Research Interests
The Jacobs lab takes a synthetic approach to reconstructing evolutionary history. Studies combine information from the fossil record, or large-scale physical process, with molecular approaches.
Our recent studies of molecular rates assess why molecular and fossil data appear to be in conflict about the timing of the Cambrian radiation. Other studies in the lab use molecular aspects of development to address issues of the origin of skeletons, a critical issue in the Cambrian radiation, and we are recovering and studying the expression of sense-organ development genes in basal animals such as jellyfish and sponges to better understand the evolution of our senses – a critical issue in the evolution of our animal nature.
Other work in the lab examines how global-scale changes in physical process control the evolution of biodiversity. For example, in a recent synthesis we combine molecular phylogenies and fossil data to document that the diverse marine fauna of the California coast is not a product of present conditions, but a relict of a spike in upwelling and productivity that lasted from 12 to 5 million years ago. Other projects in this area involve the evolution of the deep-sea and hot-vent faunas and detailed work on speciation process, and the discovery of cryptic species only resolvable by molecular means, in the estuaries of California and the Gulf of California.
Jacobs Lab at UCLA
Sanford M. Jacoby is the Howard Noble Professor in UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. He also holds appointments in UCLA’s Department of History and its Department of Public Policy. His research uses comparative and historical methods to analyze employers, labor market institutions, and the political economy of labor and corporate governance.
Jacoby’s first book was Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions, and the Transformation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1985, 2004), which won the George Terry Book Award from the Academy of Management. In 1997 he published Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal, which received the Philip Taft Labor History Award. His most recent book is The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States (2005), the Japanese translation of which was judged by Nikkei Shinbun to be one of the top three books on economics and management published in 2005. He edited two collections: Masters to Managers: Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Employers (1991) and The Workers of Nations: Industrial Relations in a Global Economy (1995).
His research also has appeared in leading journals in several fields, including economics, history, industrial relations, and law. He is co-editor of Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal and serves on the editorial boards of eleven scholarly journals in the United States and abroad. In recent years Jacoby has been a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Manchester.
Jacoby’s Guggenheim project studies the reaction of labor movements to financialization in several industrialized nations. It focuses on pension fund activism, regulatory efforts, and corporate governance. Preliminary research was supported by UCLA, Doshisha University, and Waseda University’s Institute for Advanced Study.
Dr. Michael Jerrett is an internationally recognized expert in Geographic Information Science for Exposure Assessment and Spatial Epidemiology. He is professor at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA. Dr. Jerrett earned his PhD in Geography from the University of Toronto (Canada). For the past 15 years, Dr. Jerrett has researched how to characterize population exposures to air pollution and built environmental variables, how to understand the social distribution of these exposures among different groups (e.g., poor vs. wealthy), and how to assess the health effects from environmental exposures. Over the decade, Dr. Jerrett has also studied the contribution of the built and natural environment to physical activity, behavior and obesity. In 2009, the United States National Academy of Science appointed Dr. Jerrett to the Committee on “Future of Human and Environmental Exposure Science in the 21st Century.” The committee recently concluded its task with the publication of a report entitled “Exposure Science in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy.” In 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency appointed Dr. Jerrett to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Sub-Committee for Nitrogen Oxides. In 2014, Dr. Jerrett was named to the Thomson Reuters List of Highly Cited Researchers, indicating he is in the top 1% of all authors in the fields of Environment/Ecology in terms of citation by other researchers.
Education:
PhD, Geography, University of Toronto, 1996
MA, Political Sciences/ Environmental Studies, University of Toronto, 1988
BS, Environmental Science, Trent University, 1986
Areas of Interest:
Air pollution exposures and health effects
Built Environment
Physical Activity
Climate Change
Research Interests
My research interests center around a range of issues relating to modernity and the arts in West and Central Africa. Currently, my research is focused on the role of museums in Africa and the way that Fondoms in Cameroon have approached the re-contextualization of traditional arts in the museum space. Key elements that also play a role in my research are the topics of post-colonial heritage construction, the contemporary use of traditional arts, and the impact of international development projects on the arts. My other research interests include medieval architecture and arts in Ethiopia, female performance and masking in West and Central Africa, and museology and the display of African art in the United States and Europe.
