped me find community and a sense of belonging.”

Soliman hopes to enroll in an M.D.–Ph.D. program in sports medicine. An intern with the UCLA Athletics sports medicine staff, Soliman has also served as a field research assistant for the UCLA Steve Tisch BrainSPORT Program and an NIH-funded project to improve concussion assessment and treatment in children and teens.

“I feel honored to have been selected to earn such a competitive scholarship and to have the opportunity to work at the NIH and develop skills that are necessary for my journey,” Soliman said. “UCLA provided an environment that has allowed me to grow, and I’m grateful.”

Zamora, who’s majoring in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, moved to California with his family from Tijuana, Mexico, when he was 10.

“Like many other first-generation students, my parents didn’t attend college and knew nothing about the process, which meant I had no sense of direction and struggled to find resources,” he said.

Key to helping him adjust to campus life and find his path, Zamora said, was his involvement with Hermanos Unidos de UCLA, a student organization that helps male Latino and Chicano students bond over their academic successes, community service and personal growth.

Zamora has gained experience in multiple research labs on campus. He’s currently a research intern in the lab of Professor Xiaojiang Cui, where he’s studying the implications of RNA splicing on breast cancer development. Although he hasn’t ruled out medical school, he also has an interest in continuing his clinical laboratory research.

“Earning this scholarship gives me a feeling of victory,” Zamora said. “Aspiring to make a change in this world through the beauty of science is the reason I push myself.”

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

Lamia Balafrej

Lamia Balafrej named Getty Research Institute scholar

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Manon Snyder | October 24, 2022

Lamia Balafrej, an associate professor in the UCLA Department of Art History, has been selected as a Getty Research Institute scholar for the 2022-23 cycle. Balafrej, who specializes in arts of the Islamic world, will be conducting research on this year’s themes — Art and Migration, and the Levant and the Classical World.

Annually since 1985, the Getty Scholars Program at the Villa has selected cultural figures, researchers and artists to pursue an area of their own research that falls under the theme selected for that year. The scholars work in residence at the Getty Villa and have access to collections.

Balafrej’s research focuses on topics ranging from medieval studies and the history of global slavery to historical intersections of labor and technology. Her work has been supported by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Smithsonian Institute.

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

Inaugural faculty recipients of Mellon Foundation “Data, Justice and Society” grants

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Collage image of UCLA professors David MacFadyen, Davide Panagia, Miriam Posner, Nick Shapiro and Veronica Terriquez, recipients of the inaugural “Data, Justice and Society” course development grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

From left to right: UCLA professors David MacFadyen, Davide Panagia, Miriam Posner, Nick Shapiro and Veronica Terriquez, recipients of the inaugural “Data, Justice and Society” course development grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

By Munia Bhaumik

The following UCLA faculty members are the inaugural recipients of “Data, Justice and Society” course development grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation:

This remarkable cohort of innovative UCLA faculty proposed to develop courses across the humanities, social sciences and life sciences to enhance teaching at the intersection of data, justice and society and to augment curricular offerings engaged with data ethics and justice, community-engaged teaching and digital humanities. These courses will be offered either this academic year or next.

The courses enrich our understanding of how data technologies are increasingly a part of our everyday lives. When you buy something on Amazon, friend someone on Facebook or search on Google, data is being gathered about your choices. These courses mobilize the space of the classroom at the nation’s top public university to invite conversation and thought about social consequences and the need for justice in our data-saturated world.

Thanks to the generous contribution of the Mellon Foundation, these grants are increasing the number of course offerings across the UCLA campus for both graduate and undergraduate students to learn from professors who are working at the intersection of multiple fields. Many of the new courses will also allow students to engage with and learn from community organizations across Southern California.

The faculty grant recipients are not only world-renowned scholars in their respective fields, but also committed instructors eager to engage students around issues of academic and social relevance. They were selected by the Mellon Social Justice Curricular Initiatives steering committee, comprised of Todd Presner, professor and chair of the department of European languages and transcultural studies; Shalom Staub, director of the Center for Community Engagement; Juliet Williams, professor and chair of the social science interdepartmental program; and Munia Bhaumik, program director of Mellon Social Justice Curricular Initiatives.


