Two teams of UCLA scientists have been awarded major grants from the W.M. Keck Foundation, the campus has announced.

 

"We are very honored that UCLA is one of very few universities to be awarded two Keck Foundation grants in just one awards cycle," said Joseph Rudnick, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences. "Both research projects are extremely significant, and we are excited to see the science that will result from these important projects."

 

Mayank Mehta, an associate professor of physics and astronomy, has been awarded a $1 million grant for a study called "Neurophysics of Multi-Modal Integration and Neural Representation of 'SPACE.'" His research is in the emerging field of neurophysics, which addresses the ways in which groups of neurons interact with one other and with the physical world to generate what we call the mind.

 

Recent research by Mehta, who has a joint appointment in the physics and astronomy department and the neurology department, demonstrates a novel dialogue between the old part of the brain, called the hippocampus, and the new part of the brain, called the neocortex, that could have a profound influence on the formation of new memories.

 

The other principal investigators on the project are physics professor Katsushi Arisaka and electrical engineering professor Bahram Jalali. For more information on this neurophysics project, please see UCLA Today and www.physics.ucla.edu/~mayank/.

 

In addition, a team led by David Eisenberg, director of the UCLA–Department of Energy Institute of Genomics and Proteomics and a member of UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), has been awarded a $900,000 grant for the research project "Nano X-ray Diffraction of Biological Materials," which will develop tools with the potential to open the secrets of cells in both health and disease by providing precise pictures of interacting molecules.

 

The other principal investigators on this project are Todd Yeates, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and a member of the CNSI, and James Bowie, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and a member of the UCLA–Department of Energy Institute of Genomics and Proteomics. For more information on this project, please see UCLA Today.

 

The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company. Supporting pioneering discoveries in science, engineering and medical research has been the foundation's mandate for a half-century.

 

UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of more than 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 328 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

 

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