Honors & Awards

UCI alum and “Wicked” star defied gravity as Elphaba. Now she’s hoping to give other students a boost by raising money for scholarships.

UC Irvine physics & astronomy professor Roger McWilliams often appears to have stepped out of a time machine — from the past. He rides to work on a reproduction vintage bicycle with a wide leather seat and big chrome handlebars. When he does drive a car, it’s a 60-year-old Jaguar that he fixes himself with […]

Last summer, UC Irvine senior Jasmine Fang traveled to the rural Dominican Republic province of Elías Piña to build latrines for residents and teach public hygiene. She learned something too: the value of community. Evenings and weekends, families would gather to play basketball, jump rope or just socialize. Says Fang: “People in the Dominican Republic […]

Ragtime — that bright, toe-tapping piano music that flourished in bars, brothels and parlor rooms in the early 1900s — has found an unlikely promoter and practitioner at UC Irvine: a young civil engineering student named Jared DiBartolomeo. DiBartolomeo belongs to a generation that worships technology, was raised on rap and is addicted to keyboards […]

“Do not say anything against rhyme! It is a mighty goddess indeed, the deity of very secret and very ancient coincidences, and one must never let the fires on its altars burn out.” — Rainer Maria Rilke They are small in number, the writers who have come to UC Irvine to study poetry through the master’s-level Programs […]

Levity, gossip and idle chitchat have no place in Dr. Ralph Clayman’s operating room. The pioneer in minimally invasive surgery once asked a gabby colleague to leave in the middle of an operation because the chatterbox lacked focus. Clayman, a urologist so dedicated he gives his home phone number to patients, makes no apologies for […]

When he was in his 50s, renowned molecular biologist Masayasu Nomura wrote a poem for a friend’s 65th birthday. “To the Wise Scientist” reads: “Someday I too hope to attain the age of sixty-five.Then I wish to live as you live:Giving sympathy and help to young people,Receiving friendship and respect in return.No more worries, no […]

The first person Donald Blake met when he walked into UC Irvine’s chemistry department in 1978 was F. Sherwood Rowland, clad in shorts and sandals, a towering 6 feet 5 inches tall. Rowland, department chair, was considering the UCLA senior for a graduate position.   “We talked about lots of things, and in the end […]

Medici Scholars program helps arts students launch their dreams

Kenneth Small, professor emeritus of economics at UC Irvine, is the subject of a special issue of the Journal of Urban Economics, which published a selection of essays in his honor. Small was named a fellow of the Regional Science Association International in 2006 and was recently recognized as the 2007 UC Irvine Lauds & […]