There have been many earnest efforts by academic organizations to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in higher-level education. Yet according to the latest edition of the National Science Foundation’s Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineeringreport, the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics – more widely known as STEM –...
Research on seafloor has great implications for sea levels Ken Zhao, a PhD candidate in UCLA’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS), published phenomenal research on seafloor effects on melting glaciers. In collaboration with AOS faculty members Andrew Stewart and Jim McWilliams, Zhao’s research focuses on the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and...
InSight brings the first piece of UCLA to the surface of Mars As the NASA InSight Mars lander successfully touched down on Monday, November 26, 2018, UCLA faculty Chris Russell, Peter Chi, and Caroline Beghein were on the edge of their seats watching their work touch Mars. The InSight mission is focused on studying Mars’...
Million-fold increase in the power of waves near Jupiter’s moon Ganymede The planet Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field which forms the largest object in the solar physics. Observations of Jupiter’s magnetosphere in the 1990s provided a unique opportunity to understand how magnetic fields interact with particles and how moons of Jupiter can change the...
5th Annual Yanai Distinguished Lecture 2018 Presented by UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences The speaker Amy Clement is the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. She is an expert in climate modeling. In her...
Student Spotlight: Translating Research Into Public Policy David Gonzalez Graduate student Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. and Sacramento to discuss my research with policy makers. The trip to Washington, D.C. was training for the Switzer Foundation Fellowship. In Sacramento, I was to represent UCLA...
Professors distinguished by the UCLA Academic Senate The UCLA Academic Senate has awarded two professors from the Physical Sciences Division for their incredible performance. Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Alexander Spokoyny was honored with the 2020-21 Distinguished Teaching Award, specifically for his undergraduate research mentorship. Additionally, Professor and Vice Chair for Astronomy and Astrophysics Alice...
Jon Aurnou’s Simulated Planetary Interiors Laboratory —SPINLab—studies how the rotation of planets shapes the flow of fluids in their atmospheres and cores. By investigating fluid dynamics with state-of-the-art devices and numerical simulations, the SPINLab team interpret magnetic fields and jet systems on gas planets. Most recently, they used of an enormous spinning garbage can to...
Under the guidance of a dynamic new faculty member, three Chemistry & Biochemistry graduate students have been published in Science. Alex Bagdasarian, Stasik Popov, and Brian Shao got to know each other very well after hour upon hour of experimentation in their lab, arms encased in thick rubber as they worked on highly volatile chemicals within...
How To Thrive in the Sciences at UCLA and Beyond
Celebrating the contributions of our faculty emeriti Our departments could not be among the best in the world without the dedicated faculty who lead the research and student experiences within those departments. We benefit most from the experience that is shared by our emeriti faculty, and celebrate their continued presence within the division at an...
The Maynard Group creates new polymeric materials to address unmet needs in medicine, while simultaneously educating the next generation of scientists. UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry Professor Heather Maynard is a professor of organic chemistry at UCLA, Director of the Chemistry Biology Interface Training Program, and Associate Director of Technology and Development for the California NanoSystems...