November, 2010 - UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary ...

NEWSLETTER
Dear Alumni and Friends:
ECOLOGY & EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
DISCOVERING
NATURE
Welcome to the newest edition of the Friends of
Biology Newsletter, which is aimed at alumni and
friends of the former Departments of Biology,
Botany and Zoology and the current UCLA
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Our newsletter this fall begins with alumni events
and reports on the exciting research our faculty
are carrying out, and goes on to include many
news items on alumni.
Our department continues to teach a
conceptually broad and rigorous undergraduate
curriculum for students in the following majors:
biology, marine biology, and ecology, behavior
and evolution. Many of our biology majors
continue on to attain professional degrees. We
offer the popular and stimulating Marine Biology
Quarter and Field Biology Quarter, which we
consider our capstone courses. Students study
local marine and terrestrial California ecosystems
and visit a range of ecosystems around the world
in places such as Australia, Ecuador, Kenya,
Mexico and Tahiti.
Our graduate program attracts top students from
all over, many of whom receive distinguished
fellowships from the National Science
Foundation, the Environmental Protection
Agency and many other foundations.
Our graduate student dissertations are
conceptually based projects, often with field
sites around the world, applying the latest tools
and techniques. Students often pursue topics at
the interface of ecology and evolution, and at the
frontiers of other disciplines such as
biomathematics, geography and engineering.
Our distinguished faculty members are recipients
of many honors and awards for internationally
recognized research accomplishments.
As teachers, we are proud that five members of
our faculty have received UCLA's Distinguished
Teaching Award since 2005.
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NEWSLETTER FALL 2010
It may have been a long or short time since you
last experienced biology at UCLA. We hope this
newsletter will inform you of the exciting new
faculty, new research and new developments. As
part of our academic community, you will be
invited to talks and events. We have a special
section on alumni news, so please send us news
(eebchair@eeb.ucla.edu) about you and other
UCLA Biology friends or alumni. Updating your
contact information is very easy at
www.eeb.ucla.edu/alumni2.php.
Thank you for reading this newsletter. We hope
to hear from you!
Daniel T. Blumstein
Professor and Chair,
UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
eebchair@eeb.ucla.edu

November
UPCOMING
ALUMNI
EVENTS
The Division of
Life Sciences at
UCLA presents a
speaker series for
2010-2011
Bone Marrow Stem Cells:
Developing New Therapies
in the Fight Against Disease
Donald Kohn, Professor
Department of Microbiology,
Immunology and Molecular Genetics
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
How Does Stress Affect
Health Across the Lifespan?
Shelley Taylor, Professor
Department of Psychology
Thursday, April 7, 2011
2
Coral Reefs: Fighting Back
Against Climate Change
Stephen Palumbi, Professor
Department of Biological
Sciences, Stanford University
Hosted by UCLA’s Department of
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Thursday, February 3, 2011
A Fly’s Eye View of Sensory
Integration and Biomechanics
Mark Frye, Assistant Professor
Department of Integrative
Biology and Physiology
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The Next Frontier in Stem
Cell Research
Amander Clark, Assistant Professor
Department of Molecular, Cell,
and Developmental Biology
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Times and locations will be
announced. For more
information, go to
“The Year of the New Life Sciences” at
www.lifescienceslectures.support.ucla.edu
You are invited – save the date! The 14th Annual Biology Research Symposium will be held on
May 11, 2011, at the UCLA Faculty Center, from 1:00 till 4:00 PM, with a talk from 4:00 to 5:15 PM. At
the Symposium, faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and alumni meet to see and informally
discuss the research that is taking place in the Department. Our speaker will be Mike Bell, Professor of
Biology at Stony Brook University and one of our alumni (’76 PhD -- see Alumni News in this issue). If you
would like to attend, please RSVP to eebundergrad@lifesci.ucla.edu. Stop by to see what’s going on!
Check out the latest addition to our website, EEB TV at www.eeb.ucla.edu/eebtv.php! We post faculty
and guest lectures here, commencement speakers, and videos of our faculty giving talks elsewhere.
Now playing: Dr. Neil Shubin on “Finding Your Inner Fish,” Dr. Blaire Van Valkenburgh on “Cracked
Teeth and Complicated Noses,” and many more!
Some of the lectures in the department’s Darwin Evolving series can be seen on the University of
California Television cable channel, UCTV.
The next UCLA Alumni Day will be May 21, 2011! Come back to UCLA, and join other alumni to
celebrate being a Bruin. Keep an eye on www.uclalumni.net/CalendarEvents/ for news!

FACULTY NEWS AND RESEARCH
One of the goals of this newsletter is to help
you stay in touch with the latest
developments in biology. Never before have
the biological sciences played such a
pressing role in society, ranging from the
innovations emerging from genomics and
computational biology to the biological
changes caused by global climate change
and landscape alterations. Our faculty
conduct high-profile, cutting edge research.
Here’s what we are doing now!
From the UCLA Newsroom: “Whales are
remarkably diverse, with 84 living species of
dramatically different sizes and more than
400 other species that have gone extinct,
including some that lived partly on land. Why
are there so many whale species, with so
much diversity in body size? To answer that,
UCLA evolutionary biologists and a
colleague used molecular and computational
techniques to look back 35 million years,
when the ancestor of all living whales
appeared, to analyze the evolutionary tempo
of modern whale species and probe how
fast whales changed their shape and body
size. They have provided the first test of an
old idea about why whales show such rich
diversity. ‘Whales represent the most
spectacularly successful invasion of oceans
! by a mammalian lineage,’ said Michael
Alfaro, UCLA associate professor of
ecology and evolutionary biology, and senior
author of the new study, which was
published in the early online edition of
Proceedings of the Royal Society and will
appear at a later date in the journal's print
edition. ‘They are often at the top of the food
chain and are major players in whatever
ecosystem they are in. They are the biggest
animals that have ever lived. Cetaceans
(which include whales, as well as dolphins
and porpoises) are the mammals that can go
to the deepest depths in the oceans.’” Also,
Professor Alfaro and Dr. Francesco Santini
have published a News and Views piece in
Nature describing how fish morphological
!
diversity was enhanced by the Cretaceous
mass extinction.
Professor Paul Barber is the chief
researcher of the Indonesian Biodiversity
Research Center on the island of Bali. The
center, funded by USAID, is a collaboration
between UCLA, Old Dominion University in
Virginia, and three Indonesian universities
(Udayana University; University of Papua,
Manokwari; and Diponegoro University,
Semarang). “The center will significantly
enhance Indonesia’s capacity to study its
own biodiversity,” said Dr. Barber.
This summer, Professor Dan Blumstein
received the Animal Behavior Society's W.C.
Brown Distinguished Teaching Award, given
to “a faculty member with a sustained record
of highly effective and innovative teaching in
the classroom or in an informal education
setting.” And, he was interviewed on July
22, 2010, on NPR’s All Things Considered
“Is Climate Change Leading to Super
Marmots?” regarding a study published in
the journal Nature.
From UCLA Today: “Daniel T. Blumstein,
professor and chair of the Department of
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, has
written a new book with Esteban Fernández-
Juricic, an associate professor of biological
sciences at Purdue University. The book,
A Primer of Conservation Behavior,
published by Sinauer Associates, is aimed at
biologists interested in conservation biology
and wildlife management. The book’s
subject, conservation behavior, involves
applying knowledge of animal behavior to
solve wildlife conservation problems. It
serves as a practical guide to integrate
animal behavior and conservation biology in
applying methodologies to issues benefiting
from an animal behavior perspective.”
Professors Peggy Fong and David Jacobs
led a group of 24 undergraduates on a
Marine Biology Quarter in Moorea, French
Polynesia, in Spring Quarter of 2010.
3
!
!
The students’ research projects were
presented at a departmental symposium on
June 11. A blog of the adventures of some
of the students can be found at
www.mooreabruins.blogspot.com
(Jason Post, Alex Yarid, and Priscilla Vu,
pictured below)
Professor Malcolm Gordon is an editor of
Survival in a Changing World, a special issue
of the Journal of Experimental Biology, the
leading international journal of comparative
animal physiology. It contains 15 papers
presented at a symposium on the effects of
global climate change, held at Awaji, Japan,
in August 2009. The symposium was
organized by a committee including Dr.
Gordan as co-editor; the keynote address
was delivered by EEB faculty member and
IoE Director Glen M. MacDonald. In
addition, Professor Gordon, working with a
group of former EEB graduate students and
postdoctoral fellows, has published a paper
describing important features of jumping
behavior shown by migrating salmon in a
special issue of the research journal
Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. The special
issue has the title "Biomimetics of Aquatic
Life."

