Researchers at Craig Montell’s lab created deaf mosquitoes by knocking out a single gene and found that the males had absolutely no interest in mating. The results could have major implications for how we manage disease transmission.
n award-winning video series Research in 60, Tania Israel, a professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical & School Psychology, discusses strategies for navigating conversations in a divided nation.
UCSB has again been named as a Fulbright HSI Leader for its strong engagement, as an Hispanic-Serving Institution, with the Fulbright Program.
The MultiCultural Center and UCSB’s Early Childhood Care and Education Services partner on a community-based Dia de los Muertos celebration for children and families.
In Rome, Schooler will present alongside research colleague Madeline Gross, assistant project scientist. Together, they are investigating how art can induce a state of cognitive openness, allowing viewers to approach the world with greater mental flexibility.
Jackson Muhirwe, chief information security officer and director of information assurance, is a seasoned higher education leader with over two decades of experience in information technology and security.
For affordability, social mobility, research impact, academics and other metrics, the campus is again considered among the nation’s — and the world’s — top universities, according to myriad recent rankings.
Executive functioning was the key cognitive domain impacted by vigorous exercise, such as high-intensity interval training (HIIT) protocols, according to new research.
Tasked with uniting efforts across campus to enhance “servingness” — an HSI model that goes beyond enrollment numbers to truly support the success of Latiné — Fematt characterized the establishment of the new role as a “significant step forward” for the campus.
While working at reefs in Moorea, French Polynesia, Kai Kopecky found that the network of coral skeletons left in place by bleaching events caused critical processes to break down, ultimately preventing reefs from recovering.
The award is part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program. Montell will use the funds to test a new treatment her group is developing for cancer and other diseases, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Featured prominently in Getty’s Art + Science Collide-themed initiative, Rosalena discusses computational craft, a hybrid practice between analog and digital techniques, in a recent episode of UCSB’s video series, “Research in 60 Seconds.”
The brain’s gray and white matter shift across gestation, according to first-of-its-kind research that scanned the brain of one first-time mother every few weeks, from before pregnancy through two years postpartum.
In a pair of recent papers, David W. Lawson and his team at UCSB’s Applied Evolutionary Anthropology Lab shed light on possible explanations for gender bias. Their research was carried out in an urbanizing rural community in northwestern Tanzania.
The AlloSphere opens to the public with “Sketches of Sensorium,” a multisensory installation exploring ocean fragility and resilience through art and science. Shows are every second Thursday and fourth Saturday.
The exhibition situates Puccinelli’s career within the constellation of his local and regional contemporaries.
Read more about the art opening
When it comes to shark conservation, scientists say size should matter after a global study finds that the sharks most affected by fishing are also the most important for healthy oceans.
Mechanical engineering professor Francesco Bullo leads a multidisciplinary university research initiative to investigate the mathematics behind networks of coupled oscillators.
Drake will step down from his role at the end of the 2024-25 academic year, after five years leading California’s world-renowned public research university system.
Previous studies have looked at regional effects on fishing of individual marine protected areas; this is the first to consider the question on a global scale, accounting for complex interactions between fleets. Its findings challenge assumptions about ocean conservation.
Bringing together students from Tuskegee and from UCSB, the unique program is creating a new kind of space between a Hispanic Serving Institution and an HBCU.
The professor’s expertise drives impactful research on marine contamination and oil spills. Here he discusses his work behind the headlines, balancing science, policy and people.
The Banerjee Lab’s flat and tiny field-effect transistors could pave the way for ultra-efficient computing with a platform that can bring energy requirements to within two orders of magnitude — about 100 times — with respect to the human brain.
Researchers explore the connections, and disconnects, between public beliefs about climate change and climate action.
From the sunny skies to the good vibes, it was a glorious graduation weekend at UC Santa Barbara.
Professor and historian Giuliana Perrone discusses her new research in the context of Juneteenth and the latest from California’s reparations task force.
Designed for highly motivated students, the first of its kind program in the UC system provides undergraduates with a clearly structured pathway to becoming credentialed K-12 teachers.
