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Marine scientist Paul Barber named 2019 Gold Shield Faculty Prize winner

June 12, 2019/in Featured Stories /by administrator

Coretta Harris, left, chair of the 2019 Gold Shield Faculty Prize Committee; Paul Barber; and Karen Sears, ecology and evolutionary biology department chair, who nominated Barber for the award.

In the very first day of his “Introduction to Marine Science” class, Paul Barber tells his students an amusing story about himself. It has to do with how a guy from Tucson, Arizona — in the middle of the Sonoran Desert — became a marine scientist.

Full of twists and turns, the story is also an inspiring one. It tells how Barber, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, grew up in a low-income family and attended an inner-city middle school where he once had a .45 caliber handgun pointed at his head.

“It was in the middle of class, and my teacher never even noticed,” Barber said.

Military recruiters, not college recruiters, came to Barber’s high school. But he studied hard and won a full-ride Flinn Foundation scholarship, which enabled him to attend the University of Arizona. His interest in terrestrial evolutionary genetics was sparked by classes in animal behavior and herpetology, which is the study of amphibians and reptiles. Yet it took a roundabout series of adventures while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley — involving frogs, mongooses, hyenas, clownfish and mantis shrimp — to bring him to his current position at UCLA.

“The punchline I tell the students is that, here I am, teaching a marine science course, and I’ve never taken a marine science course in my entire life,” Barber said. “And the fact that they are in that class means that they are so much further ahead of where I was at this point in their studies. If I can do this, never having done a marine science course in my life, then they are well-positioned to succeed.”

It’s this humility that endears Barber to both his students and his peers, several of whom endorsed him for the 2019 Gold Shield Faculty Prize — a $30,000 award presented annually by Gold Shield, Alumnae of UCLA, to an exceptional mid-career full professor with a distinguished record of undergraduate teaching, research and university service.

Almost since his arrival at UCLA in 2008, Barber has served as the director of the Program for Excellence in Education and Research in the Sciences, known as PEERS, a two-year program for outstanding students who wish to pursue careers in the life or physical sciences. In particular, PEERS emphasizes the recruitment and retention of students from groups traditionally underrepresented in science. Studies of the program show that its students are nearly twice as likely to complete a science degree and earn better grades than similar students not in PEERS.

Equally impressive is a summer program Barber founded 16 years ago, The Diversity Project, that he now runs with UCLA colleague Peggy Fong, also a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. The Diversity Project is designed to increase diversity in marine science — a field with a very low percentage of traditionally underrepresented minorities — and provides undergraduate students with opportunities to conduct research outside the United States, ultimately inspiring them to continue in marine science.

“We go to amazing places, like Indonesia, that have the most diverse and spectacular coral reefs on the planet,” Barber said. Nearly 70% of program alumni go on to graduate school. Among the schools from which they have earned degrees: Harvard, Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UCLA.

“Dr. Barber is a strong mentor, and I know for a fact that I am a stronger scientist because of his support,” said Camille Gaynus, an alumna of The Diversity Project. “His mentorship is embedded in me, and I strive to pass on the same sentiments to the undergrads and high school students I currently mentor. Because of Dr. Barber, I know I will become a professor and continue to provide opportunities to young scientists, particularly Black females like myself.”

Two professors will be part of the Obama Presidency Oral History Project

May 31, 2019/in College News, Featured Stories /by administrator

Karida Brown and Robert Dallek

Karida Brown, assistant professor of sociology, and Robert Dallek, professor emeritus of history, have been named to the advisory board of the Obama Presidency Oral History Project.

The Obama Foundation teamed with the Columbia Center for Oral History Research to produce the official oral history of Barack Obama’s presidency. The project will provide a comprehensive, enduring record of the decisions, actions and effects of his time in office.

Brown and Dallek join an advisory board made up of a distinguished list of presidential historians and authors; acclaimed journalists such as NPR’s Michele Norris and The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb; and other scholars in history, political science, sociology and public health from Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, UC Berkeley and UC Irvine. They will be responsible for shaping the project and uncovering narratives of how the Obama administration affected the lives of those inside and outside of Washington, D.C.

Starting this summer and during the next five years, the Obama Presidency Oral History Project will conduct interviews with some 400 people, including senior leaders and policy makers within the administration, as well as elected officials, campaign staff, journalists, and other key figures — Republican and Democrat — outside the White House.

The project also will incorporate interviews with individuals representing different dimensions of daily American life, whose perspectives enable the archive to weave recollections of administration officials with the stories and experiences of people who were affected by the administration’s decisions. This project will also examine Michelle Obama’s work and legacy as first lady.