!
!
Professor Steve Hubbell's paper, "Seedling
survival in a tropical forest shows that
species abundance is related to a species’
sensitivity to conspecific neighbors’", was
the cover story for the 16 July 2010 issue of
Science.
From Professor Philip Rundel: “I'm just
back from Costa Rica where we had a
dedication for the new instrumented canopy
towers at the La Selva Biological Station.
This is a major project I was able to develop
with NSF funding working with CENS
[Center for Embedded Network Sensing]
staff here at UCLA and the Organization for
Tropical Studies. The ribbon cutting photo
shows me with Deedra McClearn, the
Director of the La Selva Biological Station.
There is an ongoing NSF-sponsored course
on new technologies for tropical forest
research. The teaching faculty for the course
includes Peter Narins, Lawren Sack, and
myself from EEB, along with former EEB
grads Eric Graham and Alex Gilman and
current grad student Erin Riordan.”
!
Professor Lawren Sack and graduate
student Faith Inman-Narahari recently
published an article in Methods in Ecology
and Evolution titled “Digital Data Collection in
Forest Dynamics Plots." They concluded
that the digital data collection methods they
developed and tested in tropical forests in
Hawaii can be applied to a wide range of
ecological projects, especially long-term
research or monitoring projects where
mapping can be integrated into data
collection. And, Dr. Sack has recently
received the First Annual Diversity Award
from the Ecological Society of America. This
p r e s t i g i o u s a w a r d r e c o g n i z e s h i s
outstanding mentorship of students and
fellow ecologists and exemplary inclusivity of
women and minorities in all aspects of his
professional career. In addition, Dr. Sack
received the 2010 EEB Departmental
Teaching Award Special Faculty Award.
Professor Van Savage has joined the faculty
in a joint appointment with the UCLA
Department of Biomathematics. Dr. Savage
d e s c r i b e s h i s w o r k a s f o l l o w s :
“Mathematical approaches are necessary to
understand the causes and consequences
of the extraordinary diversity in form and
function that exists in biological systems.
Much of my research focuses on the
construction of mathematical models to
discover how organismal physiology
influences biological structure and
dynamics. . . . I am studying the intrinsic
organismal and extrinsic environmental
factors that influence: 1. the diversity and
structure of plant and animal vascular
networks, 2. sleep times, 3. tumor growth,
4. ecosystem structure and dynamics, and
5. speciation-extinction dynamics. I study
these problems using statistics, dynamical
systems methods, ordinary, partial, and
stochastic differential equations, asymptotic
methods, optimization methods, numerical
methods, fluid mechanics, and models for
branching architecture. These studies are
necessary both to firmly establish a basic
understanding of biological processes and to
address practical matters like the effects of
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climate change on biological systems and
the medical treatment of tumor growth.”
From UCLA Today: “It's not easy getting
13,000 birds to fly in for a bird flu check-up.
!
But that's exactly what UCLA researchers
were able to do, with the assistance of
catch-and-release birding stations and
colleagues across the country. Between
2005 and 2008, scientists from UCLA's
Center for Tropical Research analyzed swab
samples from birds of all feathers to explore
a hunch that — contrary to a 30-year
assumption that American songbirds are flufree
— songbirds actually carry the infection.
The UCLA researchers were right. That's
not to say songbirds are deadly. They carry
a mild version of bird flu – the harmful H5N1
strain of bird flu has never been found in the
United States, said Tom Smith, an
ornithologist, center director and Professor
of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, who
headed the joint EEB and Institute of the
Environment-based project. The virus strain
songbirds carry doesn't actually make birds
or people sick. Only a small percentage of
certain species of songbirds — American
robins, Swainson's thrush, fox sparrows and
a few types of finches, among others — turn
out to be flu carriers, Smith said. Other
songbird species — mockingbirds and scrub
jays, for instance — received a clean bill of
health.”
Professor Blaire Van Valkenburgh and lead
author William Ripple, a professor of forest
ecosystems and society at Oregon State
University, published a report in the cover
article of the journal Bioscience on July 1 on
their findings that the extinction of woolly
mammoths and other large mammals more
than 10,000 years ago may be explained by
the same type of cascade of ecosystem
disruption that is being caused today by the
global decline of predators such as wolves,
cougars and sharks.

NEWS FROM STU NT RANCH
Prop 84 funding approved by Wildlife Conservation Board for
UCLA Stunt Ranch Reserve Research and Education Center
The Stunt Ranch Santa Monica Mountains Reserve is a 310-acre
biological field station located four miles inland on the north central
flank of the Santa Monica Mountains. The UCLA Reserve officially
joined the University of California Natural Reserve System in
November 1995, becoming the system's 32nd site and the only one
administered by the Los Angeles campus.
Proposition 84 funding for the Stunt Ranch Reserve Research and
Education Center was approved by the California Wildlife
Conservation Board in May 2010. The award is for $975,000 from
State funds to match existing Stunt Ranch funds.
The Research and Education Center will include a small nature
center with diverse displays depicting the cultural, natural, and
dynamic landscapes of the Cold Creek watershed and Santa Monica
Mountains, a classroom to accommodate up to 40 people and a
workroom with fixed tables and storage lockers to provide important
space and facilities for diverse groups of Reserve users. The project
will replace structures lost to wildfire in 1993, and is designed to
meet all requirements for a LEED Certification.
The Stunt Ranch Reserve Research and Education Center will serve
many functions. It will offer facilities for cutting-edge scientific
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!
!
research, a venue for activities and meetings of community
organizations, a multidisciplinary research program linking sciences
with the social sciences and humanities, a public demonstration
project to educate the community about living lightly on the land, a
multidisciplinary program in environmental education at a level
appropriate for K-12 students and the public, interpretative
programs describing the cultural history of Southern California and
the Santa Monica Mountains, an opportunity for younger students to
interact with and participate in ongoing research projects carried out
by university faculty, students and staff. Additionally, the Center will
demonstrate new technologies in environmental research and
management and expand access to environmental education in the
Santa Monica Mountains to individuals with disabilities.
For more information about the Stunt Ranch Reserve see
www.stuntranch.ucnrs.org and become a fan on Facebook. Stunt
Ranch is a partner with the Institute of the Environment (IoE) on the
new La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science. To learn
more about the IoE see www.ioe.ucla.edu and to learn more about
the La Kretz Center see www.ioe.ucla.edu/lakretz/.