Course Descriptions

David MacFadyen
“Freedom of Speech in Russia: Decentralized Tools for Musicians and Journalists”
Goal: To create a blockchain-based and anonymized publishing platform, using NFTs to protect the rights of both journalists and musicians, currently under significant pressure from state censorship during the war with Ukraine.

Davide Panagia
“#datapolitik: or, the Political Theory of Data”
This course looks to the changing nature of political thinking and judgment given the emergence of data and algorithms as the principal media in contemporary democratic life. The course introduces students to developments of new forms of critical thinking for the study of data and society by interrogating familiar concepts in the history of political thought (freedom, justice, equality, race, ethnicity, gender) in relationship to new and emerging media, and the expectations and claims these media place on users. The learning objective of the course is to study political ideas in relationship to, and embedded with, the specific medium of data.

Miriam Posner
“Data from the Margins”
Data has a long tradition as a weapon of discrimination — but oppressed communities have an equally long tradition of reconceiving, reworking and remaking data in order to fight back. We’ll consult with and hear from activists and scholars who are making change for their communities as they challenge everyone to rethink what data can do.

Nick Shapiro
“Science, Mass Incarceration and Accountability”
The course will be split into two complementary halves. First, an introduction to the extractive data practices of science that have both advanced and profited off of mass incarceration. This half of the course will facilitate the subject matter expertise needed to understand the context and critiques that the work of the second half of the course is attempting to overcome or counteract. The topics of the first half will include a general introduction to mass incarceration and what data can and can’t tell us about this archipelago of nearly 7,000 carceral facilities as well as the unethical scientific knowledge extraction from incarcerated people.

Veronica Terriquez
“Community-Engaged Research Methods:  Surveying Racially Diverse Youth and Workers”
This course will train students in designing, drafting, piloting, and administering a new survey focused on transitions to adulthood. Written in collaboration with community partners, this survey will gather data on the workforce development, labor rights, education, health, mental health, and civic engagement of young people residing in BIPOC communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The course will expose students to the historical development of racial statistics, the role of racial statistics in contemporary life, and critical quantitative science. It will also include testing questions on racial identity and attitudes; gender identity; workforce development; labor rights; healing and wellness; and other topics determined by community partners serving Latinx, AAPI, Black, and Indigenous youth. Additionally, students will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of different survey sampling methodologies aimed at gathering data from BIPOC youth, low-wage workers, and students.

Image of UCLA College Professors Robert Bjork and Rosa MatzkinUCLA

Two UCLA College faculty members elected to National Academy of Sciences

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Image of UCLA College Professors Robert Bjork and Rosa Matzkin

Left: Professor Robert Bjork, Distinguished research professor of psychology; right: Professor Rosa Matzkin, Charles E. Davidson Distinguished Professor of Economics.

Editor’s note: Congratulations to all three UCLA faculty members elected to the National Academy of Sciences, including Professors Robert Bjork and Rosa Matzkin of the UCLA College!

By Stuart Wolpert | May 4, 2022

Three UCLA professors — Dr. E. Dale Abel, Robert Bjork and Rosa Matzkin — have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. They are among the 120 new members and 30 international members announced by the academy May 3.

Membership in the academy is one of the highest honors a scientist in the United States can receive. Previous electees have included Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright and Alexander Graham Bell.

Dr. E. Dale Abel
William S. Adams Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Chair, department of medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Executive medical director, department of medicine, UCLA Health

Abel is a distinguished endocrinologist, researcher and clinician who leads UCLA Health’s largest department. His pioneering work on glucose transport and mitochondrial metabolism in the heart has guided his research on the molecular mechanisms responsible for the cardiovascular complications of diabetes. Abel’s laboratory has provided important insights into how mitochondrial dysfunction and aberrant insulin signaling contribute to diabetes-related heart failure risk. His research has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1995, with additional support from the American Heart Association and other sources. Prior to joining UCLA on Jan. 1 of this year, Abel held leadership and faculty positions at the University of Iowa, Harvard Medical School and the University of Utah. Among his many awards and honors, Abel is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He serves as president of the Association of Professors of Medicine.

Robert Bjork
Distinguished research professor of psychology

Bjork is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading scholars of human learning and memory. His research focuses on the ways in which the science of learning can inform instruction and training, including identifying techniques that can enhance long-term learning. He has served as editor of the journals Memory and Cognition, and Psychological Review. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Bjork received the Association for Psychological Science’s highest honor — the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award — in 2016, the Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists and a UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. He delivered a UCLA Faculty Research Lecture in 2016.

