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The UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) is a research partnership of UCLA, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Its mission is to bring biomedical innovations to bear on the greatest health needs of Los Angeles—one of the most ethnically and economically diverse counties in the United States. Our vision is to catalyze research that translates discoveries into tangible improvements in health care, disease prevention and health in our community. The UCLA CTSI is one of more than 50 research hubs supported by the Clinical and Translational Sciences Award (CTSA) program of National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). NCATS—one of 27 Institutes and Centers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—was established to transform the translational process so that new treatments and cures for disease can be delivered to patients faster.
Last updated April 4, 2023
Cedars is a full-service, acute tertiary care hospital and the largest nonprofit hospital in the western United States. Cedars is located on a 24-acre site, which includes a 1.6 million square feet main complex and 12 other structures, for a total of more than 4.1 million square feet. This tertiary care facility contains over 886 beds for Internal Medicine, Obstetrics, Gynecology, Pediatrics and Surgery; a 133-bed community surgical hospital; a 138-bed rehabilitation center as part of a partnership with UCLA Health and Select Medical; a Skilled Nursing Acute Rehabilitation Unit; and the 150-bed Saperstein Critical Care Tower. Cedars is a major teaching facility of the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. Most of the full-time Cedars faculty are also faculty at UCLA and are active in the governance and committee structure of UCLA Academic Senate (graduate and undergraduate schools alike). Biomedical research is an integral function of Cedars commitment to developing excellent patient care. Translational and clinical research at Cedars falls under the purview and oversight of the Burns and Allen Research Institute, ranked as 9th in non-university biomedical research institutions in the nation in terms of funding from the National Institutes of Health. It includes over 270,000 square feet of laboratory and laboratory support space, including the seven-story, 216,000 square foot Barbara and Marvin Davis Research Building adjacent to the main hospital. The Advanced Health Sciences Pavilion also adds 400,000 square feet to existing wet lab space. Specialized core facilities are shared resources servicing the entire Medical Center’s research community.
Cedars serves the diverse Los Angeles community with over 4,500 physicians and nurses across every clinical specialty, along with almost 2000 research projects in motion and thousands of other healthcare professionals, staff and volunteers. In FY20-21, Cedars cared for more outpatients and inpatients than ever before, with 1,664,099 outpatient visits, occurring at over 250 primary and specialty care locations throughout Los Angeles County, and had 49,299 admissions, 111,038 emergency visits for a total of 291,114 patient days within the Cedars medical network. Greater geographic expansion in southern California including Marina del Rey Hospital, affiliate Torrance Memorial Medical Center and Huntington Health, and partner Providence St. Joseph Health has created new opportunities for the coordination of care and shared expertise that benefits patients.
Last updated April 4, 2023
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science (CDU) is a private, nonprofit, community-founded, student-centered University committed to cultivating diverse health professions leaders who are dedicated to social justice and health equity for underserved populations through outstanding education, clinical service and community engagement. CDU is also a leader in health disparities research with a focus on education, training, treatment and care in cancer, diabetes, cardiometabolic and HIV/AIDS. Since the school was incorporated in 1966 out of the ashes of the Watts Riots, it has been serving South Los Angeles and beyond by working to eliminate health disparities and providing unique, quality education and training opportunities. CDU has earned a designation as a minority-serving institution by the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, and is recognized by the Department of Education under Title III B as a Historically Black Graduate Institution. The University is also a charter member of the Hispanic-Serving Health Professions Schools. CDU has graduated more than 600 physicians, over 1,270 physician assistants and over 1,700 other health professionals, as well as training over 2,700 physician specialists through its sponsored residency programs. Its School of Nursing has graduated over 1,400 nursing professionals, including more than 1,000 family nurse practitioners. CDU is located within the Watts/Willowbrook area of Los Angeles County—one of the most ethnically diverse and socio-economically deprived regions of the country. Over 80 percent of students and 71 percent of faculty are from communities of color. CDU is the second most diverse four-year private nonprofit college in the nation, according to August 2017 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education. More than 85 percent of CDU College of Medicine students report that they intend to practice and provide much-needed care in underserved communities following graduation.
Last updated April 4, 2023
The Lundquist Institute is the largest independent, not-for-profit biomedical research institute in Los Angeles County. The Lundquist Institute has an international reputation for scientific discovery, the training of physician-scientists, and the provision of community service programs. Affiliated with both the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, the Lundquist Institute has an annual budget of over $90M. The Institute traces its roots back to 1952, when researchers and physicians of what was then known as Harbor General Hospital conducted a handful of research studies. The Institute has over 120 principal investigators and 400 researchers in total - MDs, MD/PhDs, and PhDs - currently working on 600 research studies in areas encompassing emerging infections, cancer, women’s health, male reproductive health, pulmonary rehabilitation, neonatology, autoimmune diseases, cardiology, neurosurgery, health services and outcomes as well as genomics/personalized medicine. These researchers are supported by 150 grants from federal sources. Lundquist faculty annually submit 200 patents and 15 new filings and publish over 500 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious medical and scientific journals. The Lundquist Institute also plays an active role in promoting the health and well-being of nearby communities through the provision of more than 60 community service programs that meet a variety of important social and medical needs. The 150+ entrepreneurial physician-scientists at Harbor have made major contributions to the advancement of medicine, discoveries that have been translated, through Harbor’s technology transfer program, into novel paradigms, diagnostics, devices and therapies with global impact.
The Harbor-UCLA Medical Center draws on a catchment area of about 3 million residents, 550,000 of which are below the poverty level including 75% underrepresented minority populations (55% Latino and 20% African American). The hospital is the cornerstone of healthcare services for more than 700,000 residents in the greater South Bay providing high quality healthcare to every patient regardless of ability to pay. It has over 300 full-time faculty members (with academic appointments the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA) and 500 trainees. Harbor is actively involved in teaching 50% of all UCLA medical students.
Last updated April 4, 2023
UCLA is the second-oldest campus of the UC system. It offers over 125 undergraduate majors and nearly 200 graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. With an enrollment of over 32,000 undergraduate and nearly 14,000 graduate students, UCLA has the largest enrollment in the UC system, with nearly 150,000 freshman applications for Fall 2022.
The university is organized into six undergraduate colleges, eight professional schools, and four professional health science schools. 16 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as faculty, researchers, or alumni, 11 UCLA faculty and alumni are National Medal of Science winners, and three professors have won Pulitzer Prizes for general non-fiction or history. Among the current faculty, 55 are members of the National Academy of Science; 29 are members of the National Academy of Engineering; 42, the National Academy of Medicine; and 167, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The 2022-23 U.S. News & World Report ranked UCLA 1st among public universities and 20th overall among national universities. UCLA ranked 14th in U.S. News & World Report Global Ranking and 20th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2022). UCLA ranked 7th among all universities for research expenditures in the sciences and engineering during FY20 according to a report by the National Science Foundation. In FY22, UCLA ranked 10th in NIH funding, with 888 awards totaling over $593M. In 2021, UCLA’s total research awards exceeded more than $1 billion, receiving $1.6 billion from federal agencies, industry-sponsored awards, nonprofit and charitable organizations, state government, and institutions of higher education.
In the 2022-23 edition of the U.S. News & World Report, UCLA Medical Center was ranked No. 5 on the Best Hospitals Honor Roll, with now 33 consecutive years on the Honor Roll. Additionally, its hospitals in Westwood and Santa Monica were ranked No. 2 in Los Angeles and No. 2 in California. In the 2023-24 US News report, UCLA Medical Center was also ranked as #10 best medical school in primary care and #19 best medical school in research. UCLA received the following rankings in specialty care: pediatrics (#6); internal medicine (#7); psychiatry (#8); anesthesiology (#9); family medicine (#9); obstetrics and gynecology (#10); radiology (#10); and surgery (#12). It also ranked #13 in the assessment’s diversity index, a measure of the relative ethnic diversity of school enrollment.
Last updated May 16, 2023
Cedars-Sinai Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) is housed in the Winnick Family Clinical Research Center located in the Steven Spielberg Building of the Medical Center. This outpatient facility is located next to wheelchair access parking and directly across from the hospital’s emergency room, which is the dispatch point for the medical center’s Code Blue Team. The CTRC physical space includes five exam rooms, a Sample Processing Lab (SPL), a DXA imaging procedure room, administrative offices, and a reception area. Also located nearby are offices for a bionutritionist and clinical research coordinators. The CTRC Sample Processing Lab is equipped with a centrifuge, -20° and -80° freezers, a refrigerator, ice machine, and a portable liquid nitrogen storage container. This equipment allows for short term storage of biological fluids, tissues, and cells prior to their triage to investigators’ laboratories or other specialized laboratories. Other equipment provided in the CTRC enable various procedures to be performed in a research setting and include a GE iDXA imaging machine for studies requiring assessment of body composition and/or bone density, an Indirect Calorimeter to measure resting energy expenditure, oxygen uptake and CO2 production, a VMAX respiratory analysis system to perform lung function and metabolic analyses, a 12 lead EKG, and other basic clinical equipment to measure basic vital information.
The CTRC program is administered by a Program Director along with an Associate Program Director, and day to day unit operations are supervised by the Administrator and Nurse Supervisor. CTRC staff includes 5 Research Nurses, a Bionutritionist, a Biostatistician, a Research Subject Advocate, Clinical Research Coordinators, and management support staff.
The Cedars-Sinai CTRC is designed to serve the needs of clinical research in a variety of settings, both inpatient and outpatient. A unique feature is its mobility, allowing support of research activity in the field. Such “field” services include providing nursing support in CSMC clinics, surgical units or inpatient units, and assisting with data or specimen collection from patients and their family members. The CTRC also has a Research Subject Advocate who oversees research and data safety issues in close collaboration with the clinical investigators who utilize the CRC. The CTRC research biostatistician is available to assist with study design development, creation of databases, and data analysis. In addition, the CTRC has recently implemented a new program providing Clinical Research Coordinator services to CSMC investigators to perform regulatory, study activation, recruitment, and study close out activities.
Last updated April 4, 2023
The CDU Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) is a 5,000 square foot outpatient and administrative unit with seven exam/treatment rooms, a processing laboratory, and a dedicated consultation space for study participant interviews. It provides cardiovascular and metabolic assessment resources, a site dedicated pharmacist, negotiated lab fees for assays, and participant transportation. The site also offers Wi-Fi and a conference room capable of state-of-the-art collaborative meetings for community partners and collaborators. In addition to the CTRC unit, the University offers additional conference room spaces and houses dedicated Cancer Research and Core Laboratories.
Last updated April 4, 2023
The Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) at Lundquist/Harbor-UCLA provides support and resources for studies on human research participants. The CTRC is a high-functioning collaborative research environment enabled with state-of-the-art video conferencing to facilitate participation of remote participants across the proposed project. All protocols requesting use of CTSI resources are independently reviewed for scientific merit, research participant safety, valid justification for resource utilization by the CTSI Scientific Advisory Committee at Harbor, the Human Subjects Committee or the Institution Animal Use and Care Committee as appropriate, and the Research Committee. Research nursing within the Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) integrates high-quality patient care, patient-oriented research, and education. CTRC nurses support protocol implementation and the research subject’s participation in clinical trials. The CTSI also provides consultation and support in biostatistics, study design, data management, and biomedical informatics, and supports community engagement and research. In addition, the UCLA CTSI supports a large number of Translational Research Cores. The nurses provide skillful nursing care, as well as expertise in protocol implementation and data collection. Nurses are all certified in the conduct of clinical trials, good clinical practice, the protection of human subjects, and HIPAA regulations to assure compliance with regulatory requirements. They are also trained to ensure research participants are fully informed about the details of their research protocol visits, protection of private medical health information, and the Research Subject’s Bill of Rights.
Last updated April 4, 2023
The UCLA-Westwood Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) supports and supervises human studies and clinical trials in all therapeutic areas and within all age groups, including Phase I studies, first-in-human clinical trials, and gene, stem cell, and regenerative medicine therapeutics. The UCLA CTRC includes 8 private rooms with beds, 3 private procedure suites, and 1 infusion room with 4 infusion chairs. There is also a space for research subject interviews, a phlebotomy area, a playroom for pediatric patients, and a research kitchen. The CTRC is staffed with 8 full time RNs CITI-trained in clinical research and also certified in BLS, ACLS, PALS, and chemotherapy administration. The CTRC also has 2 nurse practitioners available to assist study teams with obtaining informed consent, clinical evaluations, or protocol-derived procedures. Other staff include two medical assistants, a research dietician, and an administrative support staff to assist with budgets, billing, and coordination of appointments. Both RNs and MAs are capable of providing mobile services to all inpatient areas, outpatient areas, and portions of upper campus. The CTRC is open Monday – Friday from 7 am to 7 pm, with after hours and weekends available by prior arrangement. Services offered within the CTRC include a state-of-the-art bio-nutrition core, including an experienced bio-nutritionist, specialized menu preparations, analysis of nutrition data, and anthropometry. The CTRC also services UCLA Santa Monica Hospital and other outpatient ambulatory sites. CTRC is also considered a core facility by the UCLA Institutional Biosafety Committee and is approved to administer human gene therapy products. Other equipment and services include a portable ultrasound, standard 12-lead ECG, and an Olympus High Definition Narrow Band Imaging System, that allow us to perform procedures such as colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, and bronchoscopy for adult studies. CTRC projects include CTRC WithOut Walls (CTRC-WOW), a mobile health unit to increase special population engagement as well as quality and efficiency of clinical trials and the Phase One Developmental Therapeutics and Cellular Gene Therapies Unit (CTRC POD-CGT). Additionally, COVID-19 isolation PODs – a fully-contained sub-unit used for COVID-19 positive research participant encounters – are now available.
Last updated April 4, 2023
Having successfully established the infrastructure and governance for cohort discovery spanning multiple regional partners, and ways to provision research data, the Biomedical Informatics Program (BIP) looks to the next logical step: helping people use contemporary computational methods on data to improve healthcare. Tackling this challenge requires us to engage the continuum of stakeholders (researchers, clinicians, policy makers), educating as well as offering new services enabling agile, data-driven approaches to be tested and rolled out.
The program’s aims are to enhance researchers’ access to high-quality patient data, to facilitate reproducible data-driven science via the creation of a FAIR results repository, and to translate data science and artificial intelligence methods into practice.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design Program provides integrated services and biostatistical support. Services include contemporary data analysis methodology consultation, implementation, and epidemiology expertise; the best available clinical data management software; study design assistance; biostatistical education and training; and bioinformatics/computational biology data analysis. BERD faculty and staff statisticians have broad expertise in epidemiology, clinical trials, big data analytics, community studies, and high-throughput molecular data/genomics.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Community Engagement and Research Program (CERP) partners with community members, organizations, service providers, policymakers, academia, government, local health systems, and researchers to identify and research public health priorities towards the goal of improving health equity in Los Angeles County. CERP develops, implements, and refines models of community engagement and community capacity building, and facilitates research collaborations between academics and community partners. Activities include designing and developing new models of engagement with public and private health systems; advancing the use of local health and social data by community stakeholders, and expanding patient and community participation in a broad range of scholarly activities and studying the impact of this enhanced participation on translational research. CERP also advances training and development opportunities, engages in capacity building, and focuses on impactful outcomes to achieve social change.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Integrating Special Populations Program (ISP) focuses on three special groups: children, older adults, and groups affected by health disparities. We prioritize these groups because of their poor health status in Los Angeles and nationally, the implications of their health for society including costs of care, and the emerging science of how life develops over the life course. The program will work to catalyze and strengthen research in special populations in three ways: (1) by attempting to increase the number of investigators studying special populations; (2) by offering advice on study design and intense mentoring to improve the quality of research; and (3) through thoughtful recruitment/retention activities.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Network Capacity (NC) component of the UCLA CTSI provides the infrastructure for participation in national collaborations while contributing to the transformation of the conduct of multisite clinical trials. We are participating in the Trial Innovation Network (TIN), the Trial Innovation Centers (TICs) and the Recruitment Innovation Center (RIC). We match investigator expertise with trial opportunities and refer hub researchers to TIN network services and consultations. Our team guides proposal submission through the TIN website. We participate in NIH initiatives to improve both study activation and enrollment.
