Tianyang Wang is currently doing his ESE internship in California Air Resources Board in Sacramento. His research interest is primarily in the field of air pollution, emission mitigation technologies and regulations. He is currently working on the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008 (SB 375) to regulate and reduce GHG emissions from transportation. Before joining CARB, Tianyang works with Dr. Yifang Zhu on air pollution research projects, including ambient air pollution modeling, vehicle emission testing, and emission control technologies.
Kazue Chinen
Erica Alvarado
Franck Courchamp
Yali Si
Shaily Mahendra
My research interests lie in the area of microbial interactions with chemical contaminants and nanoparticles for applications ranging from ecotoxicology to biodegradation to disinfection. Bacteria and fungi serve as useful indicators of potential toxicity to higher organisms and ecosystem health, but they can also detoxify a variety of environmental pollutants. Conversely, antimicrobial materials can be used for disinfection applications. My laboratory pursues research projects employing microbiological, molecular biological, and isotopic tools to (a) characterize microbial communities in engineered and natural environments, (b) optimize biological processes to improve the performance of wastewater treatment or bioremediation systems, (c) explore production of biofuels from industrial wastewater, and (d) investigate mechanisms of transformation, toxicity, and trophic transfer of nanoparticles. Thus, a comprehensive study of the implications and applications of the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions will enable us to use their benefits without environmental and public health liabilities.
William Zou
William Zou joined the IoES staff in 2019 as a Staff Research Associate. He assists the Alan Barreca, an associate professor at the Institute with his project on the household economic impact of extreme heat.
William graduated UCLA in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and a minor in environmental engineering. As a student, William did research for a project on Urban Water Conservation, emergency response evaluations at the Fielding School of Public Health, and worked as an editor and writer at the Daily Bruin.
In his free time William enjoys knitting, leading unofficial tours through the tunnels of UCLA and cooking.
Sam Swartz
Sam Swartz graduated from UCLA in the spring of 2017 with a BA in World Arts and Cultures and a minor in Environmental Science. He is incredibly intrigued with the idea that art can make a huge public impact with regards to environmental issues, especially matters such as climate change and pollution. Collaborating with LENS has been a massively enlightening and productive experience, and he looks forward to contributing to more projects in the future.
Rebecca Ash
Rebecca Ash is a senior in UCLA IoES’s Environmental Science program. Throughout her time at UCLA, she has taken classes in policy, sustainability, and chemical and physical sciences. In the fall, she will travel to Costa Rica to finish up her degree, taking classes and doing research related to her concentration in conservation biology.
Rebecca is originally from the San Francisco Bay area and enjoys camping, hiking, and spending time with friends and family in her free time.
Jessica Schwartz
Jessica Schwartz approaches musical representations and sonic histories of militarization and imperial violence, affective alliances, and creative dissent through historical, ethnographic, and theoretical methods. Her work dialogs with American studies, Pacific studies, environmental anthropology, and indigenous studies, and she has begun to collaborate on projects relating to musical activism, artistic expression, and climate change in the Pacific. Other research interests include issues of musical transcription and analysis, critical pedagogies, race, class, and gender in respect to popular music from the postwar onwards and subcultural genres, such as punk and hip-hop. In 2013, Prof. Schwartz co-founded and continues to serve as Cultural Programs Advisor to the Marshallese Educational Initiative, Inc., a not-for-profit organization based in Arkansas that raises cultural awareness of and promotes educational opportunities for the Marshallese population. An active guitarist, she composes and performs experimental noise-based and punk music.