UCSB Art Professor Shows Work at Winter Olympics Digital Art Exhibition  George Legrady, a professor of art and of media arts at UCSB, is participating in the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, but not as an athlete. Legrady will be showing his work in an exhibition that is part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad Festival. Legrady’s "We Are Stardust" is one of more than 40 digital art installations in CODE Live, an 18-day event that features visual art, music, and performances fueled by digital technology and audience involvement. 2/8/10 PRESS RELEASE

UCSB Celebrates Black History Month With Academic and Cultural Events  UC Santa Barbara will celebrate Black History Month with a variety of academic and cultural events, including film screenings, musical performances, lectures, discussions, and an exhibition on African-Americans and the Black diaspora. 2/5/10 PRESS RELEASE

UCSB Financial Aid Office Offers Online Tutorial for Federal Student Aid Form  UCSB’s Office of Financial Aid is once again offering its online tutorial to assist current and prospective students in completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA is used by nearly all colleges and universities to determine a student's eligibility for federal, state, and college-sponsored financial aid, including grants, educational loans, and work-study programs. 2/4/10 PRESS RELEASE

UCSB Part of Army’s $16.75 Million Information Network Research Center  A team of UCSB computer scientists is part of a consortium chosen to establish an Information Networks Academic Research Center by the U.S. Army as a part of its Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance. The multi-campus collaborative effort is led by the University of Illinois, and also includes IBM and City University of New York. The total effort will be funded at about $16.75 million, of which the UCSB team will receive approximately $3.6 million. 2/4/10 PRESS RELEASE

UCSB's Shuji Nakamura Named Winner of 2009 Harvey Prize  Lighting pioneer Shuji Nakamura of UCSB has been named one of the two winners of the 2009 Harvey Prize for advancements in science and technology. The prize will be presented at a ceremony in Haifa, Israel, on February 17. Nakamura is a professor of materials in the College of Engineering at UCSB, where he also is co-director of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Center. He is internationally known for his invention of revolutionary new light sources: blue, green, and white light-emitting diodes and the blue laser diode. 1/26/10 PRESS RELEASE

UCSB Alumnus Jack Johnson Donates $50,000 for Disabled Students  Singer and songwriter Jack Johnson and his wife, Kim, both UCSB graduates, have made a $50,000 contribution to the campus to support students with disabilities. The recent gift honors the courageous life of Danny Riley, who was a UCSB student when he died of brain cancer in 2007. The Danny Riley Fund will help undergraduates with cancer and other serious illnesses to pursue their education at UCSB by providing support for financial aid, medication, housing, adaptive equipment, home care, transportation, family visits, and other special needs. 1/26/10 PRESS RELEASE

Research at UCSB Points to Potential Treatment for Kidney Disease  Research performed at UCSB points to the drug rapamycin as a potential treatment for kidney disease. The study builds on past research and shows that studies performed on mice are more likely to translate to humans than previously thought. The results are published in the current online issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The research was led by Thomas Weimbs, professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB, and project scientist Jonathan Shillingford. 1/25/10 PRESS RELEASE

New Film Focuses on Controversial Research About Yanomamö Indians
It’s a scandal replete with sex, drugs, and violence. Oh, and scientists, which is where Napoleon Chagnon comes into the picture. Chagnon, professor emeritus of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, retired from teaching in 1999 and now lives in Traverse City, Mich. But his name is surfacing again because a controversy started by "Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon" — a book written by Patrick Tierney more than nine years ago — won’t go away. The strife is based on Chagnon’s 35 years of research on the Yanomamö Indians. 1/21/10 PRESS RELEASE

UCSB Physicist Wins National Award from the U.S. Department of Energy
Benjamin Monreal, assistant professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara, has won an Early Career Research Program Award from the Office of Nuclear Physics at the U.S. Department of Energy. The award is for $904,000 over five years, and is for Monreal’s project, "New Experiments to Measure the Neutrino Mass Scale." The award is part of a new, national effort designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during their early career years. 1/21/10 PRESS RELEASE

New Book by UCSB Scholar Examines the History of Love Between Women  Women throughout history have desired, loved, and had sex with other women. A new book by Leila J. Rupp, a professor of feminist studies at UCSB, shares their stories and captures the many ways that diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality. In "Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women" (New York University Press, 2009), Rupp reveals how, from the time of the very earliest societies, the possibility of love between women has been known, even when it was feared, ignored, or denied. 1/19/10 PRESS RELEASE