Read more about ÉXITO
With the College of Creative Studies commencement festivities already in the books, eight more ceremonies remain in UC Santa Barbara’s graduation lineup for the Class of 2024.
The new method finds more extensive and diverse coverage, which is crucial for meeting the goal of protecting 30% of Earth by 2030.
Bringing warm surface water north and cold deep water south, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is a major component of the global climate system, influencing marine ecosystems, weather patterns and temperatures. It’s also regarded as a potential tipping element of the Earth’s climate.
The historian and professor receives the Bert Corona Lifetime Achievement Award for inspiring progressive social change to advance the inclusion of the poor and oppressed.
Read more about the honor
Physicists Cristina Marchetti and Mark Bowick develop design rules that take advantage of topological defects to control flows in active fluids.
A distinguished professor emerita in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Major was cited for her pioneering and decades-long body of work on the psychological impacts of prejudice and discrimination.
View this email online May 16, 2024 Top News How the romantic institution props-up a racialized dating landscape In a new book, Sabrina Strings blends historical research, personal anecdotes and cultural criticism to consider the demise of romantic partnerships, emphasizing…
These territorial crustaceans use their tails as shields to defend against the explosive punches of their rivals.
Ashley Yeh ’24 will go on to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine. The Knight-Hennessy Program, established in 2018, provides fellows up to three years of tuition and a stipend for living and academic expenses.
The Black Studies professor, who won a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his acclaimed biography of Alain Locke, brings to 49 the number of UCSB faculty that have been named fellows of the academy.
Assistant professor Matt Beane‘s new book uncovers ways for workers to remain competent and competitive in an increasingly automated workplace.
Patricia Fancher digs into Alan Turing’s technical and scientific writing, highlighting his role in computing’s inception and his collaborations with women and queer individuals.
Professors Beth Pruitt and M. Scott Shell have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Healing meets the surreal in the hyper-saturated dreamscape featured in the exhibition and performance series by the art professor, whose work captures the banality and enormity of everyday life.
Wang’s considerable work to develop scalable algorithms that are both swift and accurate couldn’t be more necessary. His efforts are being recognized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Signal Processing Society.
Latin American literature scholar Suzanne Jill Levine receives a PEN America award for translation.
Aiming to reduce ship strikes on the North Atlantic right whale, the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory deploys its Whale Safe vessel-monitoring tool to track, in near real-time, cargo ships moving up and down the East Coast.
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky’s first book captures ‘an important moment in global history’ in the little-known story of how roughly 1 million Muslims from Russia sought refuge in the Middle East.
The library has acquired the Cedric J. and Elizabeth P. Robinson Archive, comprising research and teaching papers, ephemera and digital materials reflecting their seminal scholarship and activism.
A Santa Barbara native, the first in her family to go to college, a tour guide during her UCSB days, and a 20-plus-year veteran of the admissions office, Acosta is an expert in her field.
Focusing on the Maldives and Guyana — two communities on the front lines of sea level rise — sociologist Summer Gray’s new book examines and illustrates how seawalls serve as a point of conflict between rich and poor, colonizer and Indigenous, powerful and powerless.
The acquisition underscores the Art and Design Collection’s status as a premier resource for the study of the built environment in Southern California from the late 19th century to the present day.
Lichtenstein’s latest book examines the former president’s expansive agenda, revealing why it was such ‘a fabulous failure’ and why its demise still haunts us today.
Rebecca Varney of the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology helps to reveal the surprising origins behind mollusk eyes, shedding light on evolutionary processes.
Assistant teaching professor Michelle Petty-Grue explores her life and profession in the arts in this long-form interview that ranges from her upbringing in England to raising a Black son in America.
Members of a single Colombian family each carry a mutation linked to accelerated development of the sticky plaques that, in addition to tangles of a misfolded structural protein called tau, are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.
The team in chemistry Professor Guillermo Bazan’s lab was trying to develop compounds to harness energy from bacteria. They wound up developing the basis for a new class of antibiotics.
At O’Hare International Airport’s Terminal 5, art lecturer H??ng Ngô and collaborator H?ng-n Tr??ng reimagine concepts of citizenship and safe passage in a newly commissioned piece.
