Gifts & Grants

Hosun Kang, assistant professor of education, has been selected as a 2017-18 Hellman Fellow. Her project explores whether and how a collaborative approach to curriculum design can promote children’s analytical and problem-solving abilities. She will conduct a summer STEM workshop involving science teachers, science teacher educators and scientists, who will develop two curricula – one […]

Community member Elma Hovanessian has donated nearly 600 books to UCI in honor of her late husband, Seboo Hovanessian, and to support the campus’s Armenian Studies Program. The Armenian-language and Armenian-related English collection spans a range of topics – from art and architecture to history, literature, theater, music and philosophy – and will be housed in Langson […]

Chancellor’s Professor Carol Connor has been awarded a $1.4 million, four-year grant from the Institute of Education Sciences to develop and test a series of digital books that embed strategies to improve reading ability for students in grades 3 to 5. The project involves designing and evaluating e-books that will help children gain a deeper […]

James Vigil, professor emeritus of criminology, law & society at UCI, signed the first-ever UCI Founders’ Pledge in June 2017 for Aztlán, a mixed reality game he is creating with business partner Sergio C. Muñoz. The UCI Founders’ Pledge gives students, alumni, faculty and staff an opportunity to include philanthropy in their startup ventures. Pledge […]

Emily Thuma, assistant professor of gender & sexuality studies in the School of Humanities, has been awarded a Hellman Fellowship for 2017-18 to support the completion of her book manuscript. The working title is No More Cages: Gendered Violence, Feminist Mobilization & the U.S. Carceral State. “The book traces the intertwined histories of feminist political […]

Robert Spitale, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences, is among 22 individuals nationwide named 2017 Pew scholars in the biomedical sciences, one of the highest honors for early-career researchers. Spitale will receive $240,000 over the next four years from the Pew Charitable Trusts to develop powerful new tools for visualizing the production, localization and structure of […]

Sabrina Strings, assistant professor of sociology, has received a 2017-18 Hellman Fellowship to complete her book, Thin, White & Saved: Fat Stigma and the Fear of the Big Black Body, a historiography of fat-phobia in the West. “My research examines the historical development of fat stigma in the United States and its potential contribution to […]

Joachim Vandekerckhove, associate professor of cognitive sciences, and Ramesh Srinivasan, professor and chair of cognitive sciences, have received a $337,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop new methods of statistically modeling the relationship between brain activity and behavior. Using electroencephalogram technology, they’ll measure neurological signals on very short time scales to map the […]

Emily Grossman, associate professor of cognitive sciences, has received a $273,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the neural pathways among the areas of the brain involved in how we act and react in social settings. “The skills used for decoding the actions of others and planning responses appropriate to the context are […]

Young-Suk Kim, professor of education, has received a three-year, $1.4 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences to develop a writing program for elementary school students. “Writing is one of the most critical skills children need to acquire in order to be successful in their schoolwork and careers,” Kim said. “It’s also one of […]