Rosa Matzkin
Charles E. Davidson Distinguished Professor of Economics

Matzkin has developed new ways of using empirical data for economic analysis. Her methods exploit properties of economic models to avoid restrictive specifications that may lead to incorrect conclusions. These methods can be used to identify and estimate unobservable variables, to test whether data are consistent with any particular model and to predict behavior and economic outcomes when economic structures change. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Matzkin is currently first vice president of the Econometric Society and is a former member of the executive committees of the Econometric Society and the American Economic Association. She is co-editor of Elsevier’s Handbooks in Economics series and of Vol. 7 of the Handbook of Econometrics. Previously, she served as chief editor of the journal Quantitative Economics, as co-editor of the Econometric Society Monograph Series and as a member of the editorial committee of the Annual Review of Economics.

The National Academy of Sciences, established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln, acts as an official advisory body to the federal government on matters of science and technology upon request. The academy is a private, nonprofit institution dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare.

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

Image of eight UCLA College faculty members who were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), alongside the AAAS logo.

Eight UCLA College faculty members elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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Image of eight UCLA College faculty members who were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), alongside the AAAS logo.

Top row (from left): Walter Allen, Blaire Van Valkenburgh and Haruzo Hida. Middle row: Brad Shaffer, Min Zhou and Peter Narins. Bottom row: John Agnew and Wilfrid Gangbo.

Editor’s note: Congratulations to the 11 UCLA faculty members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, including eight professors from the College of Letters and Science: John Agnew, Walter Allen, Wilfrid Gangbo, Haruzo Hida, Peter Narins, Brad Shaffer, Blaire Van Valkenburgh and Min Zhou.

Stuart Wolpert | April 28, 2022

Eleven UCLA faculty members were elected today to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies. A total of 261 artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors were elected, including honorary members from 16 countries.

UCLA had the second most honorees among colleges and universities, preceded only by Harvard. Stanford was third, UC Berkeley fourth, and MIT and Yale tied for fifth.

In February, UCLA was No. 1 in the number of professors selected for 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, an honor widely seen as evidence of the quality of an institution’s science, math and economics faculty.

UCLA’s 2022 American Academy of Arts and Sciences honorees are:

John Agnew
Distinguished professor of geography
Agnew’s research focuses on political geography, international political economy, European urbanization and modern Italy. Among his many awards is the 2019 Vautrin Lud Prize, one of the highest honors in the field of geography. In 2017, Agnew was selected to deliver UCLA’s Faculty Research Lecture.

Walter Allen 
Distinguished professor of education, sociology and African American studies
Allen, UCLA’s Allan Murray Cartter Professor of Higher Education, is the director of UCLA’s Capacity Building Center and the UCLA Choices Project. His expertise includes the comparative study of race, ethnicity and inequality; diversity in higher education; family studies; and the status of Black males in American society.

Patricia Gandara
Research professor of education
Gandara is co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA and chair of the working group on education for the UC–Mexico Initiative. Her publications include the 2021 books “Schools Under Siege: Immigration Enforcement and Educational Equity” and “The Students We Share: Preparing U.S. and Mexican Teachers for Our Transnational Future.”

Wilfrid Gangbo
Professor of mathematics
Gangbo’s expertise includes the calculus of variations, nonlinear analysis, partial differential equations and fluid mechanics. He is the founder of EcoAfrica, an association of scientists involved in projects in support of African countries, and is one of the UC and Stanford University faculty members who launched the David Harold Blackwell Summer Research Institute.

Haruzo Hida 
Distinguished research professor of mathematics
Hida is an expert on number theory and modular forms. A highly honored mathematician, he has spoken about his research at numerous international conferences and was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991 and the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research from the American Mathematical Society in 2019.

Leonid Kruglyak
Distinguished professor of human genetics and biological chemistry
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Kruglyak is UCLA’s Diller-von Furstenberg Professor of Human Genetics, chair of the department of human genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He studies the complex genetic basis of heritable traits, which involves many genes that interact with one another and the environment, and his laboratory conducts experiments using computational analysis and model organisms. He has been the recipient of many awards, including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Innovation Award in Functional Genomics, the Curt Stern Award from the American Society of Human Genetics and the Edward Novitski Prize from the Genetics Society of America.