Partnerships and notable achievements include: (1) harmonizing network institutional review board (IRB) reviews (e.g., with Vanderbilt University, University of Utah, and Johns Hopkins University), (2) piloting of the NIH Single IRB Policy at our hub and (3) collaborating with the Streamlined, Multisite, Accelerated Resources for Trials (SMART) to implement SMART IRB authorization agreements. We are supporting the transformation of local hub infrastructure to promote efficiency. We adopted the Federal Demonstration Partnership Clinical Trials Subaward Agreement (FDP-CTA), the standard agreement system for network trial and study contracting. The collective impact of our participation in these national programs is transformative.
Our overall goal is to build on our infrastructure and to strengthen our collaborations with the TIN and the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H). Together with other CTSAs, we will continue to engage with new data sharing networks such as the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C).
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Participant and Clinical Interactions (PCI) Program plays a critical role in assuring that clinical research at the UCLA CTSI partner institutions—Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and UCLA—is performed safely, efficiently and reliably. The PCI offers a research-friendly environment that provides investigators and research staff with the training and support required to design and successfully complete studies capable of testing well-conceived research hypotheses. PCI certifies the competency and credentialing of research teams, holds rigorous scientific peer reviews and measures and share elements of a study’s successes and failures.
The PCI program also mentors and oversees role-based clinical education and assists in collecting data analytics in order to assess research staff performance. PCI maintains an equitable service voucher system and pilot initiatives to streamline, speed and avoid common research roadblocks.
As part of PCI, the Clinical and Translational Research Centers (CTRCs) support and supervise human studies and clinical trials conducted at each partner institution. CTRCs also assist with training junior investigators in the conduct of translational clinical research. Additional CTRC resources and services include: private beds, procedure suites, infusion room and bay, rooms equipped for sleep studies, a spinal cord injury center, interview rooms, inpatient unit, bionutrition services, and skilled RN and medical assistant staff.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Pilot Translational and Clinical Studies Program provides seed funding for collaborative research, team-building activities and development of novel technologies and approaches. The program administers the following competitive mechanisms: Team Science Awards (up to $200,000) to enable multidisciplinary teams to develop preliminary data for extramural funding for high-impact translational research; Catalyst Grants (up to $5,000) to support team-building activities, including seminars; symposia; meetings related to a specific disease or scientific problem to stimulate team formation; Core Vouchers (up to $10,000 in institutional funds) defray the cost of core services at the CTSI partner sites for feasible, translational and unique research addressing health problems.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Population Health program equips health agencies with the skills that they need to introduce and sustain the practice and application of critical translational science methods. The program focuses on preparing researchers and health agencies to: apply dissemination, implementation and improvement (DII) research methods to the development, scale-up and spread of multi-component, multi-level population health interventions; apply innovative modeling techniques and use large datasets for population health research and improvement; and apply DII sciences to address real-world population health problems.
The Precision Health Program develops the necessary processes and infrastructure to bring genomic information into the clinical realm. It mobilizes and integrates genomic data with clinical data for translational research that involves genetics, genomics, patient phenotypes, and biomaterials.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Regulatory Knowledge and Support (RKS) Program ensures that research is in full regulatory compliance and meets the highest quality assurance standards. It offers ethics and regulatory compliance guidance and consultation.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Team Science Program augments the translational mission by continuing to develop new theoretical and evidence-based tools to improve, assess, and evaluate the capacity of interdisciplinary and translational science teams to effectively combine team members’ diverse expertise. The program specifically conducts research to understand the characteristics of high-performing teams. The impact of differences among team members in experience, background, culture, and disciplines are being studied. Program leaders adapt their training for academic community teams to provide novel training in communication and collaboration. To facilitate multidisciplinary collaboration, the UCLA CTSI has redesigned the Pilot Translational & Clinical Studies Program to exclusively support team science.
Last updated April 5, 2023
The Workforce Development Program houses most of our education and training activities. It ensures CTSI trainees acquire the core competencies needed to conduct multidisciplinary research and to integrate community priorities and input into research across the T1 to T4 spectrum.
The Program emphasizes three key areas:
The program offers the CTSI Training Program in Translational Science (TPTS) to scientists and trainees at all CTSI partner institutions and from multiple professional schools (Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Public Health, Education and Informational Science, Public Policy). TPTS provides several training options: a two-year Translational Science Certificate program; a two-year Master of Science in Clinical Research program focused on research and clinical trials; and a two-year Master of Science in Clinical Research program with a research and biomedical informatics emphasis.
The Workforce Development Program integrates with the CTSI KL2 training program for junior faculty and the TL1 training programs for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral and health professional students. This is accomplished through externships in industry, government and the not-for-profit health sectors as well as lectures and coursework offered by the Training Program in Translational Science, Health Policy & Management, Bioinformatics, and the National Clinician Scholars Program.
The Workforce Development Program interacts closely with the CTSI Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design (BERD) Program, the CTSI Integrating Special Populations Program, the CTSI Informatics Program, the CTSI Population Health Program, the CTSI Team Science Program, and the CTSI Community Engagement and Research Program, each of which offer separate education and training activities.
Last updated April 5, 2023
BUILD awards consist of linked grants issued to undergraduate institutions to implement and study innovative approaches to engaging and retaining students from diverse backgrounds in biomedical research, potentially helping them on the pathway to become future contributors to the NIH-funded research enterprise. BUILD awards differ from other NIH-funded training grants in that they aim to achieve simultaneous impact at the student, faculty and institutional levels. Through implementing a variety of innovative approaches to research skill building and training, mentorship and institutional change, the BUILD-funded institutions address various challenges faced by students, faculty and institutions. In addition, by disseminating effective interventions and strategies to diversify biomedical research, BUILD institutions contribute to broader transformational impact at an institutional level.
In FY 2014, 10 5-year BUILD awards were issued to undergraduate institutions across the country. Eligibility for BUILD primary institutions included having fewer than $7.5 million in total NIH research project grant funding, and a student population with at least 25 percent Pell Grant recipients. BUILD institutions serve a geographically and racially diverse population, and include historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, Asian American/Native American/Pacific Islander-serving institutions, and projects with targeted outreach to special populations. Funded BUILD institutions partner with nearly 100 institutions, both pipeline and research-intensive, to broaden the pool of students participating in biomedical research training and maximize opportunities for faculty/staff development. As part of the Diversity Program Consortium, BUILD is a cooperative agreement, in that NIH project scientists and program officials work with each BUILD institution, and the institutions collaborate with each other on planning and sharing ideas for new, creative ways to address their students’ needs in real time. Each site has a core for administration, institutional development, student training, and research enrichment, which helps ensure programming is targeted to each of the three levels.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI Program) at the University of Miami is a leading provider of research education content. Their web-based training materials serve millions of learners at academic institutions, government agencies, and commercial organizations in the U.S. and around the world. CITI Program's GCP content includes distinct courses tailored to the different types of clinical research. GCP courses are suitable for research teams involved in clinical trials of drugs, biologics, and devices. Training in this is a prerequisite for IRB approval for all clinical research key personnel. CITI provides three courses for the GCP program.
Last updated April 20, 2023
Federal grant proposals (all proposals to NSF, training proposals for NIH) normally include a requirement that all trainees are provided with instruction in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). An RCR program normally covers these areas: ethics, conflict of interest, responsible authorship, policies for handling misconduct, data management, data sharing, and policies regarding the use of human and animal subjects. UCLA utilizes the CITI-hosted Responsible Conduct of Research Course for UCLA.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) require certain categories of researchers to receive RCR training. RCR is increasingly viewed as an essential component of training, regardless of a researcher's source of funding. RCR consists of a basic course, refresher course, communicating research findings course, and facilitator guides. It is suitable for any person involved in research ranging from upper-level undergraduates to established faculty. Particular emphasis is given to the educational needs of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. RCR can provide students or other researchers with foundational knowledge that can enhance the quality of in-person or virtual training. These courses were written and peer-reviewed by experts.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007, Section 801 (FDAAA 801) requires Responsible Parties to register and submit summary results of clinical trials with ClinicalTrials.gov and applies to certain Clinical Trials of drugs (including biological products) and medical devices. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) requires trial registration as a condition of the publication of research results generated by a clinical trial as required by ICMJE. Finally, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) require inclusion of an 8-digit Clinical Trial number from ClinicalTrials.gov on claims associated with Clinical Trial participation. The Office of Regulatory Affairs provides support, for non-cancer studies, to assist and advise Principal Investigators with their obligations.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The CTSI offers confidential consultations in research ethics to all members of research teams, including those at partner institutions. Services can include assistance with: (1) study design—including the recruiting and consenting of vulnerable and international populations; (2) study execution—including ensuring privacy and confidentiality especially with genomic information, and encouraging study completion; (3) study reporting—including data treatment, authorship and conflicts of interest; (4) involvement of communities and culturally distinct populations; (5) disagreements among team members and with collaborators; (6) questionable research integrity; (7) uses of social media and other technologies; and (8) disclosures and other regulatory requirements. Consultations are led by the CTSI Associate Director-Ethics, Dr. Stanley Korenman. His input can facilitate the development of innovative translational science studies. He is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine-Endocrinology and Associate Dean for Ethics at the David Geffen School of Medicine. At UCLA he provides an annual course on "The Responsible Conduct of Research Involving Humans"(M261) that is taken primarily by graduate students, fellows from clinical departments, and junior faculty in the School of Medicine.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The Good Clinical Practices (GCP) Program is an international ethical and scientific quality standard for the design, conduct and record of research involving humans. Comprising 13 core principles, GCP applies to all clinical investigations that could affect the safety and well-being of human participants (in particular, clinical trials of medicinal products). GCP was developed by the regulatory authorities of the EU, Japan and US in a steering group termed the Tripartite International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) and provides international assurance that data and reported results of clinical investigations are credible and accurate and rights, safety and confidentiality of participants in clinical research are respected and protected.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The K Scholars Society, managed by the UCLA CTSI’s KL2 Program, supports the career development of junior investigators building careers in clinical and translational research. This program is designed for scholars within the UCLA CTSI partner institutions who have current career developments awards from the National Institutes of Health (e.g. K01, K08, K23, K99/R00), or equivalent awards from other federal (e.g. DOD, VA) and non-federal (e.g. AHA, ACS, Doris Duke) funding agencies. The program has two-year curriculum activities:
Program resources include professional grant writer consultations, scientific networking and the fostering and nurturing of multidisciplinary collaborations. The K Scholar Society also offers a mentorship curriculum to junior faculty as they begin their mentoring career.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The CTSI Grant Library has over 90 successful award applications that are accessible to all CTSI investigators and designees. Sample application types include: F32, K01, K08, K23, K24, K25, K76, K99/R00, R01, R03, R21, diversity supplements, and U54 applications. The library is available through CTSI’s Team Science System and is an online resource for faculty and trainees at the four UCLA CTSI Institutions. Principal investigators of successfully funded grants have contributed their grant proposals to the CTSI for online sharing. Users request access to the library and use a UCLA Logon ID which can be obtained without a UCLA affiliate. This secure web-based platform allows trainees to view the grant proposals online, but also prevents users from copying, downloading, or sharing the proposals outside of the platform. Thus, principal investigators can provide their successful grant knowing that their proposal will not be disseminated further without their permission. The online grant library is a fully searchable tool and allows users to quickly access different aspects or sections of a grant proposal. The library was initiated in 2015, currently has 91 proposals, and is actively growing. It has 697 active users so far. The successful grants library is an important resource for junior faculty and other trainees in writing their first K or R grant. KL2 Scholars who are successful in obtaining extramural support will be asked to submit their proposals to the successful grants library.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-funded Workforce Program (also called the NIH Diversity Program Consortium) was established in FY 2014 in response to recommendations provided in 2012 by the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Working Group on Diversity in the Biomedical Research Workforce. The working group explored ways to improve the recruitment of individuals from diverse backgrounds underrepresented in biomedical research and prepare them for successful biomedical research careers. (These individuals include persons from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, people with disabilities, and people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The group provided recommendations, endorsed by the ACD, about how to develop and support individuals from diverse backgrounds across the lifespan of a biomedical research career. In response to these recommendations, the NIH established the Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-Funded Workforce program.
This trans-NIH program is funded by the NIH Common Fund and managed by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). The overarching goal of the program is to develop, implement, assess and disseminate innovative and effective approaches to engaging, training and mentoring students; enhancing faculty development; and strengthening institutional research training infrastructure to enhance the participation and persistence of individuals from underrepresented backgrounds in biomedical research careers. The unique aspects of this program include: a focus on three levels of impact: student, faculty and institutional; the integration of social science research and psychosocial interventions into the process of training and mentoring students and faculty; rigorous assessment and evaluation of the training and mentoring interventions implemented across the program. Through the implementation and evaluation of effective approaches to improve training and mentoring across the consortium, this program aims to have a significant impact on the participation and persistence of individuals from diverse backgrounds in the biomedical research pipeline, as well as on transforming the culture and efficacy of biomedical research training and mentoring nationwide. The program, also referred to as the Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), consists of three integrated initiatives: Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD), the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), and the Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC) at UCLA.
Last updated April 20, 2023
Against this genomic breakthrough of whole genome association studies, the demographics in the United States are quickly changing. The older population (age > 65 years) in 2030 is projected to be twice as large as in 2000 representing nearly 20 percent of the total US population. The first baby boomers turn 65 in 2011 and will challenge all facets of health care in the coming decades. The demographic changes underscore the need to understand the mechanisms that promote health and disease in this cohort. Genomic discoveries will help individuals and may reduce medical costs and benefit society. The objective of this study is to obtain blood and/or saliva samples in order to help model health and disease phenotypes through population genomics. The blood and/or saliva samples may allow for participants' entire genomes to be sequenced if such comprehensive analysis becomes feasible and economical.