View this email online February 13, 2024 Top News Embracing single life: Love, intimacy and family beyond the couple Using survey data from more than 20,000 people from over 100 countries, and drawing from research by other social scientists, Bella…
Understanding and bolstering existing pathways for acquiring seafood — as opposed to creating new programs and processes — can promote food system resilience in the Pacific Islands.
The author of “¡Ask a Mexican!” (2007), “Orange County: A Personal History” (2008) and “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America” (2012) will join Mario T. Garcia to discuss his work as a journalist, politics and the future of print media.
A new study finds that some features essential to the resiliency of Elkhorn Slough, a salt marsh-dominated coastal estuary in Monterey County, are improved by the return of sea otters and their insatiable appetite for herbivorous marsh crabs.
“Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance 1900-1955,” opening Jan. 25 at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum, “rests on the idea that the immigrant, the asylum seeker, the exiled artist, shaped the language of dance modernism.” Performances by Jose Limón Dance Company, Santa Barbara Dance Theater and UCSB Dance Company, as well as a symposium, complement the exhibition.
View this email online January 18, 2024 Top News A global study reveals pathways to save threatened sharks, despite rising mortality trends Geographic protections and fishing regulations could improve what is currently a bleak outlook for sharks, but new policies…
Researchers reveal that eukaryotic organisms had already evolved into a diverse array of forms 1.64 billion years ago.
A multi-institution collaboration of scientists investigates the rise and fall in the abundance of kelp, and how it affects shorebirds.
Scientists decipher a cellular murder mystery in fruit flies, solving a human immunodeficiency. The discovery has the potential to enhance cancer immunotherapy.
As The Current winds down coverage for this calendar year, we round up and reflect on the five stories from 2023 that you visited most.
The Los Angeles-based architect’s 50-year career in organic architecture is the focus of the Art, Design & Architecture Museum’s current exhibition “From Within: The Architecture of Helena Arahuete.”
Written by Wendy Eley Jackson, a lecturer in film and media studies, “Napa Ever After” is part of an effort to create movies that appeal to African-American families, particularly women, and reflect the themes of love, romance and personal growth.
Research in California’s Northern Channel Islands provides strong evidence of the benefit of marine protected areas for the recreational scuba diving industry in Southern California and highlights that the diving community should be considered a key stakeholder in decision-making about the future of MPAs.
Professor Emeritus Francisco Lomelí and Osiris Aníbal Gómez Ph.D. ’20 won an International Latino Book Award for their work on the former poet laureate.
An updated and expanded edition of Curtis Rhodes’ work maintains its volume as a seminal textbook.
A comprehensive new analysis leverages AI to lay out how a UN plastics treaty — currently under negotiation — can achieve nearly zero plastic waste by 2040. Without intervention, say scientists, plastic pollution is set to rise 60% by 2050.
By organizing and selling access to their fisheries as a unit, African nations can make more from their fisheries on the global market, while protecting their seas’ biodiversity.
The religious studies professor turned politician will be remembered in a special event hosted by the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life.
A conversation with Chat GPT, led by digital humanities scholar Fabian Offert, raises questions about how large language models think.
NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan visits the campus and shares his thoughts for the future of science and engineering research.
In “Nothing More Than Freedom,” historian Giuliana Perrone tracks the failure of abolition in American law.
Biologist Cherie Briggs and geographer Ian Walker receive University of California Climate Action Grants to advance their respective efforts in restoration and conservation.
Curated by art history graduate students Graham Feyl and Sylvia Faichney, the exhibition — now on view at UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum — reimagines spaces such as discos, dive bars, living rooms and bathrooms through the lens of queer placemaking.
Scholars from across the nation convened on campus to discuss how to sort news from the noise through public-facing research and classroom conversations.
A Chumash cultural burn reignites ancient practice for wilderness conservation
Reviving a practice that had been lost for generations, the Chumash community and the university partner on a cultural burn at North Campus Open Space.
In “The Virus Touch,” the global studies professor explores relationships between viruses, humans, animals and the environment to show how various forms of media — from news content to lab test results — create our understanding of epidemics.