Peter Narins
Distinguished research professor of integrative biology and physiology, and of ecology and evolutionary biology
Narins’ research focuses on how animals extract relevant sounds from the often noisy environments in which they live. His numerous honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Acoustical Society of America’s 2021 silver medal in animal bioacoustics and election to four scientific societies: the Acoustical Society of America, the Animal Behavior Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Society for Neuroethology.

Bradley Shaffer
Distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology
Shaffer, the director of the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, is an expert on evolutionary biology, ecology and the conservation biology of amphibians and reptiles. His recent work has focused on conservation genomics of endangered and ecologically important plants and animals of California, global conservation of freshwater turtles and tortoises, and the application of genomics to the protection of endangered California amphibians and reptiles.

Blaire Van Valkenburgh 
Distinguished research professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology
Van Valkenburgh, UCLA’s Donald R. Dickey Professor of Vertebrate Biology, focuses on the biology and paleontology of carnivorous mammals such as hyenas, wolves, lions and sabertooth cats. She is a leading expert on the evolutionary biology of large carnivores, past and present, and analyzes the fossil record of carnivores from both ecological and evolutionary perspectives.

George Varghese 
Professor of computer science
UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
Varghese, UCLA’s Jonathan B. Postel Professor of Networking, devoted the first part of his career to making the internet faster — a field he calls network algorithmics — for which he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2017, the National Academy of Inventors in 2020 and the Internet Hall of Fame in 2021. He is now working to jump-start an area he calls network design automation to provide a set of tools for operating and debugging networks.

Min Zhou
Distinguished professor of sociology and Asian American studies
Zhou, UCLA’s Walter and Shirley Wang Professor of U.S.–China Relations and Communications, is director of UCLA’s Asia Pacific Center. Her research interests include migration and development, Chinese diasporas, race and ethnicity, and urban sociology.

“These individuals excel in ways that excite us and inspire us at a time when recognizing excellence, commending expertise and working toward the common good is absolutely essential to realizing a better future,” David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, said of this year’s honorees.

“Membership is an honor, and also an opportunity to shape ideas and influence policy in areas as diverse as the arts, democracy, education, global affairs and science,” said Nancy C. Andrews, chair of the academy’s board of directors.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals. Previous fellows have included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and UCLA astrophysicist Andrea Ghez.

The academy also serves an independent policy research center engaged in studies of complex and emerging problems. Its current membership represents some of today’s most innovative thinkers across a variety of fields and professions and includes more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners.

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

Collage image of the UCLA College’s 2022 Sloan Fellows. Top row from left: Seulgi Moon, David Baqaee, and Mikhail Solon. Bottom row from left: Chong Liu, Natalie Bau, and Guido Montúfar.Image credit: UCLA

Six UCLA College faculty among 2022 Sloan Research Fellows

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Collage image of the UCLA College’s 2022 Sloan Fellows. Top row from left: Seulgi Moon, David Baqaee, and Mikhail Solon. Bottom row from left: Chong Liu, Natalie Bau, and Guido Montúfar.

The UCLA College’s 2022 Sloan Fellows. Top row from left: Seulgi Moon, David Baqaee, and Mikhail Solon. Bottom row from left: Chong Liu, Natalie Bau, and Guido Montúfar. Image credit: UCLA

Editor’s note: Congratulations to all of the UCLA scholars selected to receive 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, including six professors from the College of Letters and Science!

By Stuart Wolpert

Eight young UCLA professors are among 118 scientists and scholars selected today to receive 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, making UCLA No. 1 among U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities in the number of new fellows.

The fellowships, among the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career researchers, are often seen as evidence of the quality of an institution’s science, math and economics faculty. MIT, with seven new faculty fellows, had the second most.

“Today’s Sloan Research Fellows represent the scientific leaders of tomorrow,” said Adam Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “As formidable young scholars, they are already shaping the research agenda within their respective fields — and their trailblazing won’t end here.”

Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said, “UCLA has an exceptional faculty — world-leaders in their fields. The quality of our faculty research is mind-boggling, and I’m delighted but not surprised that UCLA is No. 1 in faculty awarded 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships.”