Last updated April 20, 2023
Sponsor-investigators are responsible for the selection of qualified study monitors and ensuring that trials are adequately monitored throughout the life of the trial. At UCLA, the ORA offers assistance with monitoring and quality assurance auditing for investigator-initiated studies. This service helps ensure compliance with FDA, GCP, and IRB regulations, and UCLA Health System policies and guidance, as related to clinical research. The ORA monitoring program provides a proactive (rather than “for cause”) regulatory assessment and has a strong educational component. Investigators are required to provide monitoring findings to the IRB according to their policies. The ORA auditing program includes routine and for-cause reviews (requested by institutional officials). The purpose of routine reviews is to assist investigators with achieving and maintaining regulatory compliance. The reviews are meant to be educational rather than punitive in nature. The ORA summarizes and reports the findings directly to the investigators and the CTSI DSMB.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The primary objective of the Jackson Heart Study is to investigate the causes of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in African Americans to learn how to best prevent this group of diseases in the future. This population-based longitudinal study is based in Jackson, Mississippi. The JHS is the largest single-site, prospective, epidemiologic investigation of cardiovascular disease among African Americans ever undertaken. It is also the largest study in history to investigate the inherited (genetic) factors that affect high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, diabetes and other important diseases in African Americans. These studies are likely to lead to the development of new treatments that do more good and less harm than treatments that are available today. The JHS is a collaborative effort among three Jackson-area academic institutions University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson State University, and Tougaloo College, and consists of five centers: a Field Center and a Coordinating Center (UMMC); a Community Outreach Center and a Graduate Training and Education Center (JSU); and an Undergraduate Training and Education Center (Tougaloo College). The JHS is supported by contracts from NHLBI and NIMHD.
Last updated April 20, 2023
NRMN is a nationwide consortium of biomedical professionals and institutions collaborating to provide trainees across the biomedical, behavioral, clinical and social sciences with evidence-based mentorship and professional development programming that emphasizes the benefits and challenges of diversity, inclusivity and culture. The goal of the National Research Mentoring Network is to enhance the diversity of the NIH-funded research workforce and is one of the components of the NIH Diversity Program Consortium.
Last updated April 20, 2023
Upon notification of an FDA inspection, the ORA can provide guidance and assistance. The ORA can provide one-on-one inspection/audit preparation guidance, education on how to interact with the FDA, and provides support for responding to the FDA’s findings, if needed. If there is a concern about the study preparedness for a sponsor audit, investigators can contact the ORA to request an audit readiness assessment for both industry and investigator-initiated studies. This program helps ensure compliance with FDA, GCP, and IRB regulations, and UCLA Health System policies and guidance, as related to clinical research. The results of the pre-audit assessment will be provided for investigators and teams.
Last updated April 20, 2023
In response to the critical shortage of minorities in biomedical research and the health professions, the overarching goal of Project STRIDE is to increase the number of underrepresented minority and disadvantaged students in the pipeline who are committed to research careers in the health sciences. In-creasing the nation’s cadre of minority clinicians and researchers is a crucial component to eliminating health disparities, especially given that minority researchers and physicians are more likely to work in minority communities than their nonminority counterparts. STRIDE aims to increase the diversity and quality of the research workforce specifically in regard to the ongoing nationwide effort to better under-stand the complex health-related needs of low-income, medically underserved populations and thereby, ultimately, to reduce disparities in health care accessibility, quality, and outcomes. Project STRIDE will also provide an in-depth health science immersion experience to underrepresented high school students, though all program enrollees will be primarily from King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science, Health Sciences Academy and other high schools in the Watts community of South Los Angeles. The STRIDE education and training experience will encompass exposure to critical methodologies and principles of biomedical and clinical research in disease areas identified by Healthy People 2020 as disproportionately prevalent among underserved minority and low-income communities. This ten-week clinical research program will require the student to work full-time with an assigned mentor on a research project of their interest. Students will write an abstract on the project, create a poster and give a presentation at a Research Day. Participants will receive a stipend for their involvement.
Last updated April 20, 2023
A Regulatory Binder assists sites in achieving and maintaining regulatory compliance and ensuring the highest standards of human subject research. Regulatory binders house all study documentation including, but not limited to, the study protocol, staff CVs, licenses, logs, IRB documents, consent forms, data collection/CRFs, lab documents, sponsor documents, drug/device accountability, FDA documentation, financial disclosure documentation, DSMB information, and more.
FDA IND/IDE Guidance and Support. Support for investigators holding an IND or IDE at all stages of an investigation including:
Last updated April 20, 2023
ResearchGO is a virtual clinical research resource that provides a single portal to a wealth of resources, expertise, and best practices for investigators and research staff to facilitate efficient, compliant and ethical study conduct and management. This collaborative effort across a number of organizations and administrative units was built to leverage existing resources and create new content where readily accessible resources currently don't exist. The website can help investigators design, set up, conduct, and close out a study. The Goals of ResearchGo are to: (1) promote excellence in the quality of clinical research management through information and education; (2) facilitate effective and timely clinical research initiation by improving institutional processes and providing clinical research protocol, regulatory, budget, and financial assistance and tools; (3) increase awareness of clinical trials in the community and with our partners through education and community participant recruitment outreach activities; and (4) interface with institutional/industry partners to support enhanced clinical research best-practice and efficiency.
Last updated April 20, 2023
Established in September 2016, the CTSI Scientific Review Committee (SRC) provides a scientific and feasibility review of non-oncology clinical research to ensure that UCLA clinical research is of the utmost quality. The degree of review required varies based on the type of research, funding, and institutional factors. CTSI SRC review is conducted on those clinical trial protocols that have not already received documented full peer review. The SRC meets on the first and third Wednesdays of every month. Investigators are not required to initiate SRC reviews and there is no application process. All study documentation is collected by the ORA staff and provided to the SRC for review. SRC review occurs in parallel with IRB review.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health is the sponsor for the STEP-UP Program. The program provides an opportunity for high school and undergraduate students to conduct biomedical research for eight (8) to ten (10) weeks in the summer in labs throughout the country. The purpose of the program is to increase the number of ethnic minorities who are involved in biomedical research with an emphasis on the areas of diabetes, digestive and kidney diseases. There is a critical shortage of minorities in biomedical research and the health professions (Hispanic/Latino, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Pacific Islanders, and Alaskan Native Population). As a result, critical insights and perspectives from these groups are lacking in the development, implementation, and evaluation of the growing and important field of biomedical research and health science. The program is a collaborative effort between the NIH and UCLA as well as University of California San Francisco, University of Hawaii and the University of Wisconsin.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The CTSI provides quarterly team science-training workshops, which utilize an experimental team science training and development curricula to promote integrative capacity in science teams working on disease-related problems across traditionally separate scientific disciplines. The training is required for multidisciplinary teams that receive CTSI support as well as KL2 scholars and their mentors. The training focuses on two core competencies: strategic team mapping to learn to better assemble an interdisciplinary team to foster collaboration and communication principles to support cross-boundary knowledge sharing, integration and creation.
Last updated April 20, 2023
CRMS is an enterprise-wide system designed to track patient data for clinical trials and billing purposes. The eResearch system, built by Velos, Inc., has been implemented at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and Translational Oncology Research International (TORI), an affiliated clinical research network. UCLA has deployed the system in non-cancer studies being conducted in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA as well as at Cedars and Harbor in the second quarter of 2016. This allows CTSI affiliates to (i) track clinical studies and study subjects in real time, (ii) facilitate efficient coordination of clinical trials and (iii) allow accurate financial tracking of study procedures and processes.
Last updated April 20, 2023
CTSI's Population Health modeling processes and methods have been utilized with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to predict the demand for an inpatient service surge in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The California Get Out The Vaccine (GOTV) campaign is a UCLA contracted campaign to reduce structural barriers to vaccine registration and facilitate vaccination through on-the-ground community outreach in low-socioeconomic communities with low vaccination rates. Outreach is based upon real-time assessments of these characteristics based upon zip code. It entails a household-by-household outreach canvassing campaign based upon “Get Out the Vote” infrastructure, technology, mapping, engagement, and coordination. To do so, GOTV partnered with community-based organizations to hire, train and deploy about 2000 “Vaccine Navigators.” These Vaccine Navigators have been signing Californians up by canvassing door-to-door, using multiple languages, and other facilitation support such as facilitating transportation. Canvassers have also set up vaccine registration and vaccination facilitation at higher traffic locations (like supermarkets, food banks, etc.) and cooperate with partners (churches, unions, community-based organizations, and elected officials). One key element utilized in this campaign is to maximize the effectiveness of this canvassing program by hiring members of the local community. Based on the team’s experience in numerous canvassing efforts across California, local community members are trusted validators who will get the most positive responses possible. In addition, at a time of economic hardship, this approach ensures that local communities benefit from this considerable expenditure of the state’s resources, and the Vaccine Navigators are paid an hourly wage well above the federal and state minimum.
For more information on the GOTV Campaign, please visit these sites: CTSI Article, CA Governor's webpage, and this YouTube video.
Last updated April 20, 2023
4CE is an international consortium for electronic health record (EHR) data-driven studies of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this effort—led by the i2b2 international academics users’ group—is to inform doctors, epidemiologists, and the public about COVID-19 patients with data acquired through the health care process.
The UCLA CTSI has contributed aggregate data on demographics, comorbidities, and ICU utilization, plus labs by-day after diagnosis, for COVID-positive patients. 4CE is an international collaboration involving 96 hospitals across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Last updated April 20, 2023
To leverage EHRs for COVID-19 research, the national Accrual to Clinical Trials (ACT) network - a federated network of Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs - has implemented an efficient and extensible electronic infrastructure of SHRINE/i2b2 technology to enable clinical and translational research. The ACT network, which links EHR data on >130M patients from 48 CTSA hubs, provides a unique real-time platform for conducting research on COVID-19 at unprecedented national scale.
The UCLA CTSI is among one of the nine CTSA hubs that have formed this sub-network of ACT that will involve COVID-tested patients to enable queries with a COVID-19 ontology (i.e. ICU days, COVID RNA tests). Data is updated at least biweekly. The COVID-19 ACT Network has the potential to benefit a large cohort of patients as the test network expands to all 58 ACT sites in the CTSA consortium.
Last updated April 20, 2023
UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine provides a universal intake process for registering COVID-19 research projects and requesting COVID-19 research funding and resources. This streamlined process helps the recently established COVID-19 Oversight and Governance Committees better monitor systemwide activities and allocate resources to maximize benefits to human health. The Universal Intake three-step process includes registering a project, confirming and saving the registration number and requesting resources. Committees review and prioritize requests, assess projects based on operational feasibility as well as scientific excellence. Please email the COVID-19 DGSOM communications team with suggestions or questions regarding the universal intake process.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The UCLA CTSI serves as the information hub for the UCLA research community and leveraging its existing infrastructure in response to the ongoing need for COVID-19 research. The CTSI formed a task force that established a COVID-19 registry, informed consent for treatment trials, a symptom survey, and banked biospecimens. This centralized response allowed UCLA to have a single, well-managed hub to facilitate COVID-related efforts on campus and at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. The CTSI also supports efforts related to centralized EMR data extraction, symptom surveillance as part of quality improvement efforts as well as supporting testing efforts including detection, validation of commercial tests kits, and overall infrastructure in helping to identify antibodies.
The UCLA CTSI Office of Clinical Research administratively supports UCLA Health’s 11-member COVID-19 Scientific Prioritization and Feasibility Committee (see full description below). OCR has facilitated the start-up of COVID-19 studies in as few as 75 hours.
The CTSI's ResearchGo, administered by OCR, is the clinical research home for UCLA’s COVID-19 research efforts:
Last updated April 20, 2023
The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) is a self-governed resource that is coordinated by NCATS and supported by the Center for Data to Health (CD2H). By leveraging shared resources such as data, analytics expertise, medical insights from clinicians, support and funding from NCATS with coordination by the CD2H, TIN, and CLIC, the N3C allows the CTSA consortium to address the pandemic. N3C provides a: (1) row-level, limited dataset of COVID-19 patients and controls consisting of all available EHR data related to these patients; (2) partnership amongst CTSA hubs and other clinical institutions, clinical data sharing networks with government agencies such as NIH, HHS, FDA, VA, CDC, and other organizations; (3) secure, FedRAMP-compliant analytical environment where tools and algorithms can be rapidly evaluated, allowing clinicians and researchers to address complex clinical questions; and (4) national resource that is complementary and synergistic with individual institutional and consortia activities. In order to determine the most efficient process for collaboration, four initial workstreams have been installed: (1) Data Partnership & Governance, (2) Phenotype & Data Acquisition, (3) Data Ingest & Harmonization, and (4) Collaborative Analytics. These workstreams will be available to all participants and materials openly shared. The goal is to coordinate community input and transparency with rapid development and deployment to address the pandemic.
Last updated April 20, 2023
Pregnant women during flu outbreaks tend to have more severe illness, hospitalizations, miscarriage, or preterm births, and babies born with defects. Little information is currently available on COVID-19 and pregnancy. This nationwide prospective registry assesses the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women and their newborns. Led by UCSF with 150 sites across the country, including UCLA and supported by the UCLA CTSI, this study aims to answer key questions that can help patients during pregnancy. Issues related to health disparities and outcomes will be assessed.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The UCLA COVID-19 Research Governance structure is led by a central Oversight Committee to help facilitate strategic, prioritized allocation of financial resources, biospecimens, PPE, and research facilities. In collaboration with the CTSI, the OCRC helps to organize the COVID-19 research priorities supported by the CTSI and the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM). CTSI leadership are members of this Committee. There are task force committees with broad expertise across specific domains that will report to the OCRC for research related to COVID-19 in order to accelerate problem-solving and decision-making. CTSI faculty are members of the DGSOM-CTSI COVID-19 Clinical Research Task Force, the Biospecimen Use Task Force, the COVID-19 Basic Science Research Task Force, the Heath Data Oversight Committee, and the COVID-19 Scientific Prioritization and Feasibility Committee.
Last updated April 20, 2023
A mobile nurse unit is tasked with delivering COVID-19 study drugs to patients in multiple hospital intensive care units and medical wards. The UCLA Therapeutic Antibody Laboratory (TAL), in partnership with the Molecular Screening Shared Resource (MSSR), has the capability to produce therapeutics-grade antibodies and proteins in a rapid, large-scale manner. These resources are being focused to generate both accurate serology testing as well as therapeutics.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The UCHDW, through UC BRAID, coordinates communication between the UC medical campus CTSAs to facilitate the activation of several COVID-19 treatment trials. It disseminates research guidance developed by each campus to share best practices while establishing a system-wide clinical data warehouse biorepository and convalescent plasma study.