A SPECIAL REPORT
ADVENTURES IN OLD-SCHOOL CLIMBING
The following is for historical purposes
only! Don’t try this on campus these days!
Peter Hayes ’86 wrote us the following: “My
5 years of work at UCLA were terrific, difficult
& memorable. I lived up on the top of
Landfair in the Co-Op, which was. . . er. . .
interesting. I climbed just about every
structure while living so close to campus,
which was an adventure. I have been
teaching biology at the top private school in
Utah for the last 15 years, and I spent 10
years prior to that in the inner city public
school systems. The education I received as
a Bruin was indispensable. I will always be
proud of my association with UCLA.” When
we asked for more details on his climbing
escapades, he wrote: “I climbed the 3 inch
cracks on the back side of Powell Library,
and then rapped off the railing. We
borrowed a few sets of friends to lead the
thing, and it ticked in at solid 5.11 because
the blue paint was oxidized and slippery. I
also sent the traverse from the second story
landing to the sky-walk on the back of the
Physics building. This one is a deathtrap 40
foot high ball, and I did it onsight, full
commitment. It may be only 15 feet, but it
has your full attention because the
consequence of a fall is unimaginable
because there is a fire hydrant in the LZ!! (I
have a photo of me on this at the midpoint,
and I only did it once.) On the left side of the
old Ackerman Union I sent the features to
the second story windows, and we routinely
linked the traverses of the entrance ways to
the Union itself. Then there was the many
problems we did on the concrete ‘Tower of
Masks’ in the film ed. garden in north
campus, along with the vertical concrete
panels lining the entrance to the English
building. There was a neat little arch span to
climb , traverse, and down climb on the
entrance to the physics lectures, but the
tops of the little 3-finger tweakers were
always dusty, making for scary
stuff up high. We got some good
air on the outside of the
stairways on some of the
parking structures, 50 feet at
least, and the holds were
reach-through bomber jugz.
“But some of the greats have
been torn down, like the
stone traverse on the north side
of the old student cafeteria. The !
greatest loss is the 20 foot vertical layback
up the shallow 1 1/2 inch crack in the brick
wall leading to the outdoor lunch area of the
old cafeteria. It was solid 5.12, and on one
try I fell reaching for the top, which resulted
in a bone-crushing landing on the cement
below. (These climbs were all done before
sticky rubber and long before anything like a
bouldering pad was even thought of.) I sat
there for a few minutes wondering if all was
OK. I went a week later, and when I popped
the mantle over the rim and walked the
railing I think I shocked the people lunching
at the time. When I looked back they were
all looking over the rim to see how I came up
a blank brick wall. There was a cool OW up
the east side of that structure too, but it is
gone. (A few years later I did crush both
heels falling from the top of Pt. Mugu rock
on the edge of PCH when the top hold
snapped and I cratered into the roadbed
below, that put me in a wheel chair for 4
months, and to this day I suffer from chronic
pain in my feet after a day of standing in the
classroom.)
“There was a tricky little finger crack in the
cement wall on the road leading to the old
track, but I think it too was torn down. We
did some sick OW work in the cement
corners of a parking lot near Landfair, too.
All of this was done in 1983-4 before any of
us had Fires, so the boots sucked, but the
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Peter Hayes ’86
passion was there! I built my second
climbing gym up in the parking lot of The
Co-Op, which is at the top of the hill on
Landfair past Frat Row. It faced east, and I
think elements of it are still there, like the
crack machine, fingertip traverse blocks and
hanger for the pull-up bar we had. The
current director of the entire Outdoor Retailer
Show learned to climb on that gym 27 years
ago.
“I kept all of my notes from my 5 years at
UCLA, and I show them to my students at
the start of every year to show them how to
study by consistently rewriting their notes as
I did in college. I have been teaching for 25
years now, and I hold a high bar, just like Dr.
Goldberg. He was wicked hard, and the
chicken ---- woosies fled his class like an
avalanche, but I stuck it out and earned my
well-deserved ‘B’. He gave one ‘A’ that
term. I remember he knew every student's
name, and he'd call us by name to answer
questions during class, which kept
everybody on edge. Great guy, solid class,
and that double jeopardy really kept us on
our toes. Keep in touch, Keep climbing,
stay strong!” We passed this on to Dr.
Goldberg, now of the Department of
Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology
at UCLA, who told us it put a smile on his
face.

UNDERGRADUATE NEWS
Paulina Giraldo received a Joseph Epperson Memorial
Scholarship for the Fall 2009 Field/Marine Biology Quarter in the
U.S. Virgin Islands. Receiving the scholarship helped solidify her
career plans; she is currently attending graduate school in New
Zealand. (For more information on the Joseph Epperson Memorial
Scholarship, see www.eeb.ucla.edu/giving_epperson.php.)
Whitcome Summer Undergraduate Fellowships, which carry with
them a $3000 stipend to aid students in conducting biological or
biochemical research with a UCLA faculty mentor during the
summer of 2010, were awarded to Alvin Chan, Jonathan Chang,
Catherine Lubarsky, and Ruthie Musker.
!
GRADUATE NEWS
Jay Jensen ’93 spoke at the 2010
Commencement Celebration for
undergraduates in Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology. Jay is currently the
Deputy Undersecretary for Natural
Resources and the Environment of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. He has
also served as Senior Forestry Advisor
for the Western Governors Association,
Kris Kaiser was nominated by the Department this year for the
UCLA Academic Senate 2010 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Award. The award honors “those in our campus community who
have aided in the furtherance of a diverse, impartial, and inclusive
academic environment,” and focuses on “contributions beyond the
call of duty involving auspicious success (leadership, innovation,
initiatives, creativity) in furthering a diverse, impartial, and inclusive
academic environment at UCLA.” Although she was not selected
for the award, she is to be greatly commended
for her work.
Pamela Thompson in the Sork lab has been
awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study batmediated
pollen dispersal in fragmented and
continuous dry tropical forests along the coasts
of Jalisco state, Mexico. Adriana Maldonado
in the Blumstein lab has also received a
Fulbright to study the consequences of
individual by developing an individual-based
model of marmot population dynamics.
Four of our students received prestigious
!
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where he was responsible for the biomass energy program. Before
that, as lead forestry advisor for the U.S. House Committee on
Agriculture, Jensen helped develop programs under the 2002 Farm
Bill, and he has also served as lead policy analyst for the National
Association of State Foresters.
Following the 13th Annual Biology Research Symposium on May
19, 2010, awards for outstanding undergraduate poster
presentations were given to Sarah E. A. Diringer (first place), Jeff
Modlin (second place) and Andrew Chao (third place)
At the EEB Departmental Awards ceremony in June, 2010, three
students were honored with the EEB Undergraduate Research
Award for outstanding research accomplishments by an
undergraduate EEB student: Allison Quan, Martin Sahakyan,
and Romina Sifuentes.
This year's New Student Welcome Event had the highest
attendance in its four years of existence. 80 first-year and transfer
students attended the event this year.
National Science Foundation fellowships this year: Deborah Bird,
Rena Schweizer, Marisa Tellez and incoming student Megan
Bartlett. Three of our students received honorable mentions:
Greer Dolby and incoming students Samantha Cheng and
Nicole Munoz. Our continuing NSF Fellows are Jonathan Drury,
Keith Gaddis Neil Losin, Ranjan Muthukrishnan, and
Stephenie Steele.
Adriana Maldonado
Pamela Thompson has received an EPA Star
Graduate Fellowship for her work on tropical bat
pollination. Tina Wey has received a National
Science Foundation Bioinformatics postdoctoral
fellowship to continue her studies of animal
social networks with Dick James (Bath) and
Andy Sih (Davis). Tina will start in January 2011.
Jim Holmquist of the MacDonald lab was
interviewed in the blog SciMuse on July 8, 2010.
“A paleoecologist by day and the fearless leader
of The Long Holidays by night,” Jim discusses
his use of micro and macro fossils from peat
cores from the Hudson Bay area to reconstruct

