UC San Diego’s Founders’ Celebration commemorates the day the campus was officially founded on November 1960. Within the celebration is the Founders’ Symposium, an annual event that highlights world-changing initiatives conducted by UC San Diego researchers. Passion for their work is evident as six of UC San Diego’s young, innovative faculty members and graduate students share their latest research and creative approaches to solving some of society’s most pressing issues.
Marine biologist Eric Allen kicks off the event with “Decoding Our Microbial Planet: From Habitats to Human Health.” Allen’s research focuses on the discovery and genetic manipulation of microbial biosynthetic pathways involved in the synthesis of marine natural products such as omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. He is a faculty affiliate of the Scripps Center for Oceans and Human Health, which studies halogenated organic compounds, contaminents found naturally in common seafood as well as man-made chemicals that accumulate in human breast milk.
Following is “Connecting the Disconnected: Taking the Online Learning Revolution Offline,” presented by cognitive scientist Jamie Alexandre, co-founder of several education technology platforms, including thisCourse, ESL Genie and KA Lite. He leverages technological solutions to improve global access to learning opportunities, especially within disadvantaged and isolated communities. Through his work with an inspiring team at the Foundation for Learning Equality, Alexandre hopes to bring the online learning revolution to the 65% of the world that is still offline.
Next up, historians Jessica Graham and Dana Velasco Murillo look at the construction of multiracial societies in the Americas in “Envisioning Global Citizens.” Graham’s research explores the politics of race and nationalism in Brazil and the United States in the 1930-40’s. As a result of the international debates over democracy, fascism and communism, a major shift occurred in which racially exclusive ideals yielded to rhetoric of racial inclusion. Dana Velasco Murillo studies the intersections of colonialism with gender, ethnicity and identity formation in early Latin America, particularly how indigenous people of colonial Mexico responded to Spanish rule.
With her striking purple hair, it’s hard to miss the next UC San Diego graduate student. Biochemist Morgan Nunn Martinez explains how “Cosmochemistry Can Save Lives” by presenting her research on extracting and analyzing water in extraterrestrial samples. She has measured the oxygen isotopic composition of water found in meteorites from asteroids and Mars, and rock and soil samples from the moon. These studies will be used to refine theories of how water formed and was distributed throughout our solar system.
Last presenter of the evening is Jacopo Annese, who shows his artistry in computer imaging in “Building a Bigger Brain.” Annese is a computational neuroanatomist and the director of The Brain Observatory at UC San Diego. Using methods he designed, he presents startling images of the brain that he created with computer-aided microscopy,morphometry and other novel techniques for the quantitative study of neurological structures and histology.
Watch the Symposium in its entirety here >> UC San Diego Founders’ Symposium 2013.
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