This project builds on a longstanding tradition of presidential oral histories. For more than 50 years, oral history has been used to record the stories of people inside and outside the White House that shed light on a president’s time in office. This will be the second presidential oral history project conducted by Columbia, home to the country’s largest and oldest oral history archive, including the Eisenhower Administration Oral History project. Dwight Eisenhower was president of Columbia from 1948 to 1952. As part of this effort, Columbia and its academic partners will have full control on all editorial aspects of the project.

This article originally appeared on the UCLA Newsroom.

New insights about carbon and ice could clarify inner workings of Earth, other planets

May 23, 2019/in Faculty & Research, Featured Stories /by administrator

New simulations suggest that carbon (C) routinely bonded with iron (Fe), silicon (Si) and oxygen (O) deep within the magma ocean that covered Earth when it was young.

Most people behave differently when under extreme pressure. Carbon and ice are no different.

Two new studies show how these key planetary ingredients take on exotic forms that could help researchers better understand the composition of Earth’s core as well as the cores of planets across the galaxy. Craig Manning, a UCLA professor of geology and geochemistry, is a co-senior author of one of the papers, which was published today in the journal Nature, and senior author of the other, which was published in Nature Communications in February.

The Nature Communications paper revealed that high pressure deep inside the young Earth may have driven vast stores of carbon into the planet’s core while also setting the stage for diamonds to form. In the Nature report, researchers found that water ice undergoes a complex crystalline metamorphosis as the pressure slowly ratchets up.

Scientists have long understood that the amount of carbon sequestered in present-day Earth’s rocks, oceans and atmosphere is always in flux because the planet shuffles the element around in a vast cycle that helps regulate climate. But researchers don’t know whether the Earth locked away even more carbon deep in its interior during its formative years — information that could reveal a little more about how our planet and others like it are built.

To pursue an answer to that question, Manning and colleagues calculated how carbon might have interacted with other atoms under conditions similar to those that prevailed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, when much of Earth was still molten. Using supercomputers, the team created simulations to explore what would happen to carbon at temperatures above 3,000 degrees Celsius (more than 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit) and at pressures more than 100,000 times of those on Earth’s surface today.

The experiment revealed that under those conditions, carbon tends to link up with iron, which implies that there might be considerable quantities of carbon sealed in Earth’s iron core today. Researchers had already suspected that in the young planet’s magma ocean, iron atoms hooked up with one another and then dropped to the planet’s center. But the new research suggests that this molten iron rain may have also dragged carbon down with it. Until now, researchers weren’t even sure whether carbon exists down there.

The team also found that as the pressure ramps up, carbon increasingly bonds with itself, forming long chains of carbon atoms with oxygen atoms sticking out.

“These complex chains are a form of carbon bonding that we really hadn’t anticipated at these conditions,” Manning said.

Such molecules could be a precursor to diamonds, which consist of many carbon atoms linked together.

Solving an icy enigma

The machinations of carbon under pressure provide clues as to how Earth-like planets are built. Frozen planets and moons in other solar systems, however, may also have to contend with water ice. In a separate paper, Manning and another team of scientists looked at how the molecular structure of extremely cold ice changes when put under intense pressure.

Under everyday conditions, water ice is made up of molecules laid out in honeycomb-like mosaics of hexagons. But when ice is exposed to crushing pressure or very low temperature — in labs or possibly deep inside remote worlds — the molecules can assume a bewildering variety of patterns.

One of those patterns, known as amorphous ice, is an enigma. In amorphous ice, the water molecules eschew rigid crystalline order and take on a free-form arrangement. Manning and colleagues set out to try and understand how amorphous ice forms.

First, they chilled normal ice to about 170 degrees below zero Celsius (about 274 degrees below zero Fahrenheit). Then, they locked the ice in the jaws of a high-tech vice grip inside a cryogenic vacuum chamber. Finally, over the span of several hours, they slowly stepped up the pressure in the chamber to about 15,000 times atmospheric pressure. They stopped raising the pressure periodically to fire neutrons through the ice so that they could see the arrangement of the water molecules.

Surprisingly to the researchers, the amorphous ice never formed. Instead, the molecules went through a series of previously known crystalline arrangements.

However, when the researchers conducted the same experiment but raised the pressure much more rapidly — this time in just 30 minutes — amorphous ice formed as expected. The results suggest that time is the secret ingredient: When pressure increases slowly, tiny seeds of crystalline ice have time to form and take over the sample. Otherwise, those seeds never get a chance to grow.

The findings, published May 23 in the journal Nature, could be useful to researchers who study worlds orbiting other suns and are curious about what conditions might be like deep inside frozen planets.