UCLA’s 2022 recipients are:

David Baqaee
Assistant professor of economics

An expert in macroeconomics and international trade, Baqaee studies the role production networks play in business cycles and economic growth. His research tackles a central macroeconomic dilemma known as the aggregation problem, which involves reasoning about the behavior of aggregates composed of many interacting heterogenous parts — for instance, how shocks to oil production or trade barriers in parts of supply chains may affect real GDP. He has also studied monetary and fiscal policy, the macroeconomics of monopoly power and the macroeconomic consequences of supply and demand shocks caused by COVID-19. A faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Baqaee is also affiliated with the Center for Economic Policy and Research.

Natalie Bau
Assistant professor of economics
Assistant professor of public policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

Bau studies a variety of topics in development and education economics, with an emphasis on the industrial organization of educational markets. Her research has looked at how cultural traditions affect economic decision-making, how interpersonal skills facilitate intergenerational investment, whether government policy can change culture, and the effects of human capital investment in countries with child labor. She is affiliated with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Aparna Bhaduri
Assistant professor of biological chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Using bioinformatics, single-cell genomics and developmental neurobiology, Bhaduri studies how the human brain is created with billions of cells, as well as how certain cellular building blocks can reappear later in life in brain cancers. She is detailing the hundreds or thousands of cell types in the developing brain, allowing her to produce cell atlases that improve our understanding of glioblastoma. Her research is revealing how stem cells give rise to the human brain during cortical development and how aspects of this development can be “hijacked” in glioblastoma and other brain cancers.

Quanquan Gu
Assistant professor of computer science, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering

Gu leads UCLA’s Statistical Machine Learning Lab. In his research on machine learning, he is developing and analyzing what are known as non-convex optimization algorithms to understand large-scale, dynamic, complex and heterogeneous data and is building the theoretical foundations of deep learning. Gu aims to make machine learning algorithms more efficient and reliable for a variety of applications, including recommendation systems, computational genomics, artificial intelligence for personalized health care, and government decision-making. In March 2020, he and his research team launched a machine learning model to predict the spread of COVID-19 — a model that has informed predictions by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Chong Liu
Assistant professor of inorganic chemistry

Liu, who holds UCLA’s Jeffrey and Helo Zink Career Development Chair, is an authority on electrochemical systems for energy and biology. His laboratory combines expertise in inorganic chemistry, nanomaterials and electrochemistry to address challenging questions in catalysis, energy conversion, microbiota, and carbon dioxide and nitrogen — with important implications for the environment. In 2020, he received $1.9 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to conduct research on electrochemically controlled microbial communities, and in 2017, Science News chose him as one of 10 Scientists to Watch who are “ready to transform their fields.”

Guido Montúfar
Assistant professor of mathematics and statistics

Montúfar, who leads the Mathematical Machine Learning Group — centered at UCLA and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, in Germany — works on deep learning theory and mathematical machine learning. Through investigations of the geometry of data, hypothesis functions and parameters, he and his team are developing the mathematical foundations of deep learning and improving learning with neural networks. Montúfar is the recipient of a starting grant from the European Research Council and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and he serves as research mentor with the Latinx Mathematicians Research Community. He and his team have organized a weekly online math machine learning seminar since 2020.

Seulgi Moon
Assistant professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences

Moon studies the weathering and erosion or bedrock using various methods, including fieldwork, laboratory analysis, topographic analysis, numerical models, near-surface geophysics and rock mechanics. Among her research topics is physical and chemical bedrock weathering, which affects groundwater storage and soil nutrient supply and can result in natural hazards like earthquake-induced landslides and debris flows. Her expertise includes tectonic geomorphology, low-temperature geochemistry and quaternary geochronology, as well as quantitative geomorphic analysis and landscape evolution of Earth and other planetary bodies.

Mikhail Solon
Assistant professor of physics and astronomy

Solon, a member of UCLA’s Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics, holds the David S. Saxon Presidential Term Chair in Physics. His research explores phenomena that can be described using the mathematical and physical tools of theoretical high-energy physics. He focuses on using new and wide-ranging applications of quantum field theory to understand the nature of dark matter, the large-scale structure of the cosmos and gravitational waves. He was awarded the J.J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award, the American Physical Society’s highest honor for doctoral research in theoretical particle physics.

Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of exceptional young scientists and scholars in chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. Fellows receive a two-year, $75,000 award to support their research from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which was established in 1934.

