Newsroom’s Faculty Bulletin Board is a biweekly roundup highlighting awards, honors and notable achievements by UCLA faculty members. Consider it a snapshot of the many ways Bruin scholars and researchers are advancing knowledge, shaping their fields and powering progress on campus and around the world. See previous issues of the board.
3 professors receive UCLA's 2026 Faculty Award for Excellence
Dr. Onyebuchi Arah, professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health's department of epidemiology, has received the university's 2026 Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring. He was one of three professors, along with Pamela Yeh, assistant professor in UCLA's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Neil Garg, distinguished professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, to be honored with the award. Arah will serve as interim chair of the epidemiology department on July 1.
Michele Guindani named interim chair of Fielding's biostatistics department
Michele Guindani, professor in the biostatistics department at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, will serve as interim chair of the department beginning on July 1. He will succeed Damla Senturk. Guindani, who joined UCLA in 2022, is internationally renowned for his work in Bayesian statistics, biostatistics and data science. His research focuses on the analysis of complex, high-dimensional biomedical data, with particular emphasis on neuroimaging, radiomics, integrative genomics, microbiome data, clustering and Bayesian nonparametric modeling.
Kristen Choi to lead research into children's access to mental healthcare
Kristen Choi, associate professor in the health policy and management department at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, will lead research into children’s access to mental healthcare. Her team has been awarded a nearly $300,000 grant from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing to study how state nurse practitioner supervision requirements affect children’s access to mental healthcare from psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners. The two-year study will examine the temporary relaxation of nurse practitioner supervision requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paul Melas named 2026 Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellow
Paul Melas, a doctoral candidate in the UCLA Department of Anthropology, has been named a 2026 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. Melas is one of 20 doctoral candidates selected nationwide to receive a $31,000 stipend for focused dissertation writing during the 2026—27 academic year. His dissertation considers monastic asceticism in Contemporary Greece, a 1,000-year-old community traditionally perceived as insulated from global networks and contemporary social problems.
In memoriam: Charles A. West, pioneering biochemist and professor emeritus
Charles A. West, a member of the UCLA chemistry and biochemistry faculty since 1952, died May 5. He was 98. A renowned expert in plant chemical defenses, West was instrumental in building UCLA’s chemistry department. As the second biochemist hired by the university, he went on to recruit a majority of the 18 biochemists who joined before his retirement in the early 1990s. During his time at UCLA, West was named vice chair and chair of the department of chemistry and biochemistry and served as acting dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences.
Marc Suchard recognized by the International Biometric Society
Dr. Marc Suchard, a physician and professor in the department of biostatistics at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, has received the 2026 Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship from the International Biometric Society. He will deliver the annual lecture by an Impact Award recipient at the Aug. 1–6 Joint Statistical Meetings conference in Boston. Suchard plans to speak on recently published work into how improved methods to track infectious diseases, including COVID-19, mpox and Ebola, can be used by public health officials in an emergency. Award.
UCLA joins workforce consortium to expand hands-on microelectronics training
UCLA is joining NNME Southwest, a five-state semiconductor workforce development consortium with 47 partners across the Southwest. The regional node at UCLA will be co-led by the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and the California NanoSystems Institute. UCLA will help coordinate industry-aligned curriculum and hands-on laboratory training for community college students and continuing education learners preparing for careers in semiconductor manufacturing. The effort will be led by C.K. Ken Yang, the Tatsuo Itoh Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA Samueli.
UCLA physicians recognized for their achievements in urology
Drs. Robert Reiter and Nima Nassiri have been named recipients of the 2026 Research Awards of Distinction by the Urology Care Foundation and the American Urological Association. Reiter, chief of the division of urologic oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, received the Richard D. Williams, MD Prostate Cancer Research Excellence Award for lifetime contributions to prostate cancer research. Nassiri, assistant professor of urology at the Geffen School of Medicine and director of the bladder transplant program, received the Outstanding Graduate Scholar Award.
Nasim Annabi receives NIH funding to develop tunable biomaterials
Nasim Annabi, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received two grants from the National Institutes of Health to support her research on developing regenerative biomaterials and bioadhesive therapies. A four-year, $2 million grant from the National Eye Institute will support development of biomaterials that can deliver stem cells for corneal injuries; a two-year, $368,000 grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases will fund development of a skin-friendly bioadhesive wound dressing with anti-inflammatory properties.
