Briefs

UCI team creates software to help scientists make better sense of data on polar weather

Antarctica and Greenland are dotted with automated weather stations, 30-foot metal tubes equipped with sensors to record temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and other conditions. The outposts gather a lot of useful readings for scientists hoping to understand the transformation of polar environments brought on by climate change, but data formats vary from station to […]

Education professor honored for contributions to public policy, practice in child development

Deborah Lowe Vandell, UCI professor of education, has been named the winner of the Society for Research in Child Development’s 2019 award for distinguished contributions to public policy and practice in child development. Recognized for her decades-long career dedicated to helping policymakers and program developers come to evidence-based decisions about how early caregiving, particularly by […]

UCI ecologist co-authors UN Environment report on impact of plastics on coral reefs

The global fight against ocean plastic pollution will come into sharp focus at the fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly this month in Nairobi, Kenya, with Joleah Lamb, assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at UCI, making a key contribution. Lamb, who studies how diseases affect coral reefs, is co-author of a […]

British astrophysicist who discovered pulsars delivers the 2019 Reines Lecture to full house

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, visiting professor at the University of Oxford and chancellor of Scotland’s University of Dundee, enthralled a capacity audience in the Irvine Barclay Theatre on the UCI campus Tuesday night as she delivered the 2019 Reines Lecture. Bell Burnell, named dame commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2007, recounted […]

UCI professor is awarded $3.7 million in NIH grants for research on neurological disorders

UCI School of Medicine researcher Geoff Abbott, professor of physiology & biophysics, is the recipient of a $2 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (R35 grant) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and a $1.7 million R01 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The five-year grants help enable studies focused […]

Grad student working on 'superbug kryptonite' wins UCI Grad Slam, will compete systemwide

Many insects are equipped with a natural defense mechanism against harmful pathogens: Their wings are covered with nanoscale spikes – 1,000 times thinner than a human hair – that kill bacteria and fungi cells. UCI’s 2019 winner of the University of California Grad Slam competition is mimicking these antimicrobial surfaces in the lab for potential […]

UCI's graduate programs shine in U.S. News & World Report rankings

UCI’s doctoral programs once again shined in U.S. News & World Report’s annual graduate school rankings – published online on March 12. In just its fifth year of eligibility, the UCI School of Law ranks seventh among public universities and 23rd overall. In addition, it’s third among publics for clinical training (seventh overall) and third […]

UCI astronomers to study galaxy formation with newly funded NASA space telescope

UCI’s Frederick Reines Hall is home to happy astronomers after this week’s announcement of NASA’s selection of the new Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer mission. The two-year, $242 million SPHEREx is targeted to launch in 2023. Asantha Cooray, UCI professor of physics & astronomy, will head one […]

Associate professor of education Drew Bailey is named Jacobs Foundation Research Fellow

Drew Bailey, UCI associate professor of education, has been selected as a 2019-2021 Jacobs Foundation Research Fellow. The highly competitive global fellowship program lets early- and midcareer recipients in all scholarly disciplines concentrate on projects to improve child and youth development. Bailey’s work focuses on the processes underlying the stability of individual differences in youngsters’ […]

UCI and national lab researchers see lifelike ion differentiation in synthetic nanopores

Scientists at UCI and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have shown that synthetic nanopores can possess the same ion-transporting and differentiation capabilities as living tissue. They detail their discovery in a study published today in Science Advances. “Biological systems use ion selectivity to chemically store and exchange energy, making it available for use when needed,” said […]