Last updated April 20, 2023
The Western CTSA Education Consortium is a voluntary consortium of Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) Education, Training and Workforce Development Unit Directors and Administrators. The purpose of the consortium is to integrate resources and talent across the CTSA hubs to accelerate the training and mentoring of the next generation of clinical and translational scientists. WCEC's mission is to create an environment that reduces barriers, leverages and combines resources, enables teams, and serves as a model for collaborative training and mentoring consortia. The collaborating CTSA institutions include Scripps Research Institute, University of Southern California, Stanford University, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, Oregon Health and Science University, University of Washington, and University of New Mexico. The Consortium has a common goal of advancing the health of residents of California through our activities and has developed an agenda of shared activities considered to be highly relevant for all of their institutions and also nationally. Activities underway or in development are a webinar on research in diverse populations and education and training related to research in diverse populations.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The CTSI Mentor Training Program is a comprehensive program with both online and in person components designed to train faculty to become the next generation of confident and effective clinical and translational research mentors. Faculty dedicated to clinical and translational research can apply for participation in the CTSI Mentor Training Program (MTP) offered annually. The CTSI MTP has created an integrated environment for senior mentors and mentors-in-training, encouraging creative and innovative networking, discussing a range of mentoring challenges and a myriad of solutions, developing a toolbox of strategies, and using discussions and collective experiences to build a community of mentoring excellence. The six core modules through web-based and face-to-face meetings provide an overview of the core competencies needed by mentors using learning objectives, readings (required and suggested), short lectures, videos of mentors and mentees, and exercises. Seminar topics include: mentorship from the beginning, mentoring models and mentor selection, aligning goals and expectations, communicating effectively with mentees, dealing with mentoring challenges, and mentoring across differences.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The Greater Los Angeles CTSA Consortium was established to leverage our local talents in collaborations that
benefit both our local communities and our approaches to clinical research. The two main activities that are
currently underway are (a) a Community Engagement working group that is developing and evaluating an
intervention with promotoras to increase Latino representation in clinical trials research, and (b) a series
of training opportunities offered by each consortium member for faculty and staff of the other members'
institutions. Our collective goal is to collaborate to develop curricula and online courses that can
ultimately be shared with the national consortia online while supporting collaborative efforts across the
Greater Los Angeles area through onsite, in-person programs and seminars.
Curricula underway or
in development include: UCLA's Biomedical Informatics for Clinicians course and the Therapeutic Discovery
and Development program, UC Irvine's Science of Team Science Boot Camp and Introduction to Systems Biology
for Clinical Translational Scientists course, and USC's Regulatory Science for Clinical Research Boot Camp,
Engaging Diverse Communities in Clinical Research Boot Camp and Regulatory Science Boot Camp.
Last updated April 24, 2023
NCATS’ Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program supports efforts to solve system-wide translational research problems in part by developing and implementing ways to improve the success of U.S. clinical trials. One initiative, CTSA Accrual to Clinical Trials (CTSA ACT), was launched to do just that by developing a nationwide network of sites that share EHR data. It contains over 150 million patient records, and ~90% of the CTSA consortium. Building on existing platforms and operating models to create a “federated” network with common standards, data terminology, and shared resources, CTSA ACT investigators are focused on data harmonization (using the same term for the same type of data) across EHR platforms; technical needs assessment and implementation; regulatory approaches to ensure compliance with protocols for data access and participant contact; and governance development to establish proper agreements among institutions. ACT helps clinical investigators conduct cohort discovery before a trial starts, to establish feasibility of a clinical protocol for grant applications, IRB submission, etc. ACT also helps investigators identify additional sites for a clinical trial. By allowing investigators to thoroughly explore patient cohorts and potential sites before finalizing their clinical protocols, ACT increases the odds of successfully completing clinical trial recruitment. NCATS ACT provides infrastructure for streamlined informatics solutions across the CTSA Consortium.
Last updated April 24, 2023
Child Health Research Acceleration through Multisite Planning (CHAMP) is a UC BRAID initiative designed to support investigator-initiated child health and lifespan research that requires multisite involvement to achieve special population recruitment goals. It is a California-based template for the national network of CTSI-based child health researchers. CHAMP is a catalyst that offers team-building conferences for research teams in critical early phases of project development and is designed as an incubator for multisite, investigator-initiated child health translational research. The CHAMP concept was selected for presentation at the July 2014 CTSA Principal Investigators Meeting. The idea has been vetted by a group of nationally recognized leaders in child health research. Both UC BRAID Child Health and CHAMP are responses to the Institute of Medicine’s 2013 report recognizing the seminal role that the CTSAs and NCATS could play in promoting child health clinical research. UCLA has been an active participant in CHAMP and the pilot program of UC BRAID Child Health can serve as a template for the larger CHAMP network.
Last updated April 24, 2023
Dr. Peter Szilagyi from the UCLA CTSI is a co-leader of the national steering committee of the Lifespan Integration Domain Task Force. The task force focuses on integrating translational science across the entire lifespan to attain improvements in health for all, launching efforts to study special population differences in the progress and treatment of disease processes and developing a seamless integrated approach to translational science across all phases of research
Last updated April 24, 2023
The CTSA Good Clinical Practices (GCP) Program is an international ethical and scientific quality standard for the design, conduct and record of research involving humans. Comprising 13 core principles, GCP applies to all clinical investigations that could affect the safety and well-being of human participants (in particular, clinical trials of medicinal products). GCP was developed by the regulatory authorities of the EU, Japan and US in a steering group termed the Tripartite International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) and provides international assurance that data and reported results of clinical investigations are credible and accurate and rights, safety and confidentiality of participants in clinical research are respected and protected.
Last updated April 24, 2023
SMART IRB, the Streamlined, Multisite, Accelerated Resources for Trials IRB Reliance platform, is designed to ease common challenges associated with initiating multisite research and to provide a roadmap for institutions to implement the NIH Single IRB Review policy. Freely available for institutions and investigators, SMART IRB is an integrated, comprehensive platform that allows flexibility in the size and scope of collaboration to enable IRB reliance for multisite studies across the nation, regardless of funding status. Launched in 2016, SMART IRB is currently funded by the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program, grant number 3UL1TR002541-04S2. The platform serves as a roadmap for institutions to implement The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy on the Use of a Single Institutional Review Board for Multisite Research effective January 2018, though SMART IRB may be used for any study that is eligible for IRB reliance, regardless of funding source or status.
SMART IRB is not an IRB, but a platform that offers a master IRB reliance agreement (the SMART IRB Agreement) and a web-based system (SMART IRB's Online Reliance System) that provides a central process for participating institutions and their investigators to request, track, and document study-specific reliance arrangements. Investigators and their study teams, together with institutional and HRPP/IRB offices, use the SMART IRB platform to initiate single IRB review of a study. Institutions can join the SMART IRB Agreement and manage their institutional profile through the SMART IRB Joinder system. Through smartirb.org, investigators, study team members, and IRB/HRPP administrators and staff can access essential education as well as flexible tools and resources designed to support the adoption and implementation of single IRB review for a range of studies.
In September 2014, NCATS funded a collaborative effort to develop a master IRB reliance agreement and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that could be adopted by institutions across the U.S. This collaborative effort built upon existing regional networks for IRB reliance to develop a master IRB reliance agreement and SOPs suitable for use across the nation. Since 2016, more than 1000 participating institutions have joined the SMART IRB Agreement, a growing network of CTSA hubs and affiliates, universities, academic medical centers, community hospitals, cancer centers, independent IRB organizations, and more. In July 2018, with renewed support and commitment from NCATS, the SMART IRB team accelerated efforts to grow the SMART IRB network, support and train institutional representatives and study teams in the implementation of single IRB review, and promote harmonization across the nation.
Through the years, SMART IRB continued to develop and enhance the technological infrastructure that supports use of the SMART IRB Agreement for single IRB review arrangements. Given the progress made on the Joinder application, Online Reliance System, and SMART IRB website, in May 2021, NCATS made the decision to manage technical updates, development, and maintenance of these tools in-house moving forward, via NCATS Information Technology Resources Branch (ITRB) team. The SMART IRB team retains oversight and day-to-day operations of the SMART IRB Help Desk and website content, in addition to other functions such as the harmonization efforts, the ambassador team, and ongoing education, training, and resource development to support the SMART IRB community and advance collaborative research across the nation.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The Trial Innovation Network is a collaborative initiative within the CTSA Program and is composed of three key partners – the CTSA Program Hubs, the Trial Innovation Centers (TICs), and the Recruitment Innovation Center (RIC). The vision for the Trial Innovation Network is to innovatively address critical roadblocks in clinical research and accelerate the translation of novel interventions into life-saving therapies. The Trial Innovation Network is a collaborative national network that focuses on operational innovation, operational excellence and collaboration, and leverages the expertise and resources of the CTSA Program. The Trial Innovation Network features a single IRB system, master contracting agreements, quality by design approaches, and a focus on evidence-based strategies to recruitment and patient engagement. The goal of the Trial Innovation Network is to not only execute trials better, faster, and more cost-efficiently but, importantly, to be a national laboratory to study, understand, and innovate the process of conducting clinical trials. The UCLA TIN serves as the local and collaborative resource and connection tool for multi-site clinical trial studies between UCLA and its partner institutions. The UCLA TIN works with investigators to assist with proposal submissions to the TIN through a consultation process as well as identify local investigators for TIN studies to fulfill EHR cohort assessment requests for proposed TIN studies through Expressions of Interest. Community engagement consultations will be integrated with CERP.
The UCLA TIN Liaison, housed in the Grants Submission Unit, is responsible for outreach and networking, ensuring local resources and capacity are utilized at the local level before recommending to Regional and/or National networks for assistance to fulfill needs of teams engaging in multisite clinical trials. The UCLA TIN Liaison promotes and disseminates information about TIN services to local faculty and researchers to increase engagement on campus, through in-person meetings, on campus and offsite presentations, and promotion of TIN information through GSU/CTSI newsletters. The UCLA TIN Liaison engages and networks with partner institutions to build capacity, strengthen engagement, and partnership relations. For further engagement, there is an integrated system of referral and communication across CTSI program areas for local TIN-related support.
Regional TIN Engagement. The UC BRAID TIN Working Group, a collaboration across the UC CTSA’s TIN Liaison Teams, aims to improve engagement between local TIN teams and regional TIN efforts for supporting multi-campus studies across the sites. The goals are to harness the resources of five campuses to more fully utilize TIN services and maximize benefit and to explore how the UC BRAID’s mission can support TIN, especially in regards to single IRB, contracting, and recruitment. Best practices will be discussed, identified, and shared across all campuses.
National TIN Engagement. Local TIN staff regularly engage with the national TIN services including responding to EOIs, attending monthly calls, and facilitating connection between local investigators and the types of services they can receive at the national level. The TIN team also regularly consults with the national TIN administrators for best practices and guidance on outreach and engagement of local faculty, when needed.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The UC Biomedical Research Acceleration, Integration, and Development (BRAID) Network is a consortium of the five UC medical campuses and hubs at UC Irvine, UC Davis, UC San Francisco, UC San Diego, and UC Los Angeles in collaboration with the UC Office of the President. In 2008, they identified system-wide collaboration in biomedical research as an opportunity to enhance clinical and translational research efforts. In response, they launched an initiative in 2010 to identify policy changes and areas of collaboration to accelerate biomedical research across the UC biomedical campuses. The UC BRAID program is this effort to accelerate clinical and translational research that improves health, by integrating resources and talent across the University of California. UC BRAID bridges disciplinary and institutional boundaries to create collaborative teams focused on the greatest opportunities as well as the greatest needs throughout the state. The mission of UC BRAID is to create an environment that reduces barriers, leverages and combines resources, enables teams, and serves as a model for collaborative consortia. UC BRAID’s main priorities are to create infrastructure and drive harmonization to increase efficiency in clinical and translational research through initiatives and workgroups and to develop structures to support the interface between research and clinical care.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The UCLA-UCI Alpha Stem Cell Clinic (ASCC) accelerates the implementation of clinical trials and delivery of stem cell therapies by providing world-class, state-of-the-art infrastructure to support clinical research. The UCLA-UCI ASCC is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the University of California, Los Angeles, Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research and University of California, Irvine Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. It is one of three clinics (alongside City of Hope and UC San Diego) funded through a five year $8M grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state’s stem cell agency. These three clinics comprise the CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic Network.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The Drug, Device Discovery, and Development workgroup is a UC BRAID committee focused on the early translation of academic discovery research into valuable and impactful therapies. The University of California Drug Discovery Consortium (UC DDC) grew out of this work, and is funded by a three-year UC Office of the President (UCOP) Multi-Campus Research Proposal Initiative grant (MRPI). The UC DDC aims to build a drug discovery community for the University of California. Initially, the UC DDC will involve representatives from UC San Francisco, UC Los Angeles, UC Irvine, UC Davis and UC San Diego. In the future, UC DDC hopes to expand to include all UC Campuses. UC DDC goals are to support the development of therapeutics with mentoring & pilot funding, strengthen drug discovery education & training, expedite access to existing drug discovery related core facilities across the UC system, build partnerships with industry to increase support for projects and develop sustainability and provide seed funding that will enable faculty members with promising ideas to advance drug discovery or drug development projects.
Last updated April 24, 2023
Led by UCLA’s Dr. Sarah Dry, the UC BRAID Biobanking Initiative was established in order for biobanks to meet emerging federal standards and help accelerate the pace of translational research. It aims to aid in the creation of best practice documentation and a governance model for high-quality biospecimen banks. Through an inclusive governance model and standard processes for “UC-recognized” biobanks, this initiative hopes to ensure biosamples are the highest possible quality and that biobanks are operating ethically and meeting professional accredited standards. It also aims to develop biobanking educational programs. Biobanking resources include standard operating procedures for distribution, procurement, and storage as well as shared resources on developing efficient and ethical approaches to biobanking research within the UC, governance of biobanks, and outlining best practices for establishing biobanks at UC facilities.
Last updated April 24, 2023
UC BRAID-Child Health (BRAID-CH) has transitioned to a new statewide collaboration, the California Child Health Research Coalition. This effort expands upon BRAID-CH’s experience, skills and innovative investigator-initiated research projects. The goal of the new Coalition is to incubate multisite research teams across California, focused broadly on gaps and barriers to optimal health for children in our region. The Coalition will build an innovative, collegial, and collaborative network of child health centers, hospitals, and clinics in an effort to support clinical research activities that will rapidly provide new therapies, medical devices, quality care, efficient healthcare delivery, and health prevention strategies to all the people in California and beyond. Since 2013, BRAID-CH has sought to serve as a UC consortium focused on a group of pediatric diseases while building on the strengths of the existing UC BRAID structure. Some of BRAID-CH’s accomplishments include: receiving a UC award to build and test EMR templates in representative pediatric research areas (Diabetes Nutrition, Chronic Disease), funding and implementing two Child Health Catalytic Grant Awards--serving as a model for a national initiative to support multidisciplinary pediatric research, holding the first UC wide Autism Summit in 2014, receiving a UC award for a multisite Autism Research Pilot Study and developing a partnership with the UC Fetal Consortium.
Last updated April 24, 2023
Contract negotiation is a critical part of any successful research enterprise, and UC BRAID's industry contracting experts are finding new ways to improve turnaround times for contract execution. From new master contracts to a toolkit for Investigator Initiated Trials, UC BRAID's contracting team continually seeks better ways to negotiate and finalize clinical trial agreements, which gets clinical trials up-and-running more efficiently. To this end, UC BRAID convened a regional network of contracting directors to operationalize and measure common metrics as a basis for performance improvement efforts, focusing on developing the UC Master Agreements and the Accelerated Clinical Trial Agreement. The goals of this program are to: Measure and improve clinical trial contracting performance; Share best practices and lessons learned; Increase collaboration for multisite clinical trial agreement (CTA) negotiations; and Mitigate redundant effort and conserve resources.
The UC Master Agreements and the Accelerated Clinical Trial Agreement have shown significant improvements in contractual negotiations for investigators. For example, when comparing the average days to contract terms finalized, both the UC Master Agreements and the Accelerated Clinical Trial Agreement (ACTA) were 45% faster when compared to the contracts which did not use a master agreement. These analyses led UC BRAID to identify, share and implement best practices across its institutions.