“It’s entirely likely that there are planets dominated by ice in other solar systems that could obtain these pressures and temperatures with ease,” Manning said. “We have to have this right if we’re going to have a baseline for understanding the interiors of cold worlds that may not be like Earth.”

Both papers were funded in part by the Deep Carbon Observatory, a 10-year program started in 2009 to investigate the quantities, movements, forms and origins of deep carbon inside Earth. The Nature Communications paper was also funded by the European Research Council and was co-authored by researchers at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon in France, one of whom — Natalia Solomatova — completed her undergraduate studies at UCLA. The Nature paper was co-authored by UCLA geologist Adam Makhluf and researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Research Council of Canada.

This article originally appeared on the UCLA Newsroom.

UCLA psychologist on why we should embrace aging

May 14, 2019/in Featured Stories /by administrator

UCLA Broadcast Studio

Alan Castel notes that wisdom and creativity tend to flourish with age.

Who says that growing old must be paired with mental decline? Not Alan Castel, professor of psychology in the UCLA College. Our brain’s ability to adapt as we age, can actually lead to the improvement of some types of memory.

“Getting older doesn’t have to be about aches and pains and memory loss,” says Castel, who recently wrote a book about the psychology of successful aging. “If we take care of ourselves physically and choose to focus on remembering the good things, we lay the groundwork for a long and happy life.”

People coming to UCLA Alumni Day on May 18 can attend a conversation with Castel at 2:30 p.m., during which he’ll share some of what goes into successful aging.

UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture Announces Appointment of Sharon E. J. Gerstel as Director

May 14, 2019/in Featured Stories /by administrator

Sharon E. J. Gerstel

The UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture today announced the appointment of Sharon E. J. Gerstel as its inaugural director, effective July 1, 2019. Gerstel has served as the acting director of the Center since 2017.

In her role as director, Gerstel will develop a long-term vision for the Center, building on the university’s research and teaching strengths in Hellenic studies, including the expansion of courses in Modern Greek language and culture. Under her guidance, the Center will continue to forge strong partnerships with Hellenic organizations in Southern California.

“As someone who has worked in Greece for more than 30 years and who so closely identifies with Greek culture, I am honored and excited to take on this role,” said Gerstel. “The establishment of the Center demonstrates UCLA’s deep investment in the study and teaching of Hellenic culture, but also manifests its commitment to engage members of the community in the consideration of the rich history and culture of Greece, Cyprus, and the Hellenic diaspora. I am looking forward to strengthening our connections with cultural and educational institutions in Greece and Cyprus.”

In 2019, Gerstel was honored by the American Hellenic Council and the Hellenic Society of Constantinople for her work as acting director of the Center. She currently serves on the Board of the Greek Heritage Society of Southern California.

Said David Schaberg, UCLA’s Dean of Humanities, “With Professor Gerstel’s strong leadership, I have no doubt the Center will continue to forge strong connections with cultural institutions and universities near and far to highlight the significant legacy of Hellenic culture in our world today.”

In addition to its teaching and research mission, the Center, which was initiated in October 2017 by the commitment of a $5 million grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, already has become a vibrant cultural hub for the Los Angeles Hellenic community. Approximately 150,000 Americans of Greek and Cypriot ancestry live in California — more than in any other state except New York — with about half of them in Southern California, according to a 2006 U.S. Census Bureau survey.

“Professor Gerstel is a pillar for both the Greek community and Greece in Los Angeles. She is a genuine Philhellene and the most worthy person to take up the inaugural directorship of this new and important research and cultural center,” said Evgenia Beniatoglou, Consul General of Greece in Los Angeles.

Gerstel, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU), and a former student at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, has been a Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology in the Department of Art History at UCLA since 2005. Prior to her tenure at UCLA, she taught at the University of Maryland and served as a research associate at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. As a specialist in the art and archaeology of medieval Greece, Gerstel has written or edited seven books and has authored dozens of articles in the fields of art history, archaeology, history and religious studies. Her most recent book, Rural Lives and Landscapes in Late Byzantium: Art, Archaeology, and Ethnography, which was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, received the 2016 Runciman Award from the Anglo-Hellenic League, the Inaugural Book Prize from the International Center for Medieval Art (ICMA), and the Maria Theocharis Prize from the Christian Archaeological Society in Greece.