climate and ecology, as well as the perspective that science gives
to his songwriting.
Following the 13th Annual Biology Research Symposium on May
19, 2010, awards for outstanding graduate poster presentations
went to David A. Gold (first place), Faith Inman-Narahari
(second place) and Margaret Sporck (third place). The Chair’s
Award for the best laboratory poster went to the Alfaro lab. At the
EEB Departmental Awards ceremony in June, the Lasiewski Award
for exceptional research accomplishments in Organismic Biology
was given to Graham Slater. The Scherbaum Award for
distinguished research by a graduate student in Biology went to
Victoria Arch. The Schechtman Award, given to a teaching
assistant for outstanding merit in instruction and other service to
students, was awarded to Abigail Curtis and Chris Johnson.
Karen Kapheim received the Special Faculty Award, given to a
graduate student in recognition of outstanding service to students
and faculty in matters other than instruction.
8
Other fellowships this year: Dom Alioto, Abril Iniguez, and
Nicole Munoz received Cota Robles Fellowships. Daniel Stahler
received a Dissertation Year Fellowship. Graduate Assistance in
Areas of National Need (GAANN) Fellowships went to Greer
Dolby, Ryan Ellingson, David Gold, Adrea Gonzalez-
Karlsson, Christopher Johnson, and Matthew Petelle. Pauley
Fellowships were awarded to Megan Bartlett, Samantha Cheng,
Allison Fritts-Penniman, and Miran Park.
Jim Holmquist
!
RECENT MASTERS AND DOCTORAL GRADUATES
Doctorates in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology were awarded in Winter 2010 to Travis Collier (Taylor) and Connie J. Fotheringham
(Rundel), and in Spring 2010 to Victoria Arch (Narins), Jaime Chaves (Smith), and Bridgett vonHoldt (Wayne).
Masters degrees were awarded to Stephanie Dickson in Winter 2010, and to Brittany Enzmann and Thea Wang in Spring 2010.

IN MEMORIAM
NICHOLAS E. COLLIAS (1914 – 2010)
Nicholas (Nick) Collias, an internationally
prominent, creative, productive, and original
student of animal behavior, especially of bird
behavior, was born July 19, 1914 and
passed away, at age 95, April 28, 2010. He
was at his home in Van Nuys in southern
California. His close life and scientific
research partner, his wife Elsie (they married
December 21, 1948), died three years
earlier, December 17, 2006, four days before
their 58th anniversary. Most professional
colleagues and acquaintances knew them
as “Nick and Elsie.” From the time they
became a couple Elsie played major roles in
almost all of Nick’s research projects and
publications, whether or not she was listed
as co-author.
The broad outlines of
Nick’s research career
were reflections of his
general approach to
life. He worked on
q u e s t i o n s t h a t
were interesting
and important,
o f t e n t i m e s o f
p r a c t i c a l
significance as
well. He was
s t e a d y ,
consistent,
persistent,
s o l i d , a n d
w o r k e d t o
a c h i e v e t h e
Nicholas
Collias
highest standards of quality. In 1939,
age 25, he began publishing research
articles that were carefully crafted, well
written reports of original studies. He
continued publishing an average of 1-2
papers per year (occasionally as many as 5
in a year) until 2004 – a publishing life span
of 66 years and a total of 94 research
articles. This output was augmented by
three substantial books (published between
1964 and 1984); a set of recordings of
animal sounds (both zoo and farm animals)
distributed over 49 years in three different
formats (a long-playing record in 1954, an
audio cassette in 1992, and a compact disk
audio-book in 2003); and five scientific
documentary films (four made 1965 – 1972;
the fifth in 1987).
Most publications dealt with a range of
aspects of bird behavior, but there were also
a few substantial efforts dealing with
mammalian behavior. The research themes
for which he is best known include: social
hierarchies, notably pecking orders in birds;
vocal communications among birds and
mammals (in this area he was a pioneer in
the careful application of sound spectrogram
technology); and external constructions by
animals, notably bird nests. His work was
thorough, detailed, painstaking, and highly
original.
His overall approach was
strongly grounded in
both natural history
and evolutionary
thinking. These
perspectives
were major
m o t i v a t o r s
f o r fi e l d
s t u d i e s o f
p a r t i c u l a r
g r o u p s o f
b i r d s ( e . g . ,
c o l o n i a l l y
n e s t i n g
weaverbirds; various
seabirds; the red jungle
fowl). He and Elsie were
intrepid field biologists, making
multiple extended expeditions over the years
to Africa, Central and South America,
southern and southeastern Asia, Australia,
and some Pacific islands, in addition to
many parts of North America. He also was
an experimentalist; he maintained a variety of
birds in aviaries at various times, often doing
behavioral experiments testing hypotheses.
He had a strong analytical, statistical
background, which he applied consistently.
He was an effective educator. He was a
tenured faculty member at Illinois College
(Jacksonville, IL) from 1954-58, at which
9
time he was recruited (to an initially nontenured,
but tenure track) position in the
Department of Zoology, UCLA. He quickly
earned tenure and became a central figure in
both the undergraduate and graduate
teaching programs in animal behavior and
vertebrate biology in that Department
(currently named Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology). He was an active faculty member
for 27 years, until his retirement in 1985. He
retired at the top level rank of full Professor
(Professor of Highest Distinction).
His own records show that he supervised 50
Masters degree students and 12 PhD
students while at UCLA. He also served as
a member of the doctoral advisory
committees for many additional graduate
students who did dissertations that included
aspects of animal behavior. He had 20
research assistants, many of whom were
also students.
He was very active in professionally related
service activities involving several scientific
societies. The American Ornithologists
Union (AOU) was the beneficiary of much of
his work. He became an Associate Member
in 1933, an elective member in 1950, and a
Fellow in 1963; he was a Life Member for
many years. He was a member of the
Editorial Board of THE AUK for five years,
and for several years chaired the committee
that nominated recipients of the Brewster
and Coues Awards.
He was a long-time member of both the
American Society of Zoologists (now the
Society for Integrative and Comparative
Biology) and the Ecological Society of
America. In 1963 he chaired Divisions of
each of these societies (Animal Behavior in
SICB, Sociobiology in ESA). These
organizational positions involved him in
discussions which resulted in his being a
Founding Member of the Animal Behavior
Society (1964). In 1964-65 he chaired the
committee that wrote the constitution for
ABS and he chaired the first two nominating
committees for officers of ABS. He was
elected a Fellow of ABS in 1967.

