Grand Challenges

How California can boost biofuel production to cut pollution and help the economy

Ethan Elkind (UCLA School of Law and UC Berkeley School of Law) co-authored a recently-released report indicating that California has not taken full advantage of opportunities to increase its in-state production of biofuel despite state policies that encourage biofuel consumption.

UCLA nanoscientists develop safer, faster way to remove pollutants from water

UCLA’s Leonard Rome, Meng Wang, Danny Abad, Valerie Kickhoefer and Shaily Mahendra discovered that nanoscale “vaults” containing enzymes were effective at cleaning polluted water.

Tunde Akinloye/ CNSI

A team of researchers from the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA including Shaily Mahendra (UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) has found a new way to use enzymes to remove multiple pollutants from water at once, and minimizes risks to public health and the environment. This technique may be useful to get Los Angeles to 100% water self-sufficiency.

UCLA scientists receive prestigious BRAIN Initiative grant from NIH

The microscopes will visualize individual neurons expressing calcium-triggered fluorophores, which light up when specific wavelengths of light are shined on them.

Daniel Aharoni/UCLA Health

Research led by Dr. Peyman Golshani, (David Geffen School of Medicine) was awarded $2.3 million from the BRAIN Initiative to study how neural circuits in brains process, encode and retrieve information.

UCLA Grand Challenge aims to tackle depression on global scale

UCLA researchers launched a 35-year project Wednesday that aims to decrease the global economic and health impact of depression by 50 percent by 2050. The Depression Grand Challenge initiative will be the largest UCLA research initiative thus far, with an anticipated budget of $525 million for the first 10 years, according to the statement released.