A powerful memoir of poetry and prose, “Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca pasó por sus labios” explores the author’s interconnected identities as a lesbian and a Chicana, coming of age in a turbulent era of American politics and social change.
“When a child is separated from a parent, it impacts every facet of the child’s life in emotional, physical and financial ways,” said Silvia Rodriguez Vega, an assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano studies, whose new book considers hundreds of drawings by children living on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border.
In her forthcoming book, and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Kate McDonald illuminates the key role of people in the evolution of transport.
For answers, John Protzko and his team looked to philosophers, professionals and laypersons. Their conclusions could help answer moral and legal questions if scenarios in today’s science fiction ever become reality.
The nonprofit co-founded at UC Santa Barbara teams with Direct Relief to provide efficient and clean sources of light and electricity to the Maui community left decimated by wildfires.
The new issue of Written Names Fanzine, which chronicles occurrences of hyper-localized, unsanctioned public writing, features found names stuck in bubblegum in San Luis Obispo.
The idea has gained scientific consensus: Dogs can be just as good — and sometimes better — than our best tests at detecting the stealthy virus and its variants, even when they are obscured by other viruses, like colds and flu.
The jewels in the crown of the collection held by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum — plucked from the coastal forests and deserts of California Modernism — are its nearly 290 archives of architects, landscape architects and industrial and graphic designers practicing in Southern California.
Using an Afrocentric and critical race theoretical framework, lead author Sharon Tettegah and co-authors Alison Cerezo, Terrance Wooten and DeLeon Gray review the works of four prominent Black psychologists.
“The culture in which a person grows up can impact the interpretation of the event,” said UC Santa Barbara professor emeritus Ann Taves. “And certain cultures can encourage people to watch out for and expect to experience these things.”
While they confer many ecological benefits, marine protected areas do not shield against the effects of prolonged elevated water temperatures.
Resource managers are increasingly turning toward prescribed burns as a tool for land maintenance and restoration — and for reducing the risk of wildfires.
Remarkably well preserved after 11,000 years, the botanical materials at El Gigante reflect the transition from foraging to farming, providing a rare glimpse of early foraging strategies and changes in subsistence.
“Pomp & Circumstance” on repeat, thousands of cap-and-gown-clad grads wended their way from the Thunderdome, across the bike path, behind Hatlen Theater, toward the lagoon and onto Commencement Green to the cheers of family and friends.
The first of a series of events celebrating the campus’s newest crop of graduates shined a spotlight on CCS, the “graduate school for undergraduates.”
The Promise Scholar is graduating as a double major and is next set to join the university’s intensive Teacher Education Program on a full ride.
Between the overlapping arrangement of two lattices, physicists find some interesting material behaviors that have never been seen before
The Gevirtz School and the Santa Barbara County Education Office were awarded $950,000 to support up to 40 graduate students pursuing teaching credentials.
“Our economy is tough,” said Peter Rupert, a professor of economics and director of the Economic Forecast Project, which featured the Fed’s Christopher Waller and San Francisco chief economist Ted Egan during its 2023 South Coast Summit.
“Asian American Studies at UCSB is a leading department for the field, and we believe that formal recognition at the graduate level is essential,” said Lisa Sun-Hee Park, a professor and the new program’s graduate advisor.
The music department stages the rarely performed 1904 operetta “Burning to Sing,” a witty send-up of opera’s tropes and conventions.
Giovanni Vigna, with colleagues Ambuj Singh, Christopher Kruegel and João Hespanha, will head the $20-million Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and OperatioN (ACTION).
Professors Tanya Atwater, Leda Cosmides and Nelson Lichtenstein have been elected to the prestigious, 243 year-old institution.
Major new antibiotics research has significant implications in the fight against bacterial resistance.
After a rainy winter, folks are flocking to see California’s superblooms. But, experts say, smart management strategies will be required if we want to continue enjoying these spectacular events in the future.
View this email online. April 20, 2023 Top News Composer João Pedro Oliveira is awarded a Guggenheim “All of us at UC Santa Barbara are fortunate to have a colleague of such talent and expertise in our Music Department,” said…
The recently completed Interactive Learning Pavilion is the campus’s first new dedicated classroom building in more than 50 years.
