A UCLA linguist and a music educator are teaming up to examine a person's thinking processes as he or she sight-reads music by using a device that tells them exactly where the subject's eyes are focused.

In another investigation, a brain-imaging expert and two political scientists will be using functional magnetic resonance imaging to look at the cognitive processes of those who are politically sophisticated and those who are not as they engage in political thinking.

Unusual pairings? Not at UCLA where academic border-crossing is becoming an institutional hallmark and one of the key strategies to take scholarship and research in creative, new directions.

Seven such research collaborations were chosen last year to receive the first grants offered in support of border-crossing research and scholarship.

The 2000-01 winners of awards from the Chancellor's Fund for Academic Border Crossing included Jeffrey I. Zink, chemistry, and Fuyuhiko Tamanoi, microbiology and molecular genetics, for the "Ordered Arrays of Living Cells in Glass"; Eric L. Hurwitz, public health/epidemiology, and Francesco Chapelli, dentistry/oral biology/medicine, for "Immediate and Long-Term Effects of Immune Stimulation: Linking the Immune Response to Subsequent Physical and Behavioral Responses"; and Edward A. Alpers, history, and Allen R. Roberts, world arts and cultures, for the "Expressive Culture of Afro-Omanis: an Indian Ocean Crossroads."

Also among the winning projects selected by a 14-member faculty steering committee with representation from across the campus were "Molecular Nanowires," by George Gruner, physics and astronomy, and Richard B. Kaner, chemistry/biochemistry; "Eye-tracking Studies of Musical Sight Reading," by Carson Schutze, linguistics, and Frank Heuser, music; "Thinking About Politics: An fMRI Study," by Marco Iacoboni, psychiatry and biobehavioral science, Darren Schreiber, law/political science, and John Zaller, political science; and "Counting and Discounting Asians in the Americas: National and Local Constructions of Race and Ethnicity," by Clara M. Chu, Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, and Henry Yu, history.

"The committee and I were extremely pleased with the level of response we got in the initial year of this program," said chair Malcolm Gordon, professor of organismic biology, ecology and evolution.

"By submitting 39 proposals in all, the faculty has shown a considerable amount of interest in participating. It appears to us that the program is offering faculty a worthwhile opportunity that wasn't there before," Gordon said.

The steering committee is currently inviting Academic Senate members to apply for the 2001-02 awards totaling up to $160,000 using a peer review process. Typically, individual awards range from $5,000 to $20,000. Exceptional proposals may be considered for greater support. Proposals are due no later than April 16.

For more information on rules and applications, call Carol Petersen, interim director of the Office of Academic Development, at (310) 206-7411.

The program announcement can be found at www.bulletin.ucla.edu/ABC/CFABC.doc (MS Word) and www.bulletin.ucla.edu/ ABC/CFABC.pdf (Acrobat).