Other society affiliations included the
American Association for the Advancement
of Science (elected Fellow, 1977) and the
Cooper Ornithological Society (Honorary
Member, 1981). He chaired the Council of
the Cooper Society for two years and also
was chair for several years of the committee
that nominated Honorary Members.
He was an Honorary Research Associate for
varying lengths of time over a range of many
years for multiple institutions. These
included the Los Angeles County Museum of
Natural History; the Percy Fitzpatrick Institute
of African Ornithology, University of
Capetown, South Africa; and the Nairobi
(Kenya) Museum of Natural History.
The quality of his professional work was
recognized multiple times. He was elected
to Phi Beta Kappa at the University of
Chicago (1937). He received several
fellowships as both a graduate student and
postdoctoral research scholar. He was a
Guggenheim Fellow (1962-63). He and Elsie
jointly received three awards: Avy Award,
American Federation of Aviculture (1977);
Elliott Coues Award, AOU (1980); and
Margaret Morse Nice Medal, Wilson
Ornithological Society (1987). The ABS
designated him a Distinguished Animal
Behaviorist (2000).
Nick was born July 19, 1914 in Chicago
Heights, Illinois, into a sizable extended
family of Greek descent. His parents came
to the U.S. from Greece in 1900 (his father)
and 1911 (his mother). As was traditional in
that culture at that time their marriage was
arranged. His father developed a business
running a combination hotel/restaurant/bar;
his mother was a homemaker.
Nick was the fourth of ultimately six siblings,
five boys and a girl. His was not an easy life.
His oldest brother and his sister (the
youngest) both died very young, under
difficult circumstances. The loss of his sister
devastated his mother. She began to
deteriorate and contracted tuberculosis.
She died September 25, 1925 after two
years in a sanitarium; Nick was 11 years old.
His father also was unable to cope, lost his
business and then their home. The family
disintegrated.
Two sets of relatives took the boys in, one
separately, the other three, including Nick,
together. An aunt arranged for Nick and two
of his brothers to enter Glenwood Manual
Training School, a boarding school in
northern Illinois for boys without families.
Nick spent four years at Glenwood, where
he learned the trade of a machinist.
Glenwood was run like a highly regimented
military academy. Everything was geared
toward discipline and the mastering of a
trade. In those days, once a boy turned 14
or 15 they were expected to support
themselves.
Nick hated that life – he said it felt like
slavery. He knew that unless he could get
more education he would end up in a lifetime
of factory work. He also quickly learned that
it was a world where a boy’s life and
privileges were largely determined by his
size. Nick and his best friend, the two
smallest in the class, had to prove
themselves physically. They did that by
teaming up on the “alpha males” and
establishing their own dominance over the
bullies. These experiences gave Nick, a
gentle man, an edge of toughness.
Nick’s interest in birds developed
spontaneously when he was very young and
outdoors. He was an active bird watcher
while at Glenwood. The school did not
appreciate his excursions looking for birds
and often punished him for those activities.
He described the punishments as “creative.”
He persisted.
From Glenwood he went to a public high
school in northwestern Chicago. He studied
hard and earned top grades. He applied to
the University of Chicago and was accepted
as an undergraduate. He majored in
zoology and earned his B.S. degree in 1937.
While at the University he maintained his
physical condition through athletics. He was
tops in his weight class on the University
wrestling team; he earned five letters for
wrestling and diving; and he was the captain
and quarterback of the junior football team.
While an undergraduate he developed a
relationship with W.C. Allee, a distinguished
ecologist on the faculty. Allee hired him as a
research assistant after graduation. He put
10
him to work studying pecking order in
chickens. This job led to several fellowships
and to his doctoral dissertation. He earned
his PhD degree in 1942.
Soon thereafter he was drafted into the US
Army, where he spent 3 ½ years. He rose
from the rank of private to 1st lieutenant. His
professional training, statistical skills, and
educational qualifications resulted in his not
being sent overseas. He finished his Army
career as a medical research physiologist at
the Aeromedical Research Station, Wright
Field, Dayton, OH.
In 1946, after discharge from the Army, he
became an Instructor in Zoology at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. He began
his long term research program on the
development of social behavior in birds. He
met Elsie Cole at the University; they married
December 21, 1948.
In 1951-52 they studied Canada Goose
behavior for the Wisconsin Conservation
Department. Soon after that they both
joined the faculty in biology at Illinois College,
Jacksonville, IL. Except for a leave during
1956-57 when they went to Africa to study
weaverbird behavior (with support from a
National Science Foundation grant) they
remained at Illinois College until 1958. They
then moved to UCLA.
Nick and Elsie are survived by their daughter,
Karen C. Whilden.
Malcolm S. Gordon,
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
UCLA

