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.
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.
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.
The gift will create the Dr. Myung Ki Hong Endowed Chair in Polymer Science and the Dr. Myung Ki Hong Endowed Chair in Materials Innovation.
UCLA biologists have developed an intervention that serves as a cellular time machine — turning back the clock on a key component of aging.
Cities nationwide — including in California — are confronting their Confederate history after a violent and fatal weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“The dream is to have an array of hundreds or thousands of qubits all working together to solve a difficult problem,” said graduate student Joshua Schoenfield. “This work is an important step toward realizing that dream.”
Michael Jung, a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the UCLA College, and his wife, Alice, have donated $1 million toward the establishment of the Michael and Alice Jung Endowed Chair in Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery.
The gift was matched by the UCLA division of physical sciences for a total contribution of $2 million. The match was made possible by a program established after UCLA sold its royalty interest in Xtandi, a compound developed by Jung and his research team for the treatment of prostate cancer. With its share of the proceeds from the Xtandi transaction, UCLA has also made matching funds available for gifts that support undergraduate scholarships at UCLA.
“Xtandi has not only saved lives; it has been a wonderful boost to UCLA due to the matching program, and we have Mike Jung to thank for that,” said Miguel García-Garibay, dean of physical sciences. “He and Alice have set a terrific example by endowing a chair in Mike’s department, for which we are very grateful.”
Mike Jung (Penny Jennings/UCLA)
Jung is an authority on synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry. He is an inventor on 34 issued patents and 36 patent applications arising from both his consulting activities and his own research. He has more than 15 ongoing academic research collaborations and consults for more than 20 industrial laboratories in both biotech and pharmaceutical settings.
His current research holds promise for the development of new drugs for the treatment of various diseases and conditions, including for breast, lung and prostate cancer; antiviral diseases; muscular dystrophy; multiple sclerosis; osteoporosis; and even hair loss.
“My wife and I hope that our gift will enable UCLA to hire a faculty member who could continue to do similar drug discovery research well into the future, with the hope of producing more useful drugs,” Jung said.
A native of New Orleans, Jung received his B.A. from Rice University in 1969 and, as a National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellow, went on to earn his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1973. He completed a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) postdoctoral fellowship at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zürich before joining the UCLA faculty in 1974.
Jung has published more than 345 research papers and presented more than 600 lectures on his research. He has supervised 92 doctoral and nine master’s theses, and he has taught more than 130 postdoctoral scholars.
Among the awards he has received are the American Chemical Society’s Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, UCLA’s Glenn T. Seaborg Medal and Gold Shield Faculty Prize, and the 2015 Team Science Award from the American Association for Cancer Research. He also was elected to the National Academy of Inventors.
“Without chemistry, we wouldn’t have life-saving medicines like Xtandi,” said Catherine Clarke, chair of the chemistry and biochemistry department and a professor of biochemistry. “Thanks to Mike and Alice Jung’s gift, the department will be able to pursue more breakthrough research in medicinal chemistry. Who knows how many more lives will be saved?”
The department of chemistry and biochemistry was named No. 7 in the world in chemistry in the 2017 U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities rankings, and three faculty members and four alumni have been awarded the Nobel Prizes in chemistry. The department has more than 50 faculty, 130 postdoctoral researchers, 350 graduate students and 1,400 undergraduates.
The gift is part of the $4.2 billion UCLA Centennial Campaign, which is scheduled to conclude in December 2019 during UCLA’s 100th anniversary year.
Darnell Hunt, a renowned scholar of race, media and culture, chair of sociology and longtime leader of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, has been selected as the new dean of social sciences in the UCLA College, effective July 1.