Last updated April 24, 2023
Failure to recruit enough patients is one of the top reasons why clinical trials fail, which is why UC BRAID has assembled specialists in the field of participant recruitment to partner on this problem. Their team's work makes it easier for investigators to leverage recruitment capabilities in the electronic health record, conduct multisite recruitment, and obtain IRB approval for recruitment methods and materials. UC BRAID’s efforts in this area include: improving the cost, efficiency, and effectiveness of recruitment approaches; positioning member institutions to be attractive for research grant dollars, both locally and with multi-center studies and trials; and developing capabilities to forge and respond to new public/private partnerships. UC BRAID's CTSA participant recruitment initiatives span across UC Los Angeles, UC Irvine, UC Davis, UC San Francisco, UC San Diego, and Stanford University.
Last updated April 24, 2023
UC TrialQuest is a clinical trials search tool that allows real-time exploration of all IRB-approved or pending clinical trials at the five UC Health campuses. The web-based platform enables research administrative staff to efficiently search for and identify open or pending clinical trials across the UC system. The search tool has reduced redundant effort for common research administration processes, saving UC significant resources as a result. UC TrialQuest won the 2016 Sautter Award for innovation in information technology.
Last updated April 24, 2023
Last updated April 24, 2023
Last updated April 24, 2023
The Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, housed under the UCLA Anderson School of Management, is a recognized leader in entrepreneurial education and research at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Working closely with its board of advisors, the Price Center fosters the study and practice of entrepreneurship and business innovation by providing the foundation on which creativity can flourish and individuals can succeed.
The Price Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation takes a keen interest in developing entrepreneurial competence in its students while maintaining active relationships with UCLA Anderson alumni as strategic partners in many of its initiatives. The Price Center provides a set of integrated academic and extracurricular experiences designed to develop an entrepreneurial competence in MBA students. Its academic program departs from traditional business studies by emphasizing social innovation and producing managers who know how to marshal resources for new wealth creations. Furthermore, alumni and other established professionals have the opportunity to become involved with the Price Center’s academic and experiential programs as workshop leaders, mentors to our students, or sponsors of an MBA internship. This interaction creates ways to grow and maintain valuable relationships and also exposes current students to a considerable range of career options, business advice and willing sponsors.
The UCLA Anderson School of Management and the Price Center work together to provide a challenging, interdisciplinary curriculum for students who intend to embrace global and integrationist thinking, work across boundaries, and muster an uncommon amount of courage to pursue their entrepreneurial vision. First-hand experience in an entrepreneurial environment is vital to the success of our curriculum. The Price Center funds numerous fellowships designed to afford students real-world business experiences. To encourage entrepreneurial research, the Price Center has established programs such as the Galef Symposium in Business Innovation, which supports the research of Ph.D. students, academic researchers and faculty whose projects demand an openness to flexibility and new ideas, a predisposition to study innovative methods, and a capacity to see beyond existing paradigms. The Price Center also maintains a strong commitment to serving the nonprofit and small business communities through management development programs and topical seminars. All of these efforts aim to foster the study and practice of entrepreneurship and business innovation.
Last updated April 24, 2023
Since 1982, the student-run Knapp Venture Competition, hosted at UCLA Anderson School of Management by the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Entrepreneur Association, is designed to provide UCLA Anderson students with an intensive learning experience in the venture initiation process and has evolved into one of the premier academic business plan competitions in Southern California. The Knapp Competition has given more than 2,500 UCLA Anderson students a unique venture creation experience that has been instrumental in launching numerous businesses.
Virtually all UCLA Anderson students will start, work in, advise, or finance growing businesses at some point in their careers. Participating in the Knapp Venture Competition prepares UCLA Anderson students - whether they will be founders, financiers, consultants, marketers, or general managers - for these experiences by simulating the process of starting and evaluating an entrepreneurial enterprise. Students are encouraged to showcase their talents and learn from insights of successful entrepreneurs and business executives.
Over the course of the academic year, UCLA Anderson students refine business concepts, build management teams, and develop business plans to submit to the Knapp Venture Competition. While a business plan is the tangible outcome of each team's efforts, generating the document in and of itself is not the Knapp Venture Competition's primary objective. Rather, the Knapp Venture Competition encourages a rigorous and cross-disciplinary application of the tools that students have learned in the MBA program. It requires them to integrate concepts from the core curriculum - economics, finance, operations, marketing, accounting, strategy, and organizational development - into a total plan for starting and operating a business.
By refining a concept, researching its feasibility, building a management team, and preparing and presenting a plan, students test the full range of analytical and communications skills that they have developed while at Anderson. Moreover, they learn about their ability to work as a team and manage group dynamics. Finally, the screening and evaluative portions of the Knapp Venture Competition provide a solid feedback mechanism to the student teams. Dozens of entrepreneurs, alumni, and professional investors serve on the judging panels that evaluate each team's efforts. Year in and year out, students report that this feedback is one of the most valuable aspects of the competition.
Two other groups of students benefit from the Knapp Venture Competition. The student organizers are presented with an opportunity to develop their leadership skills, as well as with valuable access to the extensive entrepreneurial networks and resources of the Anderson community. The entire UCLA community is encouraged to view the competition's final presentations in order to support their classmates, prepare for their own participation in future competitions, and to learn the standards that professional investors and entrepreneurs apply in evaluating businesses.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The UCLA Technology Development Group (TDG) supports UCLA’s research, education, and service mission by commercializing intellectual property rights; facilitating collaborations with industry for next-generation scientific breakthroughs; advancing UCLA entrepreneurship and research; protecting the university’s interest by managing risk; and promoting economic growth in California. The scope of activities includes commercially evaluating new technologies; determining patentability and commercial value; prosecuting patents; marketing and licensing inventions; facilitating UCLA faculty startups; engaging industry to facilitate research collaboration; negotiating license agreements and Material Transfer Agreements; and receiving and distributing royalties and other income to the inventors, the UCLA campus, and its departments. In FY21, 348 new inventions were disclosed via TDG. TDG collaborates with CTSI researchers who seek to commercialize their intellectual property.
Last updated April 24, 2023
UCLA Ventures was founded in the late 1990s by by a group of Bruin entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, who partnered with the University to establish the UCLA Venture Capital Fund. Since then, UCLA Ventures has become a testament to the strength of UCLA's alumni network, and has evolved into a dynamic community of UCLA alumni, faculty, students, and friends who support each other, the university, and its entrepreneurial ecosystem. UCLA Ventures pioneered the unique "cashless" pledge for the startup community, wherein members pledge now, even though the shares are not transferred to UCLA Ventures until liquidity occurs. Upon pledging, members join a vibrant community of Bruin entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. When liquidity occurs, the cash or shares are transferred to UCLA Ventures. Through this system, UCLA Ventures has built a vibrant portfolio of venture-backed equity. With the returns from its pledged portfolio, it fosters UCLA’s entrepreneurial ecosystem through programming, volunteerism, and financial distributions to key initiatives on campus, such as Startup UCLA.
Last updated April 24, 2023
MD2K was established as one of 11 national Big Data Centers of Excellence awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of its Big Data-to-Knowledge initiative. The MD2K Center brought together the top brains in Computer Science, Engineering, Medicine, Behavioral Science, and Statistics, drawn from 13 universities (Cornell Tech, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Northwestern, Ohio State, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Memphis, the University of Michigan, the University of Utah, and West Virginia University). The MD2K Team developed innovative tools to make it easier to gather, analyze and interpret health data generated by mobile and wearable sensors. The goal of the big data solutions being developed by MD2K was to reliably quantify physical, biological, behavioral, social, and environmental factors that contribute to health and disease risk. The research conducted by MD2K aimed to improve the health of individuals through early detection of adverse health events and by facilitating prevention. The MD2K team directly targeted two complex health conditions with high mortality risk – reducing hospital readmission in congestive heart failure (CHF) patients and preventing relapse in abstinent smokers. The approach and product of MD2K is applicable to other complex diseases, such as asthma, substance abuse and obesity. The Center has made the MD2K tools, software, and training materials widely available and organized workshops and seminars to encourage their use by researchers and clinicians.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The Los Angeles Pediatric Research Integrating Sensor Monitoring Systems (LA PRISMS) Center is fostering the development and application of mobile health (mHealth) technologies that deepen our scientific understanding and clinical management of pediatric conditions. Bringing together leading experts from UCLA and USC in biomedical informatics, computer science, wireless health, environmental science and health, and pediatrics, this Center focuses on the creation of innovative end-to-end software infrastructure for pediatric sensor-based health monitoring. A part of the NIH's Pediatric Research Integrating Sensor Monitoring Systems (PRISMS) community, this collaborative effort focuses on pediatric asthma. Our Center's vision and proposed research is motivated by the following question: what if you could predict ahead of time, for a specific asthma patient, the potential for exacerbation and thus mitigate–if not prevent–the event? Any system with this ability must integrate the growing array of available physiologic and environmental data from sensors, and place such data into context to elucidate the patient's state and specific situation. The system must be able to act sufficiently quickly on sensed data to make timely recommendations, and end user compliance with system usage must be high to effect change. Our solution, the Biomedical REAl-Time Health Evaluation for Pediatric Asthma (BREATHE) platform, provides an extensible framework for the deployment of data collection protocols; secure data collection from sensors to a mobile device; integration of additional contextual information; and real-time analysis.
Last updated April 24, 2023
The Biobank is a state-of-the-art biorepository that: (1) collects human biospecimens based on institutional priorities for biomedical research and also for investigator-driven requests, (2) provides tissue, blood, and body fluid collection, processing, and storage services, (3) provides a uniform, institution-wide, consent process for facilitating research studies, (4) provides clinical annotation services and fulfills custom requests for chart review, and (5) aids in developing protocols for human biospecimen procurement and processing.
The Translational Research Core provides pathology and molecular services which include grossing of human/animal tissue, histopathology, tissue microarray generation, and the development of protocols for new antibodies and in-situ hybridization probes. Imaging and image analysis services include: (1) full slide scanning of human and animal cells/tissues on glass slides, including either chromogenic or fluorescent multispectral scanning, (2) image analysis of digital images generated with single or multiple probes in visible light or fluorescent wavelength ranges. The core also has a number of state-of-the art imaging and molecular instrumentation (laser-capture microdissection, nanostring, confocal, lightsheet microscope etc.) that are available to researchers.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Biobehavioral Research Core offers behavioral testing in rodents that ranges from the assessment of general health and neurological function (e.g., sensory and motor function) to the measurement of complex behaviors such as social interaction, memory, and learning. Assessments can be utilized to: (1) study animal models of human diseases and disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and drug abuse, in addition to disease-specific behavioral effects of treatment/therapies, (2) uncover neurobehavioral deficits in transgenic animals, and (3) define the possible undesirable behavioral effects of drugs and biologics (gene, vaccine, and stem cell therapies).
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Mitochondria, Metabolism, and Mouse Cardiac Phenotyping Core provides services for isolation of mitochondria from a range of tissues for respirometry and other mitochondrial studies. The Core also provides cardiac ultrasound for Ejection Fraction and Fractional Shortening, and surgical models of heart disease including transverse aortic constriction (thoracic or abdominal), permanent or reversible coronary artery ligation, or pulmonary artery banding.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Cedars-Sinai Research Imaging Core (RIC) is an advanced imaging center dedicated to providing high-quality imaging services tailored to the unique needs of the research community from rodents and large animals to human subjects. We offer a Clinical 3T MRI (Vida, Siemens) and simultaneous Clinical PET/MR (Biograph, Siemens) for human and large animal subjects, as well as in-Vivo Small Animal/Specimen CT (PerkElmer Quantum GX2), Cryofluoresence Tomography (EMIT) Optical (IVIS Spectrum and Luminar XR), Small Animal image guided irradiator (X-RAD SmART), micro-ultrasound imaging system (Vevo 3100) and Small Animal 4Dx Lung imaging services for research.
Our facility is staffed with highly trained and experienced personnel, including expert research scientists, technologists, registered nurses, and additional support staff to ensure the most positive experience. We also offer core IRB/IACUC protocol support and seed grants to help get your research started quickly, and a dedicated research PACS and post-processing software to support data transfer, image analysis and data processing. In addition to research imaging, the Siemens systems are licensed for clinical use to allow standard-of-care, diagnostic imaging performed in conjunction with research imaging. We welcome and look forward to working with all CTSI investigators.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Rodent Genetics Core provides specialized services for the production of genetically modified animals. The core offers high-quality, specific pathogen-free transgenic and knockout (knock-in) mice focused on genes of specific interest to a broad range of biomedical research projects to investigators at Cedars-Sinai, as well as affiliated and outside institutions. The core also helps design the DNA constructs for pronuclear microinjection or gene targeting with the most up-to-date genetic technologies such as the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Lundquist/Harbor-UCLA Animal Care and Use Program is uniquely designed to accommodate large animal models, and is equipped with several large animal surgical suites containing anesthesia machines, monitoring equipment, fluoroscopes, and a CT Scanner. The major types of studies center around perinatal lung development, the effect of the fetal environment on development, antibody production, vascular implant surgery, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Services include: (1) protocol development, (2) animal procurement, (3) animal care procedures, (4) animal health programs, (5) special services, and (6) training programs.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Behavioral Testing Core (BTC) brings researchers together in a collaborative effort to link genes, disorders, and treatments with behavior. It is available to investigators interested in the determination of behavioral phenotypes in different mouse and rat strains, and the effects that various treatment options have on these phenotypic characteristics. In addition to providing training and guidance in experimental design, proposal preparation, and statistical analyses, the core offers BTC staff-performed experiments.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Cardiovascular Research Theme at UCLA offers rodent models of cardiovascular disease as research resources to all researchers in the CV theme. The goal of this core is to provide CV theme researchers expertise and ready access to cardiac injury models for pre-clinical studies or mechanistic investigation of injury induced abnormalities affecting repair, scarring or electrical propagation.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The ICP-MS Core Facility provides analytical chemistry characterization services to determine the qualitative and quantitative composition with wide element coverage, up to 80 elements. Chemical analysis is completed at a part per trillion (ppt, pg/mL) scale with high sensitivity. Trained staff will provide core services including: (1) Consultation for effective decision-making based on your needs, (2) Sample preparation (e.g., acid digestion), (3) Conduct analyses, and (4) Data reports with background corrections. Applications for the Core services include (but not limited to): (a) Drug delivery (drug release kinetics, biodistribution in different organs), (b) Concentration measurements of metal-containing proteins, (c) Cellular uptake, (d) Impurities / composition / stoichiometric ratio / ion release kinetics, (e) Toxic elements analysis (As, Pb, Cd, Hg, etc.) in food and soil, and (d) Trace metal analysis in drinking water and wastewater.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Mouse Physiology Core Laboratory facility is dedicated to the phenotypic assessment of mouse and rat models of disease using a wide variety of integrative approaches. Our aim is to provide a cost effective means for investigators to reveal important functional aspects of their mouse and rat models without having to individually invest in hiring skilled personnel and in the purchase of expensive instrumentation. We specialize in ultrasound (echo) & telemetric assessments, survival and non-survival surgeries, acute and chronic evaluations of cardiac and neuro-regulatory function as well as basic metabolic and exercise assessments.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Radiation Oncology Animal Core breeds and houses mice in a gnotobiotic environment. The core can supply various strains of mice to meet investigators’ needs (please see website). Mice from other facilities may be imported, after inspection of sentinel health reports, and housed in the extra-barrier area. Irradiators are available for both whole-body and partial body exposures including image-guided techniques. The core additionally maintains an ABSL2 facility.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The overall goal of the UCLA Humanized Mouse Core Laboratory is to provide the infrastructure, materials, animals, technical expertise, and support that will facilitate the use of humanized immunodeficient mice in studies examining human tissues and disease in the context of a small animal model system. Services include: (1) procuring immunodeficient mice at a reduced cost, (2) providing specialized animal laboratories for the construction, housing, and maintenance of immunodeficient mice, (3) constructing humanized mice, (4) developing and optimizing new humanized mouse models, (5) providing technical expertise and consultation on humanized mouse models. The core also provides consultation in flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, PCR, and other assays.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Zebrafish Core facilitates the use and quick access of common mutation, genetically-engineered transgenic zebrafish, and routine techniques of zebrafish manipulation by investigators. Services include: (1) providing space to house zebrafish and perform large-scale genetic screens, (2) providing embryos for experiments, (3) generation of transgenic zebrafish, and (4) cryostorage of zebrafish sperm and re- derivation of live fish. Training is available for select techniques and zebrafish husbandry.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Biobank is a state-of-the-art biorepository that: (1) collects human biospecimens based on institutional priorities for biomedical research and also for investigator-driven requests, (2) provides tissue, blood, and body fluid collection, processing, and storage services, (3) provides a uniform, institution-wide, consent process for facilitating research studies, (4) provides clinical annotation services and fulfills custom requests for chart review, and (5) aids in developing protocols for human biospecimen procurement and processing.