Her current research focuses on the church of Hagioi Theodoroi in Vamvaka, Mani, and its community. She also is co-director of “Soundscapes of Byzantium,” a collaborative, transdisciplinary project that studies Byzantine chant, architecture and painting together with modern-day analyses of acoustics and psychoacoustics. The project, funded by both UCLA and USC, focuses primarily on the churches of Thessaloniki.The original $5 million grant establishing the Center was part of the UCLA Centennial Campaign, which is scheduled to conclude in December 2019 during UCLA’s 100th anniversary year. As part of the founding agreement, UCLA is raising an additional $3 million in eternal funding in support of the Center. For more information about The UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture, visit: https://hellenic.ucla.edu/

UCLA to mark 100th birthday with year of celebration

May 1, 2019/in College News, Featured Stories /by administrator

UCLA 100 Years Skyline

A yearlong series of programs and events will celebrate UCLA’s 100th birthday while illuminating the campus’s growth, commitment to diversity and inclusion, and impact as a leading public research university.

UCLA 100 festivities kick off on Saturday, May 18, with Alumni Day, featuring special speakers, campus tours and programs that mark UCLA’s first 100 years. On the same day, in the campus’s iconic Royce Hall, an all-star lineup of UCLA and guest speakers will ruminate on the subject of time for a special installment of the annual TedxUCLA. Immediately following the talks, the exterior of Royce Hall will become the backdrop for a dynamic light-and-sound show highlighting the people, breakthroughs and moments that defined UCLA’s first century. The display will be free and open to the public.

“UCLA has accomplished so much in its first century, fueled by a spirit of innovation and inclusion,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “This institution has proudly challenged, contributed and connected in ways that serve the world and particularly greater Los Angeles, the diverse and vibrant region that has helped define who we are. Yet our successes have not been the product of natural inevitability. They are the result of hard work, risk and vision. Our centennial, therefore, is a time for us not only to look back and celebrate, but also to look around and ahead to determine what still needs to be done to improve lives across our community and around the world, and how we can best achieve that.”

The seeds of today’s UCLA were planted in the 1881 creation of the downtown Los Angeles State Normal School, which later moved to Vermont Avenue. In 1919, the University of California Southern Branch opened on the Vermont Avenue campus. The University of California at Los Angeles name was officially adopted in 1927, and in 1929, instruction began on the present-day Westwood campus. From those beginnings, UCLA has, in just a century, become consistently ranked as one of the top public universities in the world, and the nation’s most applied-to university. UCLA faculty and researchers are routinely recognized for their leadership and breakthroughs in a stunning array of fields, ranging from health and technology to social sciences and the arts.

In a nod to the campus’s downtown roots, the centennial festivities will continue May 22 in front of Los Angeles City Hall, when the Los Angeles City Council will proclaim “UCLA Day,” on the eve of the anniversary of the university’s official 1919 founding. Free and open to the public, a celebration in Grand Park will follow, featuring food trucks, performances by the UCLA Marching Band and KCRW DJ Jason Bentley, and culminating in the lighting of City Hall in UCLA’s signature blue and gold colors. Other structures on campus and throughout the city — including the Grand Park fountains, Staples Center and the Los Angeles International Airport pylons — will also be illuminated in blue and gold.

Throughout the year, UCLA will celebrate its connection to the city at a dozen major Los Angeles events. Among them are the LA Pride Parade on June 9, and the CicLAvia open streets event on October 6, where UCLA faculty, staff and students will host art-making activities, mobile health clinics, performances, research demonstrations and more.

On August 31, in partnership with Levitt Pavilion, UCLA will present a free public concert in MacArthur Park by internationally renowned cumbia group La Sonora Dinamita. September 29 brings “UCLA Community Classroom: Exploring Today’s Big Ideas” at the Row complex in downtown Los Angeles. The day will include discussions on art, science, technology and more, alongside thought-provoking art exhibitions, live art creation and an interactive community mural.

Special centennial-themed moments will continue through the end of the 2019–20 academic year, including at the June 2019 and June 2020 commencement ceremonies, and at intercollegiate athletic events; at many of the events, a series of commemorative limited-edition centennial lapel pins will be available. And to tap into the campus’s rich history of achievement in sports, UCLA Athletics is asking fans to share their favorite Bruins memories on the Centennial Moments website.

Throughout the year, UCLA also will embark on four initiatives exclusive to the centennial year that are designed to expand public access to UCLA’s scholarly resources and build upon UCLA’s longstanding commitment of service to the community. Each will be a collaboration among multiple departments, centers, institutes and community groups.