The productivity of brine flies is tied to overall health of salt lake ecosystems; both are in decline.
Research in Moorea shows the presence of coral skeletons influences reef recovery after bleaching.
The Gevirtz Graduate School of Education is awarded a record grant for K-12 mental health services.
Doctoral candidate Elizabeth Driscoll Smith receives a dissertation fellowship to research the impact of transportation on midcentury American folk art.
A new book by sociology professor France Winddance Twine offers firsthand accounts of inequality in Silicon Valley and centers the experiences of Black and Latinx women.
Researchers prove that tough, woody lignin can be broken down in an anaerobic environment.
The UCSB Dance Company explores the spectrum of human sensibility through the lens of female choreographers.
The Carsey-Wolf Center screens the restored Ukrainian classic “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.”
A new Carsey-Wolf Center initiative shines a light on the influence and impact of Black artists.
Ecologist Leander Anderegg receives an award for research on the interplay between plant physiology and ecosystem dynamics.
Among the first generation of professionally trained historians to excavate and record Chicano and Chicana history, UC Santa Barbara professor Mario T. García helped set the foundation for emerging scholars during the past half century.
His body of work as a self-described liberationist historian aiming to inspire progressive social change includes more than a dozen books and several edited collections, all of which advance the inclusion of the poor and oppressed, and spotlight the leaders of social justice movements.
García’s legacy will be the focus of a special symposium as part of the sixth bi-annual Sal Castro Memorial Conference(link is external), Feb. 17–18, in the McCune Conference Room of the campus’s Humanities & Social Sciences Building. Named after Salvador “Sal” Castro, a high school social studies teacher who helped lead the historic 1968 Chicano student walkouts to protest bias and inequalities in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the conference is free and open to the public.
Guest speakers will cover recent books about the Chicano movement, plus history, art and culture. The symposium on García’s work will include a keynote video presentation about his life and career, a panel discussion on civil rights leadership and reflections on his work’s impact on graduate students and fellow academics.
Feminist studies postdoctoral scholar Caleb Luna centers fat experiences in cultural critique through research, podcast and poetry.
Marine scientists compile the first detailed description of the species living on and around a rare underwater habitat.
Geographers, climate scientists and ecologists weigh in on the risks of debris flows following large storms.
Now expanded, redesigned and re-released, John Perlin’s book details the inextricable link between civilization and forests.
A new library installation attempts to spark serious thinking about human impacts on the environment.
View this email online. January 19, 2023 Top News A Marvel of An Experience Historian Gerardo Aldana, an expert in Mesoamerican civilizations, consults on “Wakanda Forever,” propelling his research into the MCU — and ending up on screen. Read more…
Researchers use machine learning to map where sharks face the most risk from longline fishing.
Former Ballet Hispánico leader Kiri Avelar takes a borderlands approach to understanding the American dance archive as a doctoral research fellow.
A collaborative, cross-disciplinary study on socially responsible augmented reality for human rights museums receives a National Science Foundation grant.
Alison Cerezo leads a program evaluation team for California’s $17.5 million LBTQ Health Equity Initiative.
Researchers create visible-to-near-infrared-light lasers on silicon chips, paving the way for scientific and consumer applications.
Research shows that the more ?’s people get when retweeting negative fake news stories, the more they agreed with its content.
As Sedgwick Reserve marks 25 years of groundbreaking science, an upcoming art show will benefit the UCSB Natural Reserve System.
Six years after ‘the Blob’ rolled through the Santa Barbara Channel, lasting effects are seen in the kelp forest communities.
The annual MFA open studios at Harder Stadium offer a unique opportunity to see where artists work — and what they’re working on.
Arts & Lectures performers share what goes into songwriting in a unique community workshop series from the music department.
Results of a clinical feasibility study suggest ketogenic diet and periodic fasting may have benefits against polycystic kidney disease.
A tiny species known only from fossils is found alive in the tidepools of Santa Barbara.
A Renewed Focus
A water purification collaboration involving UC Santa Barbara researchers receives a $12 million grant from the Department of Energy.
