Architect Roger Sherman founded cityLAB, a research and design center at UCLA, with his colleague Dana Cuff after realizing a need for an outlet for UCLA architecture students and faculty to solve contemporary urban problems. Sherman, an architecture and urban design adjunct professor and co-director of cityLAB, and his colleagues use the think tank to […]
Author Archives: Nikki Somani
Alumna’s nonprofit law firm seeks to make legal services affordable
Two months had passed since Yolanda Barclay’s son was arrested, and she was starting to feel desperate. Barclay couldn’t afford to pay for a private law firm. She opted for a public defender to represent her son in court, but felt that his public defender didn’t care – she said the defender never interviewed witnesses […]
We Care collects feminine hygiene products for homeless women in need
Janelle Cohen sat on the floor of her apartment surrounded by scrapbook paper, index cards, old ribbon, markers and 14 boxes of feminine hygiene pads last week, making her first packages for We Care, a feminine care product drive for Los Angeles women in homeless shelters. The fourth-year theater student distributed her first batch of […]
Medical student seeks change in LGBT health care
When David Lyons went to his doctor to get a fertility test, the doctor asked him what his wife’s job was. Lyons politely corrected him – his husband worked in management consulting. Lyons said the doctor assumed he wasn’t interested in having kids. “Although these immediate assumptions may not be malicious, they’re offensive, disheartening and […]
UCLA researchers develop chip that can extract cancer cells from blood
UCLA scientists at the California NanoSystems Institute have developed a more efficient and cost-effective method to extract and analyze cancer cells from a patient’s blood. The NanoVelcro Chip, which is about the size of a postage stamp, contains wires 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. These tiny wires are coated with antibodies that recognize […]
UCLA doctor performs safer head and neck surgery with robots
Three years ago, David Alpern felt a lump in the back of his throat and went to see his doctor. His biopsy came back as tonsil cancer. The surgery that his doctor described involves sawing open a patient’s jaw, removing the tumor and closing the jaw back up. Patients who receive the surgery need a […]
FDA to ease lifetime ban on blood donations from gay, bisexual men
Alex Ramsey started donating blood in high school after hearing stories from his stepfather about accidents he saw in his law enforcement job. But after Ramsey came out as gay when he was 17, he learned he was no longer able to donate blood because of his sexuality. “I always wanted to be a part […]