The Translational Research Core provides pathology and molecular services which include grossing of human/animal tissue, histopathology, tissue microarray generation, and the development of protocols for new antibodies and in-situ hybridization probes. Imaging and image analysis services include: (1) full slide scanning of human and animal cells/tissues on glass slides, including either chromogenic or fluorescent multispectral scanning, (2) image analysis of digital images generated with single or multiple probes in visible light or fluorescent wavelength ranges. The core also has a number of state-of-the art imaging and molecular instrumentation (laser-capture microdissection, nanostring, confocal, lightsheet microscope etc.) that are available to researchers.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The CSMC Flow Cytometry Core is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment for cell analysis and sorting, utilizing fluorescent probes targeted to specific cell-associated molecules to characterize the diversity and function of complex cell populations. Fluorescence-activated cell sorters can also individually identify and isolate live cells with a defined phenotype that can later be expanded and/or further studied. The core is equipped to handle biohazardous samples and offers both, cell population and single cell sorting. The core is open 24/7 for analysis and can provide flexible hours for sorting to accommodate experimental needs. The core also provides training for new users and offers consulting for experimental design, for a fee.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The HLA and Immunogenetics Laboratory provides state-of-the-art histocompatibility and immunogenetics testing for solid organ and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The HLA Laboratory also provides histocompatibility testing for non-transplant services including disease association and drug hypersensitivity. Services include: (1) intermediate and high-resolution HLA typing by next generation sequencing, (2) HLA and non-HLA antibody detection by solid phase or cell-based assays, (3) KIR and MICA gene typing, (4) chimerism testing, and (5) other immune assessment.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) Core at the Regenerative Medicine Institute uses the latest techniques to reprogram, expand, and characterize human iPSCs from human skin or blood tissues of healthy subjects and diseased patients. iPSCs are then turned into specific cells of the human body including components of the nervous system, eyes, blood, bones, heart, gut, liver, and pancreas, for use by researchers. Applications of this technology include human disease modeling-in-a-dish, developing human reporter cell lines via genetic modification, drug screening on pathological human cell types, and potentially developing cell replacement or regenerative therapies. The iPSC Core offers: (1) PSC quality control and characterization services, (2) bio-banking and PSC thawing, (3) imaging services, (4) cell lines, (5) custom MEF generation, and (6) training.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Mitochondria, Metabolism and Cardiac Phenotyping Core provides comprehensive services for analysis of metabolism and mitochondrial function in the research setting, with plans to expand to provide clinical services. For in-depth mitochondrial characterization, services may include seahorse respirometry, seahorse XFp, mitochondrial isolation from tissue, seahorse data analysis, keyence microscope, indirect calorimetry (CLAMS), CLAMS data analysis, body composition (NMR), citrate synthase, complex 1, Amplex Red, Swelling Assay, and mtDNA/nucDNA. In-depth mitochondrial characterization may include mitochondrial morphometry, turnover rates, respirometry, membrane potential, mPTP susceptibility, cytochrome c release, free radical production, mtDNA sequencing and 8- oxo-dG analysis.
Last updated February 1, 2023
l time, and detection of signals from tissue, petri dishes, and microtiter plates; (3) a Luminex multiplex analyzer that utilizes xMAP microsphere technology and has the capability of performing up to 100 assays simultaneously in a single well of a microtiter plate; and (4) a Biotek Synergy 2 multi-mode microplate reader, a combination luminometer-fluorometer-absorbance detector capable of reading 96-well and larger plates that utilizes both filter-based and monochromatic-based light-detection technology.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The High-Resolution Tissue Respirometry (HRTR) Core supports investigators in mitochondrial physiology and pathophysiology studies. The core provides consultation, training, and services for assessment of oxidative phosphorylation in isolated mitochondria, permeabilized cells, or tissue preparations. The HRTR Core uses Oroboros Oxygraph-2k High Resolution Respirometry equipment. Applications of HRTR include: (1) diagnosis of acquired and genetic mitochondrial diseases, myopathies, and neuromuscular pathologies, (2) study of pathologies with reduced cellular respiration, (3) studies on cell function and cell death, (4) aging and senescence, (5) oxidative stress and antioxidant systems, (6) ischemia-reperfusion injury, (7) cancer research / pharmacological tests, (8) environmental stress, and (9) metabolic substrate balance.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Cardiovascular Research Theme will provide cardiac muscle cells as a core service at a highly subsidized rate. The goal of this service is to provide a readily available resource of cardiac muscle cells for investigators performing ex vivo experiments on cardiac muscle cells. Two types of cardiac muscle cells will be provided: (1) Neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocytes. These cells beat in the dish for 3-7 days and provide a platform for determining effects of toxins, drugs or other genetic manipulation of the cardiac muscle cell, and (2) Human embryonic stem cell or human iPSC derived cardiomyocytes. H9 or other NIH approved lines and UCLA approved lines are used as a source for the differentiation of cardiac muscle cells. Human pluripotent stem cell derived cardiac muscle cells will be handed to investigators at their preferred time point of differentiation. To maintain consistency, standard differentiation programs are used. Crispr/Cas edited hPSC derived cardiomyocytes will be introduced as a core service in the near future.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The centralized laboratory support provides a wide array of services for both HIV/AIDS and other researchers. It offers testing services (p24 ELISA, and digital droplet PCR for the detection of HIV cDNA, HIV viral load), and blood cell products ( PBMCs and Monocytes) . Finally, the core is able to assist individual researchers with special projects related to, but not limited to, HIV detection.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The core laboratory provides instrumentation and technical and professional assistance for performing laser-based flow cytometric analysis and cell sorting. The facility also offers training in basic flow cytometry principles and in the operation of analytic cytometers. A second course teaches nucleic acid analysis and measurement of proliferation by flow cytometry as well as hands-on instrument set-up and use of the specialized DNA analysis software.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Immune Assessment Core (IAC) is a CLIA certified laboratory that provides comprehensive immunological testing services for basic, clinical, and translational studies. The IAC provides both standardized and customized multi-parameter flow cytometry, multiplexed immunoassays and cellular immune function assays to evaluate the innate and adaptive immune status of study subjects. Validated tests include comprehensive immunophenotyping panels, multiplexed cytokine/chemokine detection in body fluids or culture supernatants, Single-molecule array (Simoa) ultra-sensitive assay, several ELISA assays, allo- and virus-specific T cell activation, T and B cell proliferation to antigens and mitogens, NK cell cytotoxicity, and granulocyte/monocyte oxidative burst. The core also performs customized assay development to meet the investigators’ needs.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The ICP-MS Core Facility provides analytical chemistry characterization services to determine the qualitative and quantitative composition with wide element coverage, up to 80 elements. Chemical analysis is completed at a part per trillion (ppt, pg/mL) scale with high sensitivity. Trained staff will provide core services including: (1) Consultation for effective decision-making based on your needs, (2) Sample preparation (e.g., acid digestion), (3) Conduct analyses, and (4) Data reports with background corrections. Applications for the Core services include (but not limited to): (a) Drug delivery (drug release kinetics, biodistribution in different organs), (b) Concentration measurements of metal-containing proteins, (c) Cellular uptake, (d) Impurities / composition / stoichiometric ratio / ion release kinetics, (e) Toxic elements analysis (As, Pb, Cd, Hg, etc.) in food and soil, and (d) Trace metal analysis in drinking water and wastewater.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Mitochondrial and Metabolism Core provides the necessary technical and conceptual resources for studying mitochondrial function. Services include respirometry assays in intact cells, permeabilized cells, and isolated mitochondria using the Seahorse XF96 Extracellular Flux Analyzer. An Operetta High Content Imaging System is also available for measurements of mitochondrial mass, membrane potential and reactive oxygen species, among other applications. The Mitochondrial and Metabolism Core provides in-depth training and scheduled use of instruments or full service options for assay design, performance, and data analysis.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Biostatistics & Bioinformatics Core is a resource for biostatistical and bioinformatics consulting and related methodological research, and serves as a focal point from which investigators may draw statistical expertise for planning, management, and analysis of their studies. Faculty and staff at the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core: (1) coordinate and manage statistical activities at Cedars-Sinai to ensure that investigators have ready access to statistical consultation and support, (2) provide statistical expertise in the design of experiments and studies, including research proposal development, sample size determination, randomization procedures and plans for interim reviews and final analysis, (3) assist with the writing of statistical components of manuscripts, (4) review the integrity and statistical soundness of all studies involving human subjects, (5) provide statistical analysis for projects using appropriate statistical and computing methodologies and assist in the interpretation and presentation of results, (6) interact and collaborate with the Clinical Research Office in the development of protocols and the monitoring and reporting of clinical data, (7) maintain a computing facility with up-to-date software for statistical analysis to support program project investigators, and (8) conduct biostatistical and bioinformatics methodology research on practical problems arising in basic science populational and clinical studies.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Computing Technologies Research Laboratory (CTRL) specializes in research and clinical data collection, management, and reporting solutions. They develop Internet-accessible, web-based database applications that enable and enhance clinical & basic research and education, in the biomedical community. Services include: (1) web application development, (2) mobile app programming, and (3) database design and hosting.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The primary objective of DOMStat is to provide statistical analysis collaboration to investigators across the translational research spectrum (basic science, bioinformatics, observational studies, clinical trials, electronic health records research and health services). DOMStat offers faculty and staff level statistical collaboration for grant proposals, data analysis, manuscript preparation, and other research activities requiring statistical input.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Informatics Center for Neurogenetics and Neurogenomics (ICNN) provides CNN faculty experts in statistical genetics, gene expression analysis, and bioinformatics will oversee the activities of highly-trained staff members who will accomplish three goals: 1) provide expert consultation and analyses for neurogenetics and neurogenomics projects; 2) develop and maintain a shared computing resource that will include a computational cluster for computation-intensive analyses, web-servers and state-of-the-art software tools for a wide range of applications (including user-friendly versions of public databases, as well as workstations on which ICNN users will be trained to employ these tools; and 3) provide hands-on training in analysis and informatics to the users. ICNN is developing a whole- genome data analysis pipeline, aimed at filtering and prioritizing genetic variation identified in whole-genome sequencing studies for further study.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Semel Institute Biostatistics Core (SIStat) is a team of expert biostatisticians, methodologists, programmers and research support staff. The mission of the core is to foster research productivity and quality by helping faculty and trainees design sound research projects; obtain independent funding; securely collect, store, and share data; and conduct rigorous analyses. Services include: (1) Statistical consulting and analytic support; (2) development of customized systems for data entry/capture, study management and dissemination; (3) programming of specialized software and tools for analysis, patient assessment, questionnaire scoring, and administrative systems; (4) website construction and graphical design; and (5) submission of materials to the National Data Archives or other repositories. Support is offered for projects ranging from small pilot studies to large, long-running, multi-site centers.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Applied Genomics, Computation & Translational Core (AGCT Core) is a fully equipped, automated, high-throughput genomics facility offering the latest in next generation and single cell sequencing technologies. Our goal is to generate and interpret single cell omics, genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, and metagenomics information for basic and clinical research. We offer general but complete laboratory and bioinformatics analysis pipelines to accommodate standard needs, as well as work actively in collaborations to offer more sophisticated or custom solutions on most omics-wide investigations.
As a 10x Genomic certified service provider, the AGCT Core specializes in single cell omics applications, including scRNA-Seq, scATAC-Seq, scV(D)J immune profiling, and scCNV. We also offer mRNA-Seq and total RNA-Seq for all sample types, including low-input or degraded RNA. Sequencing-only services and high-throughput qPCR are also available. The Core houses the latest in next-generation sequencing equipment, including Illumina’s NovaSeq, NextSeq, MiSeq, and MiniSeq, 10x Genomic’s Chromium Controller, automated liquid handlers, automated nucleic acid purification systems, nucleic acid fragment analyzers, and focused ultrasonicators.
The AGCT Core’s bioinformatics team provides analytical capabilities to support advanced
biomedical research. We have set up solid pipelines associated with each sequencing service for primary
data processing, including reads alignment, quality control and expression quantification (RNA-seq),
variants calling (WGS/WES) and peak calling (ChIP-seq/ATAC-seq). We have also developed packages for
in-depth, customized computational analyses driven by specific biological questions defined by
investigators. Furthermore, we provide support on interpretation and presentation of results, generating
extensive reports with publication-ready images and drafting of bioinformatics and statistical
methodology for manuscripts. We also provide lifelong data curation and cloud storage for collaborators.