UCSB Researchers Part of Grass Biodiversity Study  Grasses from across the world will be documented in a new resource to help researchers better understand the biology of and threats to these vital species, thanks to a project led by scientists from the University of Sheffield in England, in collaboration with researchers at other institutions, including UCSB and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. 2/2/10
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New Chair Appointed to UCSB Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies  Aida Hurtado has joined the faculty at UCSB as the new chair of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies. A social psychologist whose research focuses on race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender, she came to UCSB from UC Santa Cruz, where she spent more than 20 years as a scholar in the psychology department. 2/1/10
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Luis Leal, Distinguished Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Dies at 102  Luis Leal, distinguished professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at UC Santa Barbara and an internationally recognized scholar of Mexican, Chicano, and Latin American literature, died January 25. He was 102. Leal, author of more than 45 books and 400 scholarly articles, remained a prolific researcher and writer until his death. Leal was a member of the UCSB faculty since 1976. He received many honors, including the prestigious National Humanities Medal, which was presented at the White House in 1997 by then-President Bill Clinton. 1/27/10
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UCSB's Tommaso Treu Awarded Prestigious Astronomy Prize
Tommaso Treu, associate professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara, has been awarded the 2010 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize by the American Astronomical Society (AAS). According to a citation from the AAS, Treu was awarded the Pierce Prize "for his insightful work into the physical understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, groups and clusters, including the coupled evolution of the luminous, dark matter and black hole components." 1/20/10
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UCSB Receives 58,992 Applications for Fall 2010 From Prospective Freshmen and Transfer Students
The University of California, Santa Barbara has received 58,992 applications for undergraduate admission for fall 2010. The total is 4,234 more than last year, an increase of 7.7 percent. Of the total, 46,672 applications were from prospective first-year students –– 1,999 more than last year — and 12,320 were from applicants seeking to transfer to UCSB –– 2,235 more than last year. 1/14/10
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San Francisco Protests Sparked Statewide Campaign for Marriage Equality, Says UCSB Sociologist  In 2004, same-sex couples engaged in protests at marriage licensing counters across the United States as part of the gay and lesbian movement’s campaign to promote marriage equality. The largest protest occurred in San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom defied California’s Defense of Marriage Act by ordering the country clerk to issue marriage licenses. In an article published in the December issue of American Sociological Review, lead author Verta Taylor, professor of sociology at UCSB, examines how the protests in San Francisco captured the attention of the entire country and sparked many other forms of political action and mobilization on behalf of marriage rights, including the statewide campaign for marriage equality in California. 1/11/10  PRESS RELEASE

Doluca Family Chair Established in Electrical and Computer Engineering
UC Santa Barbara alumnus Tunc Doluca and his wife, Lale, have made a $500,000 gift to the campus to establish an endowed chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The Doluca Family Chair will support the teaching and research of a distinguished scholar specializing in analog and mixed-signal integrated circuit design and help strengthen pioneering research in this important field. 1/4/10
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Red Blood Cells That Look and Perform Like the Real Thing
Scientists at UC Santa Barbara, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Michigan, have developed synthetic particles that closely mimic the characteristics and key functions of natural red blood cells, including softness, flexibility, and the ability to carry oxygen. The research was led by UCSB chemical engineering professor Samir Mitragotri. 12/18/09
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Update on Search for Dark Matter
The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) Collaboration has announced the newest results from its search for the identity of the Dark Matter particles that constitute more than 80 percent of the mass of the universe. The newest and best data sample contained two events that are consistent with the signal expected from dark-matter particles, but are also consistent with a statistical fluctuation from well-known background particles. The CDMS apparatus operates in a mine in northern Minnesota, but large portions of the device were designed and fabricated at UCSB by a team led by David Caldwell, professor emeritus, and Harry Nelson, professor in UCSB’s Department of Physics. 12/17/09  MORE INFORMATION

Scientists Observe Super-Massive Black Holes  An international team of scientists has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate. Their findings are published in December's first issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The scientists used the two Keck telescopes on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. UCSB astrophysicist and co-author Robert Antonucci said that scientists can now separate the emission from the regions outside the black hole from that closest to the black hole. This is the location of the most interesting physical process, the actual swallowing of matter by the black hole. 12/10/09  PRESS RELEASE

Delivering Medicine Directly into a Tumor  Researchers at Burnham Institute for Medical Research at University of California, Santa Barbara have identified a peptide (a chain of amino acids) that specifically recognizes and penetrates cancerous tumors but not normal tissues. The peptide was also shown to deliver diagnostic particles and medicines into the tumor. This new peptide, called iRGD, could dramatically enhance both cancer detection and treatment. The work was published December 8 in the journal Cancer Cell. Led by Erkki Ruoslahti, distinguished Burnham professor at UCSB, this research was built on Dr. Ruoslahti’s previous discovery of "vascular zip codes," which showed that blood vessels in different tissues (including diseased tissues) have different signatures. 12/9/09  PRESS RELEASE