William “Bill” Eugene Evans (1930-2010)
(Bartholomew/Norris)
“William ‘Bill’ Eugene Evans, Ph.D., 80, of
College Station, Texas, passed away
Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010, at St. Joseph
Regional Health Center in Bryan, Texas.
“Dr. Evans was a worldrenowned
marine mammal
a c o u s t i c i a n a n d
ecologist. He was
o n e o f t h e fi r s t
scientists to work
w i t h t h e U . S .
N a v y ’s M a r i n e
Mammal Program
in the 1960s.
During his 10
years with the
program, his Bill Evans
primary area
o f r e s e a r c h
w a s m a r i n e
mammal communication and echo-location.
The result was a special research platform
for recording and observing dolphins
underwater called ‘Sea ! See.’ He went on to
be the head of the Hubbs-Sea World
Research Institute in San Diego and
continued his remote sensing studies and
their use in oceanography. Before leaving
federal services, he was the presidentially
appointed chairman of the Marine Mammal
Commission, promoted to National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Association associate
administrator for fisheries, followed by his
appointment as the U.S. commissioner to
the International Whaling Commission and
undersecretary of commerce for NOAA.
“He recognized the need for science majors
to have a university-level course focusing on
environmental policy and management and
taught such a course at Texas A&M
University for 10 years. He was adjunct
professor of biology at the University of
Notre Dame. He retired as managing editor
of American Midland Naturalist after finishing
the journal’s centennial issues. His most
recent research has concentrated on the
study of the history of international
environmental policy and how it affects the
conservation of threatened and endangered
species. Dr. Evans is the author of several
books, the most recent (2008) being an
autobiography, ‘50 Years of Flukes and
Flippers.’ He was named an outstanding
alumnus for Bowling Green State University
in 1985 and received an honorary doctorate
of public service form BGSU in 1988.
Survivors include his wife, Phyllis Jean
Evans; sons and daughters-in-law, Jon A.
and Carylon Evans of Hespena,
Calif., and Tim J., DVM, and
D e b o r a o f C o l u m b i a ;
grandchildren, Andreya
Evans, Courtney Evans,
Kelsey Evans, Kendall
Evans and Will Evans;
a n d o n e g r e a t -
g r a n d s o n , C o n n o r
Summers. He was
preceded in death by his
parents, Justus Robert
and Florence Martin Evans.
In lieu of flowers, please make
donations in memory of Bill to the
BGSU Foundation, memo line: Marinelab
Bill Evans Memorial, Mileti Alumni Center,
Bowling Green, Ohio, 43403.”
From his friend and colleague,
Harry N. Coulombe, Ph.D.’68 (Bartholomew)
George C. Williams, 1926-2010
from Douglas J. Futuyma, for the
Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony
Brook University
“George C. Williams ’55 PhD (Walker), a
renowned evolutionary biologist and
Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution
at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook,
New York, passed away on September 8,
2010. Professor Williams is widely regarded
by peers in his field as one of the most
influential and incisive evolutionary theorists
of the twentieth century, internationally
respected for having shaped conceptual
progress and new fields of research in
evolutionary biology. He advocated and
helped to build a ‘science of adaptation’ that
addresses the evolution of animal and
human behaviors, organisms' life histories,
and other complex features. Together with
Randolph Nesse, professor of psychiatry at
the University of Michigan, he launched the
field of ‘Darwinian medicine,’ an evolutionary
11
approach to human health and disease.
“The study of evolution in the 1950's was
based on advances in the previous two
decades that had established a powerful,
very general theory of evolution by natural
selection, cast in terms of genetic change of
species. It applied to organisms' features in
the abstract; what was lacking, for the most
part, was analysis of the causes of evolution
of various puzzling features that vary among
species. Why, for example, do some
organisms reproduce sexually and others
asexually? Why do some species have a
short life span, whereas tortoises and
redwoods can live for more than a century?
How do we account for cooperation in social
animals, when natural selection is based on
selfish, individual advantage? To the extent
that biologists addressed such questions,
they generally supposed that these traits
benefit the species as a whole, even if they
are harmful to the individual. Senescence
and death, for example, were thought to
provide space and resources for a vigorous
new generation, and so promote the
species' welfare.
“Although Williams's research area was the
ecology and life history of fishes, he started
to address such questions in 1957, when he
published a theory to account for the
evolution of senescence and short life span;
this paper is now recognized in all major
biological works on gerontology as a
foundation for understanding the genetic
and evolutionary bases of the age
distribution of mortality. In the same year, he
and his wife Doris were among the first to
advance the modern theory for the evolution
of cooperative behavior that is harmful to the
cooperating individual but beneficial to the
group. Williams, adhering to Darwin's
conception of natural selection, sought
explanations based on the reproductive
success of individual organisms and their
genes, and rejected hypotheses based on
‘group selection’ that promotes the ‘good of
the species.’ He developed these ideas at
length in Adaptation and Natural Selection: A
Critique of Some Current Evolutionary
Thought (1966), which had enormous
influence and immediately established his
reputation as one of the most original,
incisive thinkers in evolutionary biology. In
this book, in other publications, and in

conversation, Williams had a gift for clear
thinking about complex problems, and for
explaining them in disarmingly simple terms.
“Although much of evolutionary theory takes
the form of mathematical models, Williams
made sparing use of math, and developed
almost entirely verbal theory. Nonetheless,
he helped to establish the foundations for
n e w s u b d i s c i p l i n e s w i t h i n m o d e r n
evolutionary biology, including behavioral
ecology and sociobiology, sexual selection,
and the evolution of sexual reproduction and
reproductive systems, to which Williams
devoted another book (Sex and Evolution,
1975). Richard Dawkins and others credit
Williams with pioneering a reductionist
approach to evolution, by analyzing how
mutational changes in a characteristic would
affect the reproductive success (fitness) of
an individual organism or of the gene itself
(i.e., the "selfish gene" paradigm). Despite
some controversy, this approach is widely
considered to have enhanced the
explanatory power of evolutionary theory.
Williams published five other books,
including Why We Get Sick: The New
Science of Darwinian Medicine, with
Randolph Nesse (1994), that shows why an
understanding of evolution is helpful and
even necessary in the health sciences. Since
then, Darwinian medicine has been the
subject of numerous books and symposia,
and is beginning to influence some medical
school curricula.
“Williams was born on May 12, 1926. After
serving in the U.S. Army, he enrolled in the
University of California at Berkeley and
received a B.A. in zoology in 1949. He
received his M. A. (1952) and Ph.D. (1955) at
UCLA, held a postdoctoral fellowship at the
University of Chicago for one year, and
became an Assistant Professor at Michigan
State University in 1955. In 1960 he moved
to the nascent State University of New York
at Stony Brook as Associate Professor and
he became Professor of Biological Sciences
in 1967. He was a key figure in establishing
both the Department of Ecology and
Evolution and the Marine Sciences Research
Center at Stony Brook. He was appointed
Senior Research Biologist in the Marine
Sciences Research Center in 1967, but
transferred to the Department of Ecology
and Evolution in 1974. He retired as
Professor Emeritus in 1990, but his
contributions, such as the book on
Darwinian medicine, continued for several
years, until Alzheimer's disease began to
take its toll. His positions during sabbatical
leaves included Distinguished Visiting
Scientist at the University of Michigan, Fellow
of the Center for Advanced Studies in
Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and
Adjunct Professor at Queen's University in
Ontario.
“W illiams distinguished himself by
professional service: he was Vice President
and later President of the Society for the
Study of Evolution, and Editor of The
American Naturalist. He was devoted to the
Quarterly Review of Biology, housed
at Stony Brook, serving in
various editorial capacities
throughout his career at
Stony Brook University.
His many honors and
awards include election
a s F e l l o w o f t h e
American Association
for the Advancement of
Science (1984) and of
the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences
( 1 9 9 0 ) ; b e i n g
n a m e d E m i n e n t
Ecologist by the
Ecological Society of
America (1989); receipt
of the Daniel Giraud Elliott A w a r d
from the U. S. National Academy of
Sciences (1992) and the Raymond Pearl
Award from the American Society for Human
Biology (1997); and receipt of Honorary Sc.
D. degrees from Queen's ! University (1995)
and SUNY-Stony Brook (2000). He was
elected to the U. S. National Academy of
Sciences in 1993, and was co-recipient (with
John Maynard Smith and Ernst Mayr) of the
highly prestigious Crafoord Prize, awarded
by the Swedish Royal Academy, in 1999.
(The Crafoord Prize is intended, according to
the Swedish Academy, ‘to promote basic
research in mathematics, astronomy, the
biosciences (particularly ecology), the
geosciences and polyarthritis,’ and is
considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize
in fields for which no Nobel is specified.)
12
George
Williams
“An articulate, daring writer, Williams was
soft-spoken, unassuming, and laconic in
person. Even if he said little in gatherings, his
colleagues and students quickly learned to
listen carefully when he did venture an
opinion, for he almost invariably posed a
provocative question, provided a novel point
of view, or cleared confusion away with a
simple analysis that left listeners enlightened.
He was invariably friendly, and eager to
discuss science and human affairs with
peers or students. He held socially
progressive, liberal, views, and was
concerned in particular about socially
significant misunderstanding or abuse of
evolutionary theory. In 1992, in his article
‘Gaia, nature worship and biocentric
fallacies’ (originally entitled
‘Mother Nature is a wicked
old witch’), he pointed
out the cruelties in
nature, and drew
attention to the
‘naturalistic fallacy’
whereby people
attempt to find
ethical justification
o f b e h a v i o r i n
natural selection, on
the supposition that
‘natural’ is ‘good.’ Earlier
( 1 9 9 2 ) , h e w r o t e ‘ A
sociobiological expansion of
Evolution and Ethics’ to accompany a
reprinting of T. H. Huxley's 1893 essay of
that title. Viewing natural selection as ‘a
process for maximizing short-sighted
selfishness,’ he found much of nature,
including our own ‘selfish genes,’ a ‘morally
unacceptable,’ ‘powerful and persistent’
enemy, writing that ‘we need all the help we
can get in trying to overcome billions of
years of selection for selfishness.’ Only by
being aware of the morally unacceptable
elements in human nature, he felt, can we
hope to find our better angels.”