“UCLA’s objective has always been to lead the way in advancing education, medicine, technology, the arts, public service and so much more,” said Carole Goldberg, chair of the centennial celebration steering committee and a UCLA distinguished research professor of law. “But of critical importance is the role we play, and will continue to play, in cultivating opportunity, inclusion and access for the communities we serve.” The four initiatives are:

Open UCLA, fall 2019. To erase barriers to the materials and scholarship that reside at UCLA Library, the campus will digitize more than 5,000 library resources and expand the library’s open collection. The initiative also will involve partnerships among UCLA, the Los Angeles Public Library and the Los Angeles County Public Library.
UCLA: Our Stories, Our Impact, fall 2019. A traveling multimedia exhibit will showcase the role of UCLA in advancing social justice and equality in the U.S.
UCLA Data for Democracy in L.A., fall 2019. UCLA will partner with K-12 teachers and local civic groups to examine data on inequality and opportunity, develop new curricula and improve civic discourse. The project will culminate in an on-campus Centennial Youth Summit that will bring together students and teachers from more than 100 classrooms across Los Angeles.
UCLA Collects: 100 Years of Sharing Knowledge, April 2020. The UCLA Fowler Museum, Hammer Museum at UCLA and other campus units will unveil an exhibition and series of activities and lectures drawn from the nearly 14 million art objects, texts, crafts and antiquities under UCLA’s care, with the goal of expanding access to UCLA’s diverse collections. Curators and faculty members will share stories related to the collections and tackle controversial topics on the issue of collecting itself.

As part of the celebration, the Los Angeles community will be invited to join students on campus for the second edition of the popular “10 Questions” lecture series. From October 1 through December 3, 2019, UCLA will host a series of 10 lectures that are free and open to the public — and that are a for-credit course for UCLA first-year students. The course’s centennial edition is based on a program begun in 2018 by the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. The program will bring together leading scholars from across campus for panel discussions of thought-provoking questions such as “What is justice?” or “What is creativity?”

A full list of confirmed events follows. More programs and events will be added throughout the 2019–20 academic year.

UCLA 100 is sponsored by University Credit Union.

UCLA 100 calendar at a glance

2019

May 18: Launch events

Alumni Day, including special speakers, centennial-themed programs and tours
TEDxUCLA at Royce Hall
“Lighting the Way” sound and visual show outside Royce Hall

May 20: UCLA leadership will visit Sacramento to receive a proclamation from the California State Legislature and State Senate

May 22: UCLA 100th Birthday Celebration at Grand Park with KCRW (details for media)

June 9: UCLA at LA Pride Parade

Summer: UCLA 100 international alumni celebrations

August 31: Free concert by La Sonora Dinamita at Levitt Pavilion in MacArthur Park

Sept. 28: UCLA Volunteer Day. For the centennial edition of the annual event, first-year UCLA students and other Bruins will provide community service at 100 locations throughout the city and around the world

Sept. 29: “UCLA Community Classroom: Exploring Today’s Big Ideas” at Row, downtown Los Angeles

Oct. 1–Dec. 3: 10 Questions: Centennial Edition lecture series

Oct. 6: CicLAvia: Heart of L.A., Celebrating 100 Years of UCLA

Oct. 29: “Internet50” conference, commemorating UCLA’s role as the birthplace of the internet. Scheduled to speak are UCLA distinguished professor Leonard Kleinrock; Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and Alphabet Inc.; Judy Estrin, CEO of JLabs; and Kara Swisher, founder of Recode.

Nov. 3: “Exploring Your Universe” interactive science festival with hands-on demonstrations, free and open to the public

2020

Jan. 1: UCLA will be hosted on the Wescom Credit Union float at the Rose Parade

March 27–29: “LA Hacks x UCLA 100.” In partnership with LA Hacks, UCLA will invite students and tech-savvy members of the community to participate in a coding event in Pauley Pavilion with the goal of creating apps that serve the public good.

UCLA microbiologist Patricia J. Johnson elected to National Academy of Sciences

May 1, 2019/in Featured Stories /by administrator

Patricia J. Johnson

Patricia J. Johnson, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.”

Membership in the academy is one of the highest honors that a U.S. scientist can receive. Its members have included Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Orville Wright and Alexander Graham Bell. The academy today announced the election of 100 new members and 25 foreign associates.

“I am very honored to be include among the ranks of such distinguished scientists,” said Johnson, who has appointments in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the division of life sciences in the UCLA College.

Research in Johnson’s laboratory focuses on the molecular and cellular biology of a single cellular parasite called Trichomonas vaginalis. This microbe is responsible for the most prevalent, non-viral, sexually transmitted infection worldwide and is the most common parasite found in the U.S. population. An estimated 275 million people worldwide have the parasite, including approximately 3.7 million in the United States. In 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified trichomoniasis, the infection caused by T. vaginalis, as one of the “neglected parasitic infections in the United States.”

Johnson said that beyond its medical importance, T. vaginalis is a fascinating organism for conducting research on the evolution of biological processes present in all eukaryotes, from microbes to humans. The parasite’s atypical properties offer possible chemotherapeutic targets and vaccine candidates, she said.

Her laboratory focuses on several aspects of trichomonad biology, including its evolution, regulation of gene expression, drug resistance, genomics and biological processes vital for human infection.

