🎓 Dr. Robert Teranishi received the 2020-21 C. Doris and Toshio Hoshide Distinguished Teaching Prize in Asian American Studies for his engaging teaching and consistent support of his students.
🎓 Dr. Nina Eidsheim received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for "In Search of Light: Wadada Leo Smith’s Creation of Sound, Symbol, and Breath", a project centered around the music and philosophy of American composer Wadada Leo Smith.
🎓 Former FIR Keith Camacho won the UCLA Academic Senate 2020-21 Distinguished Teaching Award.
🎓 Dr. Eddie Cole was quoted in the UCLA Newsroom Article, "Why schools haven’t taught about Juneteenth, and why they should" on how history affects the current climate around race.
🎓 Former FIR (2010-2016) Dr. Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Labor Studies, will become new Director of the Center for Mexican Studies (CMS) effective July 1, 2021. Announcement from Vice Provost Cindy Fan is below:
Professor Rubén Hernández-León, Sociology, will be the new Director of the Latin American Institute (LAI), and so is stepping down as Director of the Center for Mexican Studies (CMS) at the end of this academic year. We wish to express our sincere gratitude to Rubén for his years of dedicated leadership of CMS, and we very much look forward to his leadership of LAI. The new Director of CMS effective July 1, 2021, we are pleased to announce, will be Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Labor Studies.  Gaspar’s expertise is in labor movements, immigrant workers, farm workers, binational worker movements and global labor solidarity, and he is currently Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center and a faculty member in Labor Studies, units of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. He teaches classes on work, labor and social justice in the US and immigration issues. He also directs the Cross-Border Labor Solidarity Initiative in collaboration with the Solidarity Center (AFL-CIO) and has extensive experience as an independent consultant on transnational migration, race and ethnic relations, and diversity trainings for large organizations. His publications include the volumes (with J. Fox)Indigenous Mexican Migration in the United States (UCSD, 2005) and (with E. Telles and M. Sawyer) Just Neighbors?: Research on African American and Latino Relations in the United States (Russell Sage, 2011), and the recent article (with S. Camacho) “Lost in Translation en el Fil: Actualizing Cultural Humility for Indigenous Mexican Farmworkers in California,” Latino Studies Journal, 2020. He received his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Please join us in thanking Rubén Hernández-León for his dedicated, successful, and ongoing service, and in welcoming Gaspar Rivera-Salgado to his leadership role at the Center for Mexican Studies!
🎓 Dr. Neil Garg lead the lab that developed the app VRChem, which presents students with 3D molecular models to interact with in via virtual reality.
🎓 Dr. Neil Garg, Dr. Tara Prescott-Johnson, Dr. Gena Carpio, Dr. Michael Rodriguez, Dr. Nina Eidsheim, and Dr. Rana Khankan were featured in the Daily Bruin Article, "UCLA Faculty-in-Residence Finds Ways to Connect Despite Pandemic Limitations."