Please visit the AGCT Core’s website for a complete list of available services,
instrumentation, and detailed information about data processing and analyses.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Institute consists of 3 core laboratories—the Laboratory for Biochemistry, Molecular Phenotyping, and Microarray; the Laboratory for Statistical and Mathematical Genetics; and the Laboratory for Molecular Genetics, Bioinformatics, and High Throughput Genotyping. The Genomics Institute Faculty have been extremely active in large scale genetic studies and both single cohort and in multi-cohort (and multi-ethnic) consortium efforts that have identified many genetic loci for cardiometabolic traits. We have contributed to the design stages, to performance of biochemical phenotyping, to large scale genotyping, and to statistical genetic analysis. The many loci we and our collaborators have identified are being utilized by ourselves and others to generate multi-loci genetic risk scores as powerful tools to dissect disease etiology and to perform risk assessment in populations. Besides our involvement in many large scale genome wide association studies (GWAS), we are now actively involved in large scale whole genome sequencing studies (WGS) and Multi-Omics studies.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Microbiome Core performs services related to microbiome studies including 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing, shotgun metagenomics sequencing, human/animal sample collection and processing (feces, tissues, intestinal lavage, oral and vaginal swabs), frozen fecal sample aliquoting, bioinformatics analysis of 16S rRNA and shotgun metagenomics data, quantitative PCR of total bacterial load, and fecal calprotectin measurement.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Neurosciences Genomics Core (UNGC) currently operates an Illumina high throughput SNP genotyping system (iScan), operates a PacBio Sequel IIe long read sequencer and has access to Illumina NovaSeq instruments on the UNCLA campus. Services include: RNA/DNA library preparation and sequencing on NovaSeq and PacBio platforms. Genotyping available using all current Illumina Infinium genotyping arrays. Whole genome methylation assays using Illumina Meth-Epic and Horvath custom pan-mammalian arrays are available. For project specific pricing please contact Joe DeYoung, facility manager. Non UCLA neuro labs please inquire about service availability.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Technology Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics (TCGB) is a fully automated, high-throughput genomic facility equipped with all major next generation sequencing and microarray platforms. The Core provides pre-experiment consultation and post-experiment support, including preparation of grant applications and publications, and strategic planning for additional research steps. The TCGB also provides educational training to faculty, staff, and students to raise awareness on new directions and major discoveries in the areas of genomics and bioinformatics. Services include: (1) next generation sequencing, (2) microarray analysis, and (3) quality control services for RNA, miRNA, and DNA samples including RNA/DNA extraction, cDNA synthesis for quantitative-PCR, and qRT- PCR.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Biobank is a state-of-the-art biorepository that: (1) collects human biospecimens based on institutional priorities for biomedical research and also for investigator-driven requests, (2) provides tissue, blood, and body fluid collection, processing, and storage services, (3) provides a uniform, institution-wide, consent process for facilitating research studies, (4) provides clinical annotation services and fulfills custom requests for chart review, and (5) aids in developing protocols for human biospecimen procurement and processing.
The Translational Research Core provides pathology and molecular services which include grossing of human/animal tissue, histopathology, tissue microarray generation, and the development of protocols for new antibodies and in-situ hybridization probes. Imaging and image analysis services include: (1) full slide scanning of human and animal cells/tissues on glass slides, including either chromogenic or fluorescent multispectral scanning, (2) image analysis of digital images generated with single or multiple probes in visible light or fluorescent wavelength ranges. The core also has a number of state-of-the art imaging and molecular instrumentation (laser-capture microdissection, nanostring, confocal, lightsheet microscope etc.) that are available to researchers.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The HLA and Immunogenetics Laboratory provides state-of-the-art histocompatibility and immunogenetics testing for solid organ and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The HLA Laboratory also provides histocompatibility testing for non-transplant services including disease association and drug hypersensitivity. Services include: (1) intermediate and high-resolution HLA typing by next generation sequencing, (2) HLA and non-HLA antibody detection by solid phase or cell-based assays, (3) KIR and MICA gene typing, (4) chimerism testing, and (5) other immune assessment.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Mitochondria, Metabolism, and Mouse Cardiac Phenotyping Core provides services for isolation of mitochondria from human tissues including skin fibroblasts, endomyocardial biopsies, platelets, or peripheral blood mononuclear cells for respirometry studies.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Cedars-Sinai Research Imaging Core (RIC) is an advanced imaging center dedicated to providing high-quality imaging services tailored to the unique needs of the research community from rodents and large animals to human subjects. We offer a Clinical 3T MRI (Vida, Siemens) and simultaneous Clinical PET/MR (Biograph, Siemens) for human and large animal subjects, as well as in-Vivo Small Animal/Specimen CT (PerkElmer Quantum GX2), Cryofluoresence Tomography (EMIT) Optical (IVIS Spectrum and Luminar XR), Small Animal image guided irradiator (X-RAD SmART), micro-ultrasound imaging system (Vevo 3100) and Small Animal 4Dx Lung imaging services for research.
Our facility is staffed with highly trained and experienced personnel, including expert research scientists, technologists, registered nurses, and additional support staff to ensure the most positive experience. We also offer core IRB/IACUC protocol support and seed grants to help get your research started quickly, and a dedicated research PACS and post-processing software to support data transfer, image analysis and data processing. In addition to research imaging, the Siemens systems are licensed for clinical use to allow standard-of-care, diagnostic imaging performed in conjunction with research imaging. We welcome and look forward to working with all CTSI investigators.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The CTRC Bionutrition Core at Lundquist/Harbor-UCLA provides services to outpatient, overnight / extended stay and community based studies. A metabolic kitchen is dedicated to the preparation of nutrient controlled and regular meals. The Bionutrition Core has a metabolic assessment room with DXA, indirect calorimetry, BIA and anthropometric tools that integrates body composition, bone mineral density, and energy expenditure testing. The Bionutrition Core also provides state-of-the-art nutrition computing facilities with programs for nutrient analysis, semi-quantitative food frequency analysis, and design and specification of research diets. The Bionutrition Core personnel are experienced with REDCAP and can facilitate the collection and tracking of nutrition data for research studies. Training in nutrition research methodology is available to research fellows and other students.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Computed Tomographic (CT) Core specializes in cardiac, vascular, and body composition imaging using advanced CT workstations, advanced quality control methods, systems storage, and analytical methods for multiple investigations. It provides unique services in atherosclerosis imaging including plaque quantification, perfusion imaging, and diagnostic services. In addition, the CT Core offers collaborations in the area of renal, hepatic, vascular, and pulmonary imaging, as well as body composition and endothelial function assessment.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Endocrine and Metabolic Research Laboratory supports clinical and translational investigators in many aspects of research through expertise in analytical testing and development of new methods. Over forty different procedures are offered through the Endocrine and Metabolic Research Laboratory utilizing a variety of techniques including radioimmunoassay, fluoroimmunoassay, fluorometry and LC-MS/MS. Additionally, semen analyses and special andrological testing are available in the Andrology Laboratory.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The pulmonary function testing (PFT) cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) core lab facility supports investigators in pulmonary function and cardiopulmonary exercise testing studies. PFT consists of an array of non-invasive tests of abnormality of lung mechanics and pulmonary gas exchange used to detect the presence of, and quantify the severity of, a range of lung diseases. CPET provides a whole-body assessment of the integrative exercise responses involving the pulmonary, cardiovascular, hematopoietic, neuropsychological, and skeletal muscle systems, which are not adequately reflected through the measurement of individual organ system function. The CPET Core Lab will provide consultation, training, and services for clinical research using PFT and CPET. The Core Lab is also highly-experienced in multicenter clinical trials using PFT and CPET measurements.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Center for Computer Vision and Imaging Biomarkers (CVIB) provides imaging core lab services, including: (1) standardized multi-center imaging protocol development and quality control, (2) image de-identification, transfer, banking, and distribution, (3) cutting-edge quantitative image feature extraction, analysis, and data management, and (4) imaging research database support. CVIB also provides clinical quantitative imaging services within UCLA Healthcare and to overseas hospital departments.
Key attributes of the CVIB Core Laboratory are: (1) image quality, (2) accurate and reproducible quantitation, (3) rigorous science, (4) high throughput, (5) well-managed and on-time service, and (6) user friendly.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Center for Human Nutrition provides Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry (DXA or DEXA) Body Composition Analysis. DXA body composition analysis is considered the "gold standard" for measurement of body fat including visceral fat estimation, and gives an accurate assessment of overall health by quantifying the basal metabolic rate. Specialized scans of the lumbar spine and femoral neck are available to evaluate Bone Mineral Density, which can be utilized for assessing bone health and risk estimation of osteopenia and osteoporosis.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UC Fit-Exercise Physiology Research Laboratory, part of the Airway & Exercise Physiology Research Laboratory, promotes a prevention model of wellness, focused on forestalling disease progression through the enhancement of health and fitness practices. Recently, the lab was distinguished as part of the Exercise is Medicine® on-campus recognition program through the American College of Sports Medicine, together whose vision is to create a campus culture that embraces physical activity and exercise as a daily facet of life and views it as essential for long-term health and wellness. Health-fitness assessments include: (1) aerobic performance; (2) pulmonary function; (3) body composition; (4) muscle performance; (5) functional movement screen; (6) total energy expenditure; (7) sleep quality; (8) cardiovascular health risk & HRV; (9) posture; (10) performance tracking; (11) consultation for exercise program development.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Immune Assessment Core (IAC) is a CLIA certified laboratory that provides comprehensive immunological testing services for basic, clinical, and translational studies. The IAC provides both standardized and customized multi-parameter flow cytometry, multiplexed immunoassays and cellular immune function assays to evaluate the innate and adaptive immune status of study subjects. Validated tests include comprehensive immunophenotyping panels, multiplexed cytokine/chemokine detection in body fluids or culture supernatants, Single-molecule array (Simoa) ultra-sensitive assay, several ELISA assays, allo- and virus-specific T cell activation, T and B cell proliferation to antigens and mitogens, NK cell cytotoxicity, and granulocyte/monocyte oxidative burst. The core also performs customized assay development to meet the investigators’ needs.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Immunogenetics Center provides comprehensive testing for organ and tissue transplantation to physicians, patients, pharmaceutical companies, and other medical facilities. It is one of the leading laboratories in the world, providing state-of-the-art technology and methodology with a comprehensive quality assurance program to ensure accuracy in testing. Services include: (1) HLA-class I (A,B,C) and class II (DR, DQ, DP) gene polymorphism typing, (2) histocompatibility testing (HLA antibody and identification testing and lymphocyte crossmatch testing) and non-HLA antibodies (AT1R, MICA, Autoantibody Panel, Endothelial Crossmatch, (3) KIR and MICA gene typing, (4) HLA and Disease Association testing and (4) immune assessment to alloantigens and pathogens.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Two previous research laboratories, the Clinical and Translational Research Laboratory (CTRL) and the Clinical Immunology Research Laboratory (CIRL) have been restructured into the Pathology Research Portal (PRP). The PRP is a CAP accredited laboratory. This new addition to the Center for Pathology Research Services (CPRS) functions as the biospecimen liaison between researchers and clinical testing, and provides coordination for sample receiving, accessioning, processing, short term and long term storage, dispatching to multiple core facilities for testing, and result retrieving. PRP also provides shipping and temporary storage services, and can also provide customized services to meet various research needs.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Pulmonary Function and Respiratory Physiology Laboratory, part of the Airway & Exercise Physiology Research Laboratory, specializes in COPD research from pediatrics through geriatrics and houses a multitude of spirometers, oscillometers, body plethysmograph equipment for measuring spirometry, lung volumes, diffusing capacity, and bronchodilator challenge to assess lung function. Our facilities include clinical and research subject encounters, interviews, resting ECG’s, and blood and sputum samplings. Moreover, physical performance tests such as the six-minute-walk-test, hand grip strength test and short-physical-performance battery can be assessed. The lab is highly-experienced in multicenter trials using PFT and has acted as the primary reading and quality control site in many clinical trials.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Our primary service is human MRI research scanning; the rate is 600/hour, and we have a full suite of advanced pulse sequences for structural functional, diffusion, blood flow and spectroscopic imaging. We also have EEG systems in shielded rooms, and MRI compatible EEG.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Clinical and Research Service in the Semel Institute operates six TMS devices that are capable of a full range of clinical and research TMS procedures. The Service also is equipped with a neuronavigation system that allows MRI-guidance of coil placement as well as TMS-compatible EEG that allows recording during stimulation procedures.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Translational Pathology Core Laboratory (TPCL) provides an array of pathology-related services in support of basic, translational, and clinical research. Expert consultative services are offered to investigators in pathology-related study design, tissue selection, microscopic interpretation, immunohistochemistry/in situ hybridization, spatial gene expression (Visium), laser capture microdissection, digital image analysis, and IRB-related tissue questions. Services include: (1) tissue procurement, storage, and provision, (2) histology-related services, (3) immunohistochemistry, (4) in situ hybridization, (5) digital imaging and image analysis, (6) spatial gene expression (7) laser capture microdissection, (8) pathology consultative services, and (9) advice on research protocols, safety issues, and IRB applications.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Imaging and image analysis services include: (1) full slide scanning of human and animal cells/tissues on glass slides, including either chromogenic or fluorescent multispectral scanning, (2) image analysis of digital images generated with single or multiple probes in visible light or fluorescent wavelength ranges. The core also has a number of state-of-the art imaging and molecular instrumentation (laser-capture microdissection, nanostring, confocal, lightsheet microscope etc.) that are available to researchers.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Cedars-Sinai Research Imaging Core (RIC) is an advanced imaging center dedicated to providing high-quality imaging services tailored to the unique needs of the research community from rodents and large animals to human subjects. We offer a Clinical 3T MRI (Vida, Siemens) and simultaneous Clinical PET/MR (Biograph, Siemens) for human and large animal subjects, as well as in-Vivo Small Animal/Specimen CT (PerkElmer Quantum GX2), Cryofluoresence Tomography (EMIT) Optical (IVIS Spectrum and Luminar XR), Small Animal image guided irradiator (X-RAD SmART), micro-ultrasound imaging system (Vevo 3100) and Small Animal 4Dx Lung imaging services for research.
Our facility is staffed with highly trained and experienced personnel, including expert research scientists, technologists, registered nurses, and additional support staff to ensure the most positive experience. We also offer core IRB/IACUC protocol support and seed grants to help get your research started quickly, and a dedicated research PACS and post-processing software to support data transfer, image analysis and data processing. In addition to research imaging, the Siemens systems are licensed for clinical use to allow standard-of-care, diagnostic imaging performed in conjunction with research imaging. We welcome and look forward to working with all CTSI investigators.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Bioimaging and Immunotherapeutics Research Core provides four major resources to researchers: (1) the BD Calibur flow cytometer facility, which employs a dual-laser (argon and helium-neon), 4-color FACS Calibur flow cytometer and cell sorter to facilitate the molecular and physiological examination of individual cells and enable collection of living cells for further study; (2) the IVIS Lumina II system, a high- sensitivity, in vivo imaging technology platform that enables non-invasive visualization of both bioluminescent and fluorescent signals, tracking of cellular and therapeutic activities within a living organism in real time, and detection of signals from tissue, petri dishes, and microtiter plates; (3) a Luminex multiplex analyzer that utilizes xMAP microsphere technology and has the capability of performing up to 100 assays simultaneously in a single well of a microtiter plate; and (4) a Biotek Synergy 2 multi- mode microplate reader, a combination luminometer-fluorometer-absorbance detector capable of reading 96-well and larger plates that utilizes both filter-based and monochromatic- based light-detection technology.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The mission of the Advanced Light Microscopy and Spectroscopy Laboratory (ALMS) is to provide consultation, services, and support for the application of novel microscopic and spectroscopic methods and advanced image analysis techniques for the study of macromolecules, cellular dynamics, and nano-scale characterization of bio-materials. The facilities provide a collection of high-level, customized fluorescence microscopes and small-animal imaging devices that provide the ability to study biological processes with high spatial and temporal resolution in whole organisms and in living cells down to the single molecule detection level with nanometer accuracy. Services include: (1) wide-field fluorescence imaging microscopy, (2) confocal and two-photon laser scanning microscopy (point scanning and spinning disk), (3) fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), (4) fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), (5) microscopic and macroscopic fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) with time-correlated-single-photon-counting and near-infrared detection, (6) super-resolution microscopy (STED and STORM), (7) microscopic and macroscopic (small animal) spectral unmixing, (8) laser capture microdissection, (9) light-sheet microscopy and (10) image analysis.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center is committed to facilitating the development and growth of the field of Brain Mapping, a sub-discipline of neuroscience which uses brain imaging to better understand the structure and function of the human brain in health and alterations associated with disease. It is comprised of resources located in the core facility, the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, as well as additional resources housed in the Reed Neurological Research Center and the Neuroscience Research Building. Services include: (1) imaging (MRI), (2) NeuroModulation, (3) data analysis, (4) data center, and (5) the DIVE (Data Immersive Visualization Environment).