Some of our alumni find us, and sometimes
we find them. If we find you first, we’ll ask
you for permission to include your news on
the web. If you’d like to let others know
what you are doing, please email us at
eebchair@eeb.ucla.edu.
2000s
Ailin Barseghian El-Farra ‘02 writes: “I
wanted to thank you for setting up forums to
strengthen UCLA alumni connections, an
area I feel we lacked in the UCLA community
especially compared to our USC rivals.
Since graduating from UCLA, I have earned
an MD from New York Medical College and I
am presently a second year internal
medicine resident at UCI with aspirations to
pursue a career in cardiology.”
Julie Garchow ’05 is a first year medical
student at the University of Buffalo.
Arta Lahiji ’01 received her MD from the
University of Michigan Medical School in
2006, and is currently pursuing a Master of
Public Health at the Harvard School of Public
Health and a Petrie-Flom Center for Health
Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics
Fellowship at Harvard Law School (with her
research interests in children with special
health care needs).
Arye Lipman '08 is a Project Manager and
Head of Pre-Clinical Development at
ImaginAb Inc., a biotechnology company in
the Los Angeles area. His research is
focused on the use of antibody fragments
for target specific imaging, utilizing
modalities such as PET and SPECT. In the
next few months, several fragments he
helped to engineer will be heading into
clinical trials.
Ziba Razinia ’03 is a graduate student in
cell biology at Yale.
Danielle Whitehair ‘05 received a Masters
in Public Health with emphasis in
epidemiology from San Diego State
University. Her paper, "Influence of
Apolipoprotein E ε4 on rates of cognitive
and functional decline in mild cognitive
impairment," has been accepted for
publication in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
Currently she is Assistant Project
Coordinator at the Alzheimer’s Disease
Cooperative Study in the Department of
Neurosciences at UC San Diego.
1990s
Joanna Camba-Colon ’93 writes: “I
worked as a lab helper as an undergrad. I
received a stipend from CARE (Center for
Academic and Research Excellence) at
UCLA and worked on an independent
project with Dr. O’Lague and his postdoc,
Dr. Kalman. This experience got me hooked
on science. My first real job right out of
college was as a staff research associate
(SRA) in Dr. Bryson’s lab at UCLA. Our work
focused on understanding the vertical
transmission of HIV from mother to baby.
With the encouragement of my husband,
Nicholas, and the many scientists and
researchers I worked with, I went back to
graduate school. In 2009, I completed my
Ph.D. in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental
Biology (CMDB) at the University of California
Riverside. I then worked as a postdoctoral
research fellow at City of Hope. I am
currently a staff research scientist at
Calimmune Inc. I am happy to say that my
husband and I will be celebrating 22 years of
marriage this year (2010). We are also the
proud parents of Alexandria, Cameron, and
Katrina, who keep us on our toes as we
guide them through college, middle school,
and elementary school. It’s been a busy and
fulfilling 17 years since graduating from
UCLA, and I look forward to exciting years
ahead.”
Pamela Chapman ’95 is a supervising
epidemiologist with ChemRisk, a scientific
consulting firm that specializes in using risk
assessment methods to characterize and
provide improved understanding of complex
e x p o s u r e s i n v o l v i n g c h e m i c a l s ,
pharmaceuticals, or radionuclides in a variety
of potentially contaminated media.
Robert T. De Forest ’99, MA ’06, MBA ’06
is Managing Principal with The Pinyon Group
in Los Angeles.
Dennis Hwe-Yang Hong ’96 received a
PhD in biology from UC San Diego in 2002.
In addition to teaching biology at Palomar
High School, he coaches a team to compete
at the National Ocean Sciences Bowl each
year, held at the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography.
13
!
!
!
!
ALUMNI
Arta Lahiji
Joanna Camba-Colon
Arye Lipman
Jennifer Brown

!
!
!
!
Tina Cowan
Martin Donohoe
Elizabeth Kornblum Devine
Diego Lirman
1980s
Jennifer Brown ’96 Marine Bio, is the
Ecosystem Scientist for the Sanctuary
Integrated Monitoring Network (SIMoN). She
is responsible for developing and
coordinating ecosystem assessments at
both local and regional levels. These
ecosystem models and condition reports
help address resource management needs
for integrated monitoring information.
Additionally, Jennifer provides science
support for the Marine Protected Areas
M B N M S A c t i o n P l a n t h r o u g h t h e
development of data summaries and
resource assessments. Jennifer earned a
PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
from the University of California at Santa
Cruz. Her research focused on evaluating
the relative value of nearshore ecosystems at
nursery grounds for juvenile flatfish.
Tina Cowan ’86 is an Associate Professor
of Pathology at Stanford University. She is a
diplomate of the American Board of Medical
Genetics with specialty certification in Clinical
Biochemical Genetics and a Ph.D. in Medical
Genetics, and is Medical Director of the
Clinical Biochemical Genetics Laboratory at
Stanford. Her research focuses on the
screening and diagnosis of patients with
inborn errors of metabolism, including
newborn screening, development of new
testing methods and genotype/phenotype
correlations.
Elizabeth Kornblum Devine ’83 writes: “I
was a Criminalist for LA Sheriff for 15 years
with a Masters Degree in Forensic Science
from Cal State LA. I worked nine years for
the CSI television franchise rising to Co-
Executive Producer for CSI: Miami. I started
the CSI Endowment at Cal State LA for
students interested in pursuing a Forensic
Science degree. Currently I am writing and
developing a television drama for A&E and
Fox Television Studios.”
Martin Donohoe ’84 writes: “I received my
BS (Biology, 1984) and MD (1990) from
UCLA. I loved my bio classes and
have maintained a side interest in biological
anthropology. I completed internship and
residency at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital / Harvard Medical School, and was
a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at
Stanford University. I am now Adjunct
Associate Professor in Community Health at
Portland State University and practice
internal medicine with Kaiser Permanente. I
serve on the Board of Advisors of Oregon
14
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
and am Chief Scientific Advisor to Oregon
PSR’s Campaign for Safe Foods. I teach
courses in medical humanities, public health,
social justice ethics, and women’s studies.
My open-access slide shows, articles, and
syllabi can be found at www.phsj.org or at
www.publichealthandsocialjustice.org. Best
wishes to my former student-colleagues.”
Susie Hsiuhan Ling ’80 has earned two
master’s degrees, one in Asian American
Studies at UCLA, and one in History at Cal
State Los Angeles, and is an Associate
Professor of Social Sciences at Pasadena
City College.
Diego Lirman ’88 received his PhD from
the Rosenstiel School of Marine and
Atmospheric Science, Miami, and is a
Research Assistant Professor of Marine
Biology and Fisheries at the University of
Miami, researching the disturbance ecology
of coastal systems.
Ronald H. Matson ’87 PhD (Buth) former
Chair of the Department of Biology and
Physics at Kennesaw State University, has
been appointed to the position of Interim
Dean of the College of Science and
Mathematics at KSU as of 1 July 2010.
Eric F. Reichman ’84 received his MD from
the Medical College of Wisconsin, and a
PhD in Anatomy from the Uniformed
Services University of the Health Sciences in
Bethesda, Maryland, in 1989. He is
currently an Associate Professor of Medicine
and the Director of the Surgical & Clinical
Skills Center at the University of Texas
Houston Medical School.