“Our interdisciplinary research program merges several specialties, including structural and cell biology, biochemistry, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, evolution and medical sciences,” she said. “In recent years, we have narrowed our focus to defining and explaining critical pathogenic mechanisms that allow T. vaginalis to establish and maintain an infection. These studies include identifying critical parasite cell surface molecules and secreted vesicles, as well as defining human immune responses to parasitic infection. We have also investigated a possible link between infection with T. vaginalis and prostate cancer.”

The National Academy of Sciences was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology. The academy is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare.

Professor Meredith Cohen Discusses Rebuilding and Restoring Notre Dame Cathedral

May 1, 2019/in Featured Stories /by administrator

Meredith Cohen

Feelings of grief and despair were felt across the globe on Monday, April 17, 2019, when a devastating fire erupted at Notre Dame Cathedral. Individuals around the world collectively mourned the state of the 850-year-old Paris landmark, posting photos and exchanging memories of the cathedral.

After officials began to assess the damage, it became clear that it will take multiple experts to develop a plan to restore and rebuild the structure, including conservators, engineers, and art historians.

Meredith Cohen, associate professor of medieval art and architecture in the UCLA Art History Department, is a specialist in Gothic architecture of Paris and high medieval Europe (c. 1000 – c. 1450). Below are some statements that she gave to various media publications regarding the Gothic building’s significance and the complicated question of how to rebuild and restore Notre Dame.

Cohen explained to Slate that the building is “the origin of our concept of Paris as a center of art and culture.” It was constructed over the course of three centuries, beginning in 1160, and “symbolically transformed the city into the center of European culture during the medieval period through its display of the new and innovative Gothic architecture and its singular architectural and artistic ambition.”

Not only did Notre Dame symbolically and culturally transform the city, but it also represents “an extraordinary feat of mankind” because it was built by hand during a time without heavy machinery. Cohen also notes that the building was “a kind of utopian vision for people in the Middle Ages, and they really wanted it to last forever.”

With most of the building’s structure still intact, Cohen told Slate that the cathedral itself is “the artwork” and that “all the other works of art attached to church are different details of it.” She expressed concern over the loss of the “Forest,” the cathedral attic’s wooden frame with beams that were each made from an individual tree.

Speaking to National Geographic about the wooden structure, dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries, Cohen added that it was a “rare example of medieval engineering.” She also stated that the cathedral’s choir might be missing some key features, including some sculptures and graffiti that medieval worshippers etched into the choir stalls.

In her LA Times response to the current debate on how to rebuild and restore the iconic cathedral, Cohen puts forth another question to consider: “Should you fake history or create something of our time?” She suggests a design that acknowledges the building’s status and relevance in the 21st century, which could mean replacing the 19th century spire with something different instead of replicating it. As a more modern addition to the cathedral, Cohen reminds the public that this spire is a piece of the cathedral’s layered history. “A carbon copy is a false history because you can’t re-create the past. It would still have a completion date of 2019.”

The question of how to rebuild and restore the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral will not be answered overnight. As a symbol of Paris’ history, this process will require a collaborative effort between various experts and stakeholders looking to preserve the history and cultural significance of this beloved architectural structure.

The Humanities Division would like to thank Professor Cohen for sharing her insight with the public in the aftermath of this destruction.

The stone faces and human problems on Easter Island

April 23, 2019/in Faculty & Research, Featured Stories /by administrator

Excavation of Moai 156 (left) and 157. The visible difference in color and texture, and thus in preservation, is due to soil and depth coverage.

Archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg continues to seek insight from the statues and for the living descendants of their makers

In 1981, UCLA archaeology graduate student Jo Anne Van Tilburg first set foot on the island of Rapa Nui, which is commonly called Easter Island, eager to explore her interest in rock art by studying the iconic stone heads that enigmatically survey the landscape.

Van Tilburg was one of just a few thousand people who would visit Rapa Nui each year back then. And though the island to this day remains one the most remote inhabited islands in the world, a surge in annual visitors has placed its delicate ecosystem and archaeological treasures in jeopardy.

“When I went to Easter Island for the first time in ’81, the number of people who visited per year was about 2,500,” said Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project, the longest collaborative artifact inventory ever conducted on the Polynesian island that belongs to Chile. “As of last year the number of tourists who arrived was 150,000 from around the world.”

On April 21, which is Easter Sunday, CBS’ “60 Minutes” will air a special interview with Van Tilburg and Anderson Cooper filmed on the island, talking about efforts to preserve the moai (pronounced MO-eye) — the monolithic stone statues that were carved and placed on the island from around 1100 to 1400 and whose stoic faces have fascinated the world for decades.

