:: UCLA TODAY Home

©2004
The Regents of the University of California
 

NAMES AND FACES

ACCOLADES

Marco A. Firebaugh, who represented the 50th Assembly District in southeast Los Angeles County from 1998 to 2004, was appointed last month a visiting professor and policy fellow at the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture in the Geffen School of Medicine. While at the center, Firebaugh is co-authoring a paper on educational and health legislation in 19th-century California and consulting on a policy research project examining access to care for children of immigrant parents. In addition to lecturing, he is mentoring students and working on curriculum and assisting with a program that helps community college students become health-care professionals. “We are very fortunate to have a public figure of the stature of Assemblymember Firebaugh,” said center director David Hayes-Bautista.... A memoir by renowned human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama, which was published by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, received a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for 2004. “Passing It On: A Memoir” is the account of Kochiyama, an extraordinary Japanese-American woman who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and whites for social justice and civil rights in the United States and abroad for more than half a century.

CONGRATS

Jason L. Speyer, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering for the development and application of advanced techniques for optimal navigation and control of a wide range of aerospace vehicles. Membership is one of the highest honors awarded to an engineer.... The Hammer Museum, in partnership with Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, was among the top winners at the 2003-04 International Association of Art Critics/USA’s awards ceremony last month. The museum took first place in the category of best monographic museum show nationally for “Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective,” curated by Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin and Elizabeth A.T. Smith, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.... Katrina Dipple, assistant professor in the departments of Human Genetics and Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine and the Mattel Children’s Hospital, received the 2005 Ross Young Investigator Research Award at the Western Society of Pediatric Research’s annual meeting in Carmel, Calif. The society presents the award to emerging young faculty members in recognition of their outstanding research in a field related to pediatrics. Dipple’s research focuses on how changes within genetic material can cause disease and why some people are more severely affected than others.

IN MEMORIAM

George A. Dudley, 90, founding dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, died of pneumonia Feb. 6 at his home in Rensselaerville, N.Y. A graduate of Yale University in 1936, he established the first master of fine arts program in urban planning there five years later. In 1962, he became dean of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and founded the architecture school at UCLA in 1965. The school was later reconfigured when the School of the Arts and Architecture and School of Public Policy and Social Research were formed. The latter was renamed School of Public Affairs last year. As an architect, Dudley played a key role in the design of the United Nations Headquarters. From 1945 to 1950, he was secretary of the international committee of architects that took on the project. He also headed a project to build more than 10,000 low-cost, mass-produced housing in the Middle East, Puerto Rico and Peru.