Fifty-three Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, including Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, in 2020. Seventeen have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 69 have received the National Medal of Science and 22 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics.

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

 

Montage of diverse images of researchers in the sciences and social sciencesPhoto credit: UCLA

UCLA College scholars among most highly cited researchers for 2021

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Montage of diverse images of researchers in the sciences and social sciences

UCLA researchers on the Clarivate list study a wide array of subjects, ranging from chemistry and medicine to ecology and engineering. Photo credit: UCLA

 

Editor’s note: Congratulations to the UCLA College scholars included in this year’s Clarivate Analytics list of the most highly cited researchers in the sciences and social sciences!

By Stuart Wolpert

The world’s most influential researchers include 43 UCLA scholars.

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

UCLA internet studies and race scholar Safiya Noble awarded MacArthur Fellowship

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Picture of Safiya Noble

Safiya Noble, an associate professor of gender studies and African American studies, and co-founder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.

Professor Safiya Noble, director of an interdisciplinary research center at UCLA focused on the intersection of human rights, social justice, democracy, and technology — was announced today as a recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

In 2019, Noble, an associate professor of gender studies and African American studies, co-founded the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, with Sarah T. Roberts, associate professor of gender studies and information studies.

Noble’s scholarship focuses on digital media and its impact on society, as well as how digital technology and artificial intelligence converge with questions of race, gender, culture and power. She is the author of the bestselling book “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” which examines racist and sexist bias in the algorithms used by commercial search engines.

“Noble’s work deepens our understanding of the technologies that shape the modern world and facilitates critical conversations regarding their potential harms,” the MacArthur Foundation said in a statement.

The MacArthur Fellowship is a $625,000, no-strings-attached award to people the foundation deems “extraordinarily talented and creative individuals.” Fellows are chosen based on three criteria: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of accomplishments, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Noble is one of 25 individuals the foundation selected for fellowships in 2021.

In addition to recognizing and supporting exceptional creativity, the fellowship is intended to inspire people to pursue their own creative interests.

For Noble, who is also affiliated faculty in UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, that means launching her nonprofit EquityEngine.org, a leadership and empowerment initiative for women of color.

“The MacArthur Fellowship will have a transformative impact on the work I do to abolish the harmful and discriminatory effects of digital technologies,” Noble said. “It’s a great and unexpected honor, and I’m grateful to the selection committee and all my colleagues who made this possible. I plan to use this award to accelerate and amplify the work of other Black women and women of color.”

In addition to her research, Noble works with engineers, executives, artists and policymakers to think through the broader ramifications of how technology is built, deployed and used in unfair ways. She challenges them to examine the harms algorithmic architectures cause and shows the necessity of addressing the civil and human rights that are violated through their technologies.

With Noble’s award, seven current faculty in the social sciences are MacArthur Fellows, including historian Kelly Lytle- Hernández (2019), anthropologist Jason De León (2017), linguistic anthropologist Elinor Ochs (1998), sociologist Rogers Brubaker (1994), anthropologist Sherry Ortner (1990) and geographer Jared Diamond (1985).

“As social scientists, it is increasingly important for us to interrogate the power that technology holds over our social structures, cultures, behavior and potential for progress,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of the division of social sciences in the UCLA College. “Safiya’s work has done just that. We are deeply gratified and proud that the MacArthur Foundation has recognized Safiya for her ongoing commitment to engaging community, inspiring action and her efforts to build a more equitable world for all.”

Along with Roberts, Noble also serves as co-faculty director of the interdisciplinary Minderoo Initiative for Technology and Power held within the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.

“This recognition of Dr. Noble by MacArthur Foundation is so timely, and rightly recognizes her indefatigable efforts, her incredible scope of vision, and her ability to hold fast to her convictions in the name of justice and equity, often years before the rest of the world catches up,” Roberts said. “Time and again, I have watched her fearlessly, boldly and assuredly lead the vanguard, push the boundaries of the possible, demand and then pave the way for something better. This world is a better place for the work of Safiya Noble. I am so proud to see her recognized as the iconoclastic genius that she is.”

Noble joins 13 other UCLA faculty as MacArthur fellows in total, a list that also includes mathematician Terence Tao, director Peter Sellars, astrophysicist Andrea Ghez and historian of religion Gregory Schopen.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.