Jo Anne Van Tilburg, right, and Cristián Arévalo Pakarati

Back in 2003, Van Tilburg, who is research associate at the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and director of UCLA’s Rock Art Archive since 1997, was the first archaeologist since the 1950s to obtain permission from Chile’s National Council of Monuments and the Rapa Nui National Park, with the Rapa Nui community and in collaboration with the National Center of Conservation and Restoration, Santiago de Chile, to excavate the moai, which most people didn’t know included torsos, which are buried below the surface, prior to her work and the publicity surrounding it.

Her success in obtaining permission to dig on the island, she credits to a philosophy of “community archaeology.” She has spent nearly four decades among the people of Rapa Nui, listening, learning, making connections, making covenants with the elders of the society, reporting extensively on her findings. Major funding has been provided by the Archaeological Institute of America Site Preservation Fund.

“I think my patience and diligence was rewarded,” she said. “They saw me all those years getting really dirty doing the work. What they don’t like is when people come and think they have all the answers and then leave. That feels to the Rapanui like their history is being co-opted.”

Van Tilburg credits the sustained and generous support of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute as critical to her continued work on the island. She has also made it a point to include UCLA undergraduates from a variety of academic disciplines in the hands-on work on Rapa Nui, including Alice Hom who began as a work study student 20 years ago and who now serves as project manager for the Easter Island Statue Project.

Van Tilburg, who received her doctorate in archaeology from UCLA in 1989, is working on a massive book project harnessing her vast archive that will serve as an academic atlas of the island, its history and the meaning behind the moai. She used the proceeds of a previous book to invest in a local business, the Mana Gallery and Mana Gallery press, both of which highlight indigenous artists. And she helped the local community rediscover their canoe-making history through the 1995 creation of the Rapa Nui Outrigger Club.

Jo Anne Van Tilburg being interviewed by Anderson Cooper of “60 Minutes”

Her co-director on the Easter Island Statue Project, Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, is Rapanui and a graphic artist by trade. Van Tilburg exclusively employs islanders for her excavation work. She’s traveled the world helping catalog items from the island that are now housed in museums like the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the British Museum in London. Van Tilburg does this to assist repatriation efforts.

Rapa Nui is more commonly known as Easter Island because Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen first landed there on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722. But the people who already lived there (Polynesian descendants of a massive human migration more than 500 years earlier), simply called the place “home,” Van Tilburg said.

“Very few pacific islands originally had names,” Van Tilburg said. “What was named was a landmark or a star or something that brought you to it, but not necessarily the island itself.”

The “60 Minutes” interview also focuses on how current residents of the island are coping with increasing waves of tourism, which is almost always a double-edged sword, but is especially so in a fragile ecosystem, Van Tilburg said.

The now 150,000 annual visitors pale in comparison to the vast numbers of travelers who flock to Egypt’s pyramids and awe-inspiring archaeological sites, she noted.

The intricate rock art on the back of Moai 157.

“But by Rapa Nui standards, on an island where electricity is provided by a generator, water is precious and depleted, and all the infrastructure is stressed, 150,000 is a mob,” she said.

What’s more disheartening is the frequent disrespectful nature of some travelers who ignore the rules and climb on the moai, trample preserved spaces and sit on top of graves all in service of getting a photo of themselves picking the nose of an ancient artifact, Van Tilburg said.

The masses and the increasingly harmful glibness of the travelers are something the 5,700 residents of the island must grapple with. Only in the last decade or so have they been given governance of the national park where the moai are located. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park.

Van Tilburg’s original impetus behind studying the moai is rooted in her curiosity about migration, marginalized people and how societies rise and fall.

“Rapa Nui was the last island settled probably in the whole westward movement that took place from southeast Asia across the Pacific,” Van Tilburg said. “I’m interested in what that might signal to us about today and why people are moving around the world the way they are.”

Rapanui society was traditionally hierarchical, led by a class of people who believed themselves God-appointed elites. These leaders dictated where the lower classes could live, how they would work to provide food for the elites and the population at large. The ruling class also determined how and when the moai would be built as the backdrop for exchange and ceremony.

“This inherently institutionalized religious hierarchy produced an inequitable society,” Van Tilburg said. “They were very successful in the sense that their population grew and they were good horticulturists, agriculturists and fisherman. But they were unsuccessful at understanding that unless they managed what they had better, and more fairly, that there was no future.”

Population growth and rampant inequity in a fragile environment eventually led to wrenching societal changes, she said. Internal collapse (as outlined in UCLA professor Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”) along with colonization and slave-trading in the 1800s caused the population of Rapa Nui to drop to just 111 in the 1870s.

