Faculty members in the Center for the Study of Women have received grants for 2009-10.

 

Dawn M. Upchurch, professor of public health and community health sciences, has received the Faculty Research Completion Grant for her investigation of midlife women’s use of omplementary and alternative medicine for health and menopause.

 

Lucy Burns, assistant professor in the Department of Asian American Studies, has received a Junior Faculty Research Development Grant for her research about the Filipino performing body in various entertainment media.

 

Nina Sun Eidsheim, assistant professor of musicology, has also received a Junior Faculty Research Development Grant for her theory that most analyses of voice and vocal repertoire in the Western music tradition have been focused more on the written works rather than the performances of the works.

 

Michelle A. Johnson, assistant professor of social welfare, has also received a Junior Faculty Research Development Grant for her studies of the ways in which community dynamics create disparities in maternal and infant healthcare, focusing on communities of Mexican women.

 

Jo-Ann Eastwood, assistant professor in the School of Nursing, will share a Junior Faculty Research Development Grant with Dr. Noel Bairey Merz for their research on estrogen deficiency and cardiovascular disease in premenopausal women.

 

Katrina Daly Thompson, assistant professor of applied linguistics and TESL, has also received a Junior Faculty Research Development Grant for her critical analysis of sexuality in the urban myths of Tanzania.

 

Aamir Mufti, associate professor of comparative literature, has been awarded a Faculty Research Seed Grant for work on the iconography of partition in Indian visual arts.

 

Hannah Landecker, associate professor of sociology, has also been awarded a Faculty Research Seed Grant for her examination of the intersection between genetics and the politics of reproduction.

 

Margot Quinlan, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has been awarded a Faculty Research Seed Grant for her research into the role of the cytoskeleton in determining polarity during egg and embryo development.

 

Christine Dunkel-Schetter, professor of psychology and health psychology chair, has received a Faculty Research Seed Grant for a controlled pilot trial that aims to reduce prenatal stress in pregnant women using mindfulness-based intervention.

 

Robin Derby, assistant professor of history, has received a Faculty Research Seed Grant for her look into Haitian and Dominican rumors about the state, as divined from popular narration.

 

Eric Avila, associate professor of history, Chicano/Chicana studies and urban planning, has received a Faculty Research Seed Grant for his comparative history of urban highway construction during the 1950s and 60s.

 

Keith L. Camacho, assistant professor of Asian-American studies, has received a Faculty Research Seed Grant for his ethnographic research project exploring how social activist groups were formed post-9/11 in areas such as Guam and Okinawa.

 

Saskia Subramanian, assistant resident of psychiatry and medicine, will share a Faculty Research Seed Grant with Dr. Thuy Tran for their plan to conduct in-depth interviews and focus groups with 12 physicians who deal regularly with menopausal women.

 

     

UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies has been awarded a $2.5 million grant by the National Science Foundation to fund a professional development program for computer science teachers in Los Angeles high schools. The new program, Teachers Are Key, brings together education reform researchers and faculty from UCLA and University of Oregon education with the Los Angeles Unified School District. "There is a severe shortage of high school teachers who have both computer science content and pedagogical knowledge to teach a college-preparatory level computer science curriculum," said Jane Margolis, a UCLA senior education researcher and principal investigator for the grant. "Our goal is to design and implement an intensive program that will offer continuous in-classroom teacher development supported by district-wide computer science coaching and a peer-to-peer monitoring system." The program is based on Margolis' research identifying the main obstacles to offering and achieving quality high school computer science education. The findings will be disseminated nationwide, allowing other school districts and universities to utilize them.

Dr. Pinchas Cohen, professor of pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has won a $2 million Transformative R01 (T-R01) award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund his innovative research on mitochondrial dysfunction.

 

The new T-R01 program was specifically created under the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research to support exceptionally innovative, high risk, original or unconventional research projects that have the potential to transform a field of science. The selected projects tend to be inherently risky, but if successful, can profoundly impact a broad area of biomedical research. 

 

He also serves as chief of endocrinology at the Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA, as well as co-director of the UCSD/UCLA Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center.

 

Angela Hudson, assistant professor in the School of Nursing, has won a competitive grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to conduct research on HIV and pregnancy prevention strategies among youth in foster care.  Hudson is one of 15 nurse educators in the U.S. to receive the three-year $350,000 “Nurse Faculty Scholar” award this year. It is given to junior faculty who show outstanding promise as future leaders in academic nursing.

 

For her research, Hudson is revising an educational program on sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy prevention that was originally designed for homeless and runaway youth. She will modify the program to fit the specific needs of foster children. Her research will include randomly selected females ages 13 to 18 living in group homes throughout Los Angeles, and will examine how to change attitudes and knowledge regarding HIV and pregnancy prevention.

 

Nancy Reifel, assistant professor of public health and community dentistry, has won two grants. The American Dental Association has awarded her $1,335,000 for the Community Dental Health Coordinator Training Program, a UCLA School of Dentistry pilot program to provide clinical training and internships in a Native American community. Dr. Reifel also has received more than $8,000 from Mono County to fund the Mono County Oral Health Project.