1970s
Michael A. Bell ’70, PhD ’76 (Olson),
writes: “I received my BA (1970), masters
(1975) and Ph.D. (1976) in Biology and
Zoology at UCLA, before you existed as a
separate department. My advisor for the last
two degrees was Everett C. Olson, with
whom I remained close until his death in
1993. My masters research concerned
v a r i a t i o n i n f o s s i l s t i c k l e b a c k fi s h
(Gasterosteus doryssus) from Nevada and
(mostly) geographical variation of threespine
stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus) in
California streams. Those two projects were
the foundation for research that I continue
today. After hanging around UCLA for two
years (9 months as an unemployed Ph.D.
and a year as a lecturer), I joined the faculty
(1978) in the Department of Ecology and
Evolution at Stony Brook University, where I
am still in the faculty and continue my
research. Some of your present faculty at
UCLA know me, though I think almost
everyone who was there when I finished up
is gone now. My research concerns the two
themes established in my masters and Ph.D.
research. I continue to study fossil
stickleback fish in Nevada, and published
analyses of fine-scale stratigraphic time
series in the last few years in Paleobiology,
Science, the Journal of Fish Biology, and
Evolution. My work on spatial variation
shifted to Alaskan stickleback populations,
where the intraspecific variation is
spectacular. The work I started there in the
1980s has now attracted about ten labs that
study various aspects of stickleback biology
- primarily evolution. A paper on which I was
a minor coauthor in Science in February
(Chan et al. 2010. Science 327:302-305)
answered a question I posed about the
genetic basis of skeletal variation in fossil
and modern stickleback in my masters
thesis in 1973. We narrowed the causal
lesion for this trait down to a 500 bp region
and showed that the alleles responsible for it
have arisen independently many times in a
mutational (deletion) hot spot. My fossil
work is cited frequently in textbooks, and I
value having that impact on the textbook
literature. So, the work I started at UCLA as
an undergraduate and graduate student
established the foundation for research that
has had a substantial impact. I have almost
finished editing a book that came out of one
of the many Darwin conferences in 2009:
Bell, M. A., D. J. Futuyma, W. F. Eanes, and
J. S. Levinton. 2010. Evolution Since Darwin:
The First 150 Years. Sinauer, Sunderland. It
will be published in July [2010]. Although I
don't have a chapter in the book, Everett
Olson's work is still cited in more than one
chapter. His work continues to have an
impact.” Dr. Bell will be the speaker at the
14th Annual Biology Research Symposium
on May 11, 2011, at the UCLA Faculty
Center. The symposium will run, from 1:00
till 4:00 PM, with Dr. Bell’s talk from 4:00 to
5:15 PM. (See Alumni Events above to
RSVP.)
Vinay Keshav Pathak ’79 received a PhD
at UC Davis in 1988 and is the Head of the
Viral Mutation Section of the HIV Drug
Resistance Program at the National Cancer
Institute. In 1991, Dr. Pathak became an
Assistant Professor in the Department of
Biochemistry and the Mary Babb Randolph
Cancer Center at West Virginia University.
He was promoted to Associate Professor
with tenure in 1998. He joined the National
Cancer Institute in 1999 as Senior
Investigator and Head of the Viral Mutation
Section in the HIV Drug Resistance Program.
Dr. Pathak was appointed as Guest Editor
for the HIV Drug Resistance special issue of
Viruses, published in October 2009. He is
also an Adjunct Professor at West Virginia
University.
15
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Ronald H. Matson
Vinay Keshav Pathak
Michael A. Bell
Mark Leffert

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Ronald Sederoff
Jackie Tobian-Steinmann
Laurel Woodley
Paul I. Terasaki
1960s
Mark Leffert ’65 MD, is a psychiatrist and
sculptor in Santa Barbara, California. He
writes: “I am also a psychoanalyst and write
on postmodernism, neuroscience, and
complexity theory. I had a book published in
March by Routledge, Contemporary
P s y c h o a n a l y t i c F o u n d a t i o n s :
P o s t m o d e r n i s m , C o m p l e x i t y, a n d
Neuroscience. A second book, The
Therapeutic Situation in the 21st Century will
be forthcoming in 2012 or 2013.”
Ronald Sederoff ’61 writes: “I graduated
from the Department of Zoology in 1961,
1963, and 1967 with BA, MA, and PhD
Degrees. I was a student of Elof Carlson and
the first recipient of the A. Mandel
Schechtman Teaching Assistant Award. I
am currently a named Professor at NC State
University in Raleigh, NC where I have been
since 1978. I work in genomics of forest
trees. Current projects are using genomics
to help restore the American chestnut, and a
systems biology approach to lignin
biosynthesis. In 1995 I was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences.”
Laurel Woodley ’65, ’67 MA, is a retired
biology professor from Los Angeles Harbor
College and a trustee of the South Coast
Botanical Garden. The Southern California
Horticultural Society named her its 2009
Horticulturist of the Year, and the South
Coast Botanic Garden Foundation named
her the Volunteer of the Year in September,
2009. From the Society’s website: “When
some were told that Laurel Woodley was
being honored as the SCHS 2009
Horticulturist of the Year, they were
surprised, believing she had won the title
long ago. Laurel has had a lifelong,
passionate relationship with plants, having
been introduced by her parents who
operated H.F. Woodley Nursery. As a
student of Zoology and Botany at UCLA, she
had the fortunate opportunity to travel on
worldwide field trips with Mildred Mathias. A
popular biology professor at the community
college level, she retired in 2004. Laurel is a
natural and gifted teacher, and has never
stopped sharing her knowledge and
inspiring plant people through lectures,
website postings and more.” Since
September of 2009, she has been the
President of the Cactus & Succulent Society
of America.
16
1950s
Jackie Tobian-Steinmann ’52 coached
the UCLA women's golf team for 22 years
(1977-99). Her teams won five conference
titles and a national championship in 1991
after a runner-up finish in 1990. UCLA
finished in the Top 10 nationally 12 times,
won 43 tournaments and qualified for the
NCAA Championship 14 straight seasons
(1984-97), a school record. She has been
called “one of the original pioneers of
women’s collegiate golf,” and is honored in
theUCLA Hall of Fame and also the National
Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Paul I. Terasaki ’56 PhD (Schechtman), a
celebrated UCLA faculty member and
pioneer in organ transplant medicine, has
made a $50 million gift to the University. The
historic gift will support research in the newly
named Terasaki Life Sciences Building, a
state-of-the-art facility designed to enhance
interaction among scientists and speed the
translation of discoveries into practical
applications. Dr. Terasaki is quoted in UCLA
Today: “"Most advances in medicine are
rooted in the life sciences. . . . That
background opened the door to my research
and proved vital to my medical discoveries."

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