As an anthropologist, Van Tilburg is deeply interested in equity.

“I’m interested in asking why do we keep replicating societies in which people are not equal, because in doing so, we initiate a crisis,” she said. “Inequity is at the heart of our human problems.”

This story originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom.

Will ocean seafood farming sink or swim? UCLA study evaluates its potential

April 23, 2019/in Featured Stories /by administrator

Divers survey submersible cages used to farm cobia off the coast of Puerto Rico. UCLA researchers conducted the first country-by-country evaluation of the potential for marine aquaculture under current policies and practices.

Seafood farming in the ocean — or marine aquaculture — is the fastest growing sector of the global food system, and it shows no sign of slowing. Open-ocean farms have vast space for expansion, and consumer demand continues to rise.

As with many young industries, there’s a lot to figure out, from underlying science and engineering to investment and regulations.

In a study published in the journal Marine Policy, UCLA researchers report that they have conducted the first country-by-country evaluation of the potential for marine aquaculture under current governance, policy and capital patterns. They discovered a patchwork of opportunities and pitfalls.

Peter Kareiva, one of the study’s authors and director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said sustainable food systems are an important part of the fight against climate change.

“Like many environmental scientists, I see marine aquaculture as the future food system for a carbon neutral world,” Kareiva said. “But whether we get that future and a healthy ocean depends on governance and regulations — and we all know how sketchy those can be at times.”

In 2017, Kareiva’s research found that a tiny fraction of the world’s oceans, farmed sustainably — just 0.015 percent — could satisfy the entire world’s fish demand.

The new study categorizes 144 countries into three groups based on their capacity for aquaculture growth in the industry: “goldilocks,” “potential at-risk” and “non-optimized producer.” The categories are based on quality of government institutions and regulations, potential for investment and how suitable the biological and physical environment are for farming seafood in the ocean.

Sixty-seven countries fell in the goldilocks category for either finfish or bivalves, like mussels and clams — meaning conditions there are favorable for marine aquaculture. According to lead author Ian Davies, who conducted research for the study at Kareiva’s UCLA lab, the industry could help address social challenges in these places.

“There is a lot of potential in food-insecure countries, including island states in the Pacific and Caribbean,” Davies said. “They have limited resources and quickly growing populations. But these are also the countries with the most productive waters in the world.”

Twenty-four countries were identified as non-optimized producers, which lack highly productive waters but still engage in aquaculture, usually because of better access to investment. This group includes countries around the Persian Gulf and Black Sea, South Korea, Italy, Canada and Norway.

Finally, the paper categorized 77 countries as potential at-risk. These countries have suitable waters but poor access to capital and unstable, corrupt or ineffective governance systems. Despite such problems, 16 are currently farming fish in the ocean, often harming ecosystems or causing other problems in the process. China is by far the largest producer of ocean-farmed seafood, owing to strong financial capacity and political will, but was found to have poor oversight — which could pose problems for the industry in the future.

“The more robust regulation you have, the more you can ensure the industry will be around for longer, and that it will be able to produce fish at a reasonable cost with minimal input,” Davies said. “There is a palpable feeling among planners, researchers and aquaculture operators that we have the ability to do this right before the industry gets too big. Let’s put the regulations in place.”

Ineffective regulation often leads to ecosystem damage. In the 1990s, there was a shrimp farming boom in Southeast Asia. Operations added too much shrimp and feed to mangroves, destroying many in the process. The impact was also felt by humans. Mangroves serve as barriers that reduce storm surge and flooding, and many small aquaculture operators quickly found themselves out of business. More recently, unregulated fish farming led to disease outbreaks in northern Vietnamese waters.

In other observations, the study found that while lack of regulation poses problems, so can regulation that is too burdensome. In Ireland the licensing process takes years, making it impossible for operators to qualify for European Union grants. There are other country-specific barriers, too. New Zealand is a goldilocks country, but opposition from local communities and vocal stakeholders, including fishermen, has slowed marine development.

China is the largest marine aquaculture producer by far, but its waters are only moderately good and its governance was listed as low quality. The industry has succeeded there because of political will and access to capital. China isn’t alone. Excluding outliers, the study notes, less suitable countries produce almost six times as much fish as optimal countries. Capital-driven aquaculture in less suitable waters carries the risk of being less effective and more damaging.

Marine aquaculture is seen as promising compared to high-polluting inland operations. The open ocean disperses its impact, leading to fewer environmental problems. Meanwhile, according to the United Nations, nearly 90 percent of the world’s marine stocks are depleted, with many fisheries on the verge of collapse. Sustainably farming oceans could allow wild populations to rebound while serving as a crucial source of protein and economic benefits to humans.