Briefs

Pharm Sci's Robert Spitale wins Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science Initiative Award

Robert Spitale, associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences, is one of five winners of 2019 Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science Initiative Awards, intended to accelerate high-risk and high-reward science research projects that could lead to discoveries, solutions and potential breakthrough treatments for patients. The award is for three years and provides $900,000 in direct funds for selected […]

Distinguished Professor is awarded the 2019 Lebowitz Prize for achievement in philosophy

Margaret P. Gilbert, Ph.D., UCI’s Abraham I. Melden Chair in Moral Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of philosophy, has been awarded the 2019 Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for outstanding achievement in the field of philosophy. It includes an honorarium of $25,800. Gilbert’s research interests span diverse topics in social, political and […]

UCI student's empathy-based AI project is among finalists in NSF 'big idea' competition

Karishma Muthukumar’s “Promoting Empathy-Based AI” project has been chosen as one of 33 finalists in the National Science Foundation’s 2026 Idea Machine competition. The entry from the cognitive sciences major, who just completed her freshman year, was one of 800 nationwide. If selected as one of the four winners, her “big idea” will help guide […]

UCI biomedical engineer co-authors guide for federal investing in synthetic biology research

Today a group of more than 80 scientists and engineers from 30 universities and a dozen companies released a road map to guide and encourage government agencies to invest effectively in engineering and synthetic biology research endeavors. Chang Liu, UCI assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is lead author of the document’s biomolecular engineering section. The […]

UCI men's crew team places 6th in the nation

The UCI men’s rowing team finished up what proved to be a great 2018-19 season over the Memorial Day weekend by placing sixth in the American Collegiate Rowing Association National Championship Regatta in Georgia’s Lake Lanier Olympic Park. After competing in heats throughout Friday and Saturday, the men’s second varsity 8 crew finished second in […]

Matthew P. Canepa is named to endowed chair in art history and archaeology of ancient Iran

Matthew P. Canepa has been installed as the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Presidential Chair in Art History & Archaeology of Ancient Iran within UCI’s Department of Art History and Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies and affiliated with the campus’s Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies & Culture. Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, a private foundation that […]

Astronomers find atypically evolved galaxy with tightly packed dark matter at its core

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, UCI astronomers have identified a galaxy with an unexpectedly high amount of dark matter at its core. Descended from a family of galaxies called “red nuggets” that formed relatively soon after the Big Bang but were stalled in their growth about 10 billion years ago, Markarian 1216 has […]

Claudia Benavente is awarded a $2.1 million NCI grant to combat childhood bone cancer

Claudia Benavente, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences and developmental & cell biology at UCI, has received a $2.1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop a novel therapeutic treatment for osteosarcoma. Her research aims to explain the role of the chromatin remodeling protein UHRF1 as a potential target in the treatment of […]

Chancellor's Professor Emeritus wins award from Society for Study of Southern Literature

Brook Thomas has won the 2018 C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature for The Literature of Reconstruction: Not in Plain Black and White (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), described as “the go-to book on Reconstruction for at least a generation” by the SSSL panel. Drawing on 19th-century historiography […]

Distinguished Professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o wins 2019 Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, UCI Distinguished Professor of comparative literature and English, has been awarded the 2019 Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize for Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, about language and its constructive role in national culture, history and identity. The collection of essays advocates for linguistic decolonization and is one […]