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Biological Chemistry Imaging Facility (BCIF) provides resources for data acquisition and analysis for radioactive, fluorescent, and photographic samples as well as digital imaging and document production. BCIF provides round-the-clock access to a cluster of modern equipment such as Typhoons 9410 and 9400 Variable Mode Imagers, Storm 820 and 840 imagers, Laser Densitometer, Gel Documentation System, color printers, and high-resolution scanners. In addition, BCIF provides unlimited scientific data storage space on its secure storage arrays to all participating labs and access to a number of software packages for data analysis and digital data processing.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Brain Research Institute Electron Microscopy Core Facility houses a JEOL 100CX transmission electron microscope. A Reichert Ultracut ultramicrotome is also available for use by trained personnel. Services include: (1) fixation and embedding of specimens, thin sectioning, (2) use of the electron microscopes (with or without assistance), (3) gold labeling, (4) negative stain, and (5) light microscopy of plastic embedded materials. The facility offers advice on appropriate preparatory procedures and other technical matters. Training and assistance in the use of the electron microscope is also offered.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Brain Research Institute Microscopic Techniques Laboratory offers instructions in microscopic techniques and assistance in tissue specimen preparation including rodents perfusion for light microscopic observation. Histological procedures available include: (1) some immunocytochemistry staining, (2) special stains, (3) paraffin sectioning, (4) vibratome sectioning, (5) cryostat sectioning, (6) plastic embedding and (6) sectioning. The laboratory also provides staining setups, a cryostat, microtomes, a vibratome, and a Nikon photomicroscope for use by trained personnel.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Electron Imaging Center for Nanomachines (EICN) provides state-of-the-art electron microscopy instruments and assisted usage services. Highly experienced staff provides necessary training and can help users address complex electron imaging needs. EICN offers advanced electron imaging techniques for visualizing materials, nanomachines, and cellular structures at atomic or nanometer scales in 2D and 3D. Services available: (1) instrument training, (2) self usage, (3) assisted usage, and (4) data processing.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Nano and Pico Characterization (NPC) Laboratory provides Provides both state-of-the-art microscopic techniques to visualize surfaces, adsorbates, nanostructures and devices at the atomic and molecular scale as well as a unique opportunity for researchers to gain insight into local properties under a wide range of experimental conditions.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Provides state-of-the-art small animal imaging. It functions both as a shared preclinical imaging resource for UCLA researchers and as a hub for emerging imaging research and technology development. The same technologies and services are also available to the larger research community including other academic institutes and industry groups through contract work. The Imaging Center, operating through its sales- and-service, offers microPET, microCT, bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging modalities and complementary in vitro/ex vivo services including cell-based assays, biodistribution, digital autoradiography and dosimetry. Companion PET tracer radiochemistry and radiolabeling services are available in-house and is supported by on- campus cyclotron facilities. Technical and analytical support are available throughout the study process: initial consultation, experimental design and optimization, imaging protocols and techniques, post-acquisition data analysis and interpretation. Training and staff assistance are available. The Imaging Center is part of the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging and is supported by the expertise of its faculty members, world leaders in various imaging sciences.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Our primary service is human MRI research scanning; the rate is 600/hour, and we have a full suite of advanced pulse sequences for structural functional, diffusion, blood flow and spectroscopic imaging. We also have EEG systems in shielded rooms, and MRI compatible EEG.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Translational Research Imaging Center (TRIC) at UCLA is a state-of-the-art, pre-clinical and human cadaver, diagnostic and interventional imaging center. With over 25 years of expertise, our team of physicians, scientists, fellows, technologists, and veterinary staff support pre-clinical studies and imaging procedures across the field of medicine. TRIC is dedicated to the development and testing of new medical devices, imaging technologies, drug therapies as well as novel treatments. Our dedicated staff include: Board-certified Interventional Radiologists, Board-certified Radiologists, MR Physicists, Veterinarians, Statisticians, and Experienced Research Assistants. The TRIC Lab imaging equipment and support systems include: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)– Siemens Magnetom 3T Prisma MRI whole-body system, X-Ray Angiography – Siemens Artis Zeego Angiogram Suite with robotic C arm with 3D rotational angiography and DynaCT capabilities, Computed Tomography (CT) – Siemens Somatom Definition 64 Dual Source scanner, X-Ray Angiography – Philips Allura Xper FD-10 Angiogram Suite with floor mounted C arm with 3D rotational angiography capabilities, iU22 Philips Ultrasound system for general imaging, PACS data management system, observation and recovery suites, multi-modality 3D-image post-processing, High-Definition video integration for Telepresence video conferencing.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Molecular Therapeutics Core provides a cross-disciplinary resource for researchers engaged in structural biology, therapeutics development, and drug discovery research. Services include: (1) pilot recombinant protein production, (2) large-scale protein production, (3) biophysical characterization, (4) molecular modeling and drug design, and (5) x-ray crystallographic services. Initial consultations are available free-of-charge.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Proteomics, Metabolomics and Mitochondrial Function Core is defined by technically diverse instrumentation with the most advanced technologies available to the fields of proteomics, metabolomics, and quantitative targeted protein assays. These technologies are dedicated to the identification and quantitative analysis of analytes from all types of biological samples including whole blood, plasma, CSF, cells or tissues and include samples originating from cell culture, animal models or patient-derived research studies. Services include a wide variety of discovery proteomics assays, identification of co- and post-translational modifications (phosphorylation, acetylation, methylation citrullination and more), as well as the fields leading methodologies for protein dynamics and protein-protein interactions.
A selection of targeted mass spectrometry-based assays is available for quantification of protein panels associated with important cellular pathways and functions. In addition to the many mass spectrometry-based assays available, the core is equipped with two of the field’s leading immunoassay platforms, (1) ultra-sensitive digital ELISA, SIMOA HD-1 Analyzer (2) high-performance electrochemiluminescence ELISA platform, MESO QuickPlex SQ 12, and a brand new O-Link Immunoassay platform.
New this year, single-cell functional proteomics are also available via the Isoplexis DuoSpark system.
All Proteomics and Metabolomic Core services include data analysis and a data release consultation. Advanced bioinformatic services for biological pathway analyzes and multi-omic data integration are also available through the core bioinformatic services.
To complement molecular phenotyping of mitochondria by metabolomics and proteomics, we recently incorporated instrumentation for seahorse respirometry and support a suite of seahorse XFp instruments. These respirometry platforms enable quantification of cellular metabolism by glycolytic and oxidative pathways and in response to numerous nutrient sources and perturbations. Our Mitochondria and Metabolomics experts wield expertise to advise on complex interrogations of mitochondrial biology and we offer consultation and support on techniques for in-depth mitochondrial characterization beyond respirometry, to include mitochondrial morphometry, turnover rates, membrane potential, mPTP susceptibility, cytochrome c release, free radical production, mtDNA sequencing and 8- oxo-dG analysis.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Biomedical Mass Spectrometry Facility (BMSF) supports clinical research projects in clinical nutrition and metabolic research. The BMSF specializes in experimental design using stable isotopes and analytical methods (13C carbon tracing) for physiological or metabolic investigations. It provides unique services in isotopomer distribution analysis of metabolites (tracer-based metabolomics) using GC/MS (or LC-TOF). In addition, the BMSF offers collaborations in the area of metabolite profiling and modeling of metabolic systems with tracers. Services provided include: (1) sample preparation, (2) quantitative and qualitative analysis by GC/MS, IRMS and LC/MS, (3) consultation, (4) collaboration in metabolite profiling and tracer-based metabolomics, and (5) training on approved projects.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Guenther Molecular Biology Core supports investigators performing morphological, biochemical, cell and molecular biological studies both at cellular and subcellular levels. Consultation and training services are provided for localization of genes, RNA transcripts and proteins in complex tissues as well subcellular distribution in tissues. The laboratory houses five types of state-of the art equipment: an Agilent Bioanalyzer, two Applied Biosystem StepOne Plus Sequence Detection Systems, one Applied Biosystems 7900HT 384 well real-time quantitative PCR system, one Leica Confocal SP8 platform, and a Palm Microbeam. The Guenther Core also has a facility for immunohistochemistry studies.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Institute consists of 3 core laboratories—the Laboratory for Biochemistry, Molecular Phenotyping, and Microarray; the Laboratory for Statistical and Mathematical Genetics; and the Laboratory for Molecular Genetics, Bioinformatics, and High Throughput Genotyping. The Genomics Institute Faculty have been extremely active in large scale genetic studies and both single cohort and in multi-cohort (and multi-ethnic) consortium efforts that have identified many genetic loci for cardiometabolic traits. We have contributed to the design stages, to performance of biochemical phenotyping, to large scale genotyping, and to statistical genetic analysis. The many loci we and our collaborators have identified are being utilized by ourselves and others to generate multi-loci genetic risk scores as powerful tools to dissect disease etiology and to perform risk assessment in populations. Besides our involvement in many large scale genome wide association studies (GWAS), we are now actively involved in large scale whole genome sequencing studies (WGS) and Multi-Omics studies.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Provides 3-dimensional structure of small molecules in solid crystals via X-ray crystallography. Equipped for characterization of polycrystalline solid materials using powder and thin film diffraction techniques. The laboratory is a full service facility where staff deals with all aspects of service from crystal selection to publication of results. In-house training is a requirement if you wish to use the equipment yourself. Part of the UCLA Molecular Instrumentation Center, which is a campus wide facility open to the UCLA community. The facility also collaborates with personnel from other universities and industry both locally and internationally.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Lipidomics Laboratory provides the highest quality of quantitative lipid measurements from biological samples including cells, tissue, serum, and media. The lab offers automated sample preparation and two distinct mass spectrometry platforms: 1) shotgun lipidomics providing measurement of 1100 complex lipid species and 2) a fatty acid and sterols analysis compatible with isotopic labeling. Our full-service lab provides data analysis (including computational modeling of lipid flux parameters) and consultation services.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Consultation and technical assistance available to researchers prior to, and following, experiments. Evaluation of sample via Dynamic Light Scattering. Automatic setup of 4000 crystallization conditions per hour using 500uL of sample. (Hanging or Sitting Drops). The Mosquito from TTP, Labcyte ECHO525 and Tecan GENESIS are used for Liquid Dispensing. Capable of distinguishing between organic and inorganic crystals using a sophisticated UV/vis microscope. Optimization of crystallization conditions. Storage of plates in temperature controlled incubators at 4, 15, and 20C. Optimization of crystallization conditions using a library of 1,500 commercial compounds. Affinity and Kinetics Characterization with the ForteBio OCTET Red96 instrument. The Labcyte ECHO 525 is used for acoustic liquid dispensing. Production of stereolithography files from Pymol, 3D design of labware, 3D SLA and Filament printing.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Lab at the Molecular Instrumentation Center (MIC) is heavily used with broad participation of users from many disciplines. Researchers from many different research groups in 12 different campus departments, make use of the instrumentation in the NMR lab after a thorough training process. The major equipment available consists of six NMR spectrometers: Bruker NEO600, DRX500, AV500, AV400, AV300 for liquid samples and AV600 for solid-state samples. Most spectrometers are equipped with broadband probes covering frequencies from 31P to 15N, the AV500 is equipped with a cryoprobe capable of only 1H and 13C experiments, the NEO600 is equipped with a broadband cryoprobe and 19F experiments are available on the AV300 and AV400. Variable temperature and multipulse experiments are also available.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Mass Spectrometry Laboratory provides a wide range of sample characterization techniques for researchers. Mass spectrometry services include: (1) a variety of ionization methods including electron, chemical, matrix assisted laser desorption, direct analysis in real time, electrospray, and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization and ICP, (2) a variety of analyzers including time of flight, quadrupole, ion trap, Orbitrap, and several tandem combinations of mass analyzers, and (3) microflow, nanoflow and regular flow liquid chromatography. For proteomics studies, some equipment is available for protein/peptide identification. In addition, the facility provides consultation for sample preparation, experimental design, analysis of protein expression patterns, data mining, and operation of the various instruments. This laboratory is a part of the UCLA Molecular Instrumentation Center.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Materials Characterization Laboratory offers thermal, optical, microscopic, electrical, and magnetic characterization of materials and elemental analysis of surfaces via a wide range of instruments including: (1) light scattering spectrometers, (2) several spectrophotometers, (3) scanning probe microscopes (AFM/STM), (4) a SQUID magnetometer, (5) a scanning electron microscope, and (6) an X-Ray photoelectron spectrometer. This laboratory is a part of the UCLA Molecular Instrumentation Center.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Metabolomics Center enables investigators to study metabolism with a particular focus on central carbon metabolism and several branch pathways (glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway, TCA cycle, nucleos(t)ide synthesis, etc.). Metabolite analysis can be performed on a variety of specimens (e.g. cultured cells, culture medium, blood, urine, tissue). Generally, relative amounts of metabolites are measured, but absolute amounts can be determined as well. Tracing experiments using stable isotope-labeled metabolites (C13, N15, D) are routinely performed. For data analysis, relative amounts of metabolites as well as mass isotopologue distributions (if isotope tracing was performed) are calculated. Results are illustrated using bar graphs, heatmaps, and principal component analysis. Customized analysis is available.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Molecular Screening Shared Resource (MSSR) is a core facility open to all research labs on campus. The services provided include assay development and execution, data mining and the use of robotic high throughput screening (HTS) technology.
For small molecule drug discovery, a total of roughly 300,000 compounds in various libraries are available. The MSSR is currently funded by the JCCC and the California NanoSystems Institute as well as grants from the NIH and DOD. We have libraries covering FDA approved drugs, kinases, natural products as well as human metabolites. Assays will be automated to enable rapid screening of 10,000+ tests per diem using our custom robotics. Also available are accompanying assay development services that can take advantage of our set of 20 validated reporter gene constructs. We have high content screening capabilities or support all plate reader based readouts including luminescence, alpha, TF-FRET, FRET, fluorescence, OD etc..
For CRISPR cell line engineering, we offer CRISPR services such as the generation of KO cells in all cellular backgrounds as well as the execution of CRISPR screens using Cas9 or Cas-i/a. Also available are services for the generation of cell lines overexpressing any transgene desired through lentiviral or transposon based technologies. Also available are arrayed cDNA, siRNA, shRNA and CRISPR sets for the mouse/human genome. Individual clones are any of these libraries (cDNA, lentiviral cDNA , shRNA and CRISPR) are available against nearly any gene in the genome. Resulting cells are available as populations or individual clones.
For automated confocal or widefield imaging, we provide services including the robotically automated imaging of samples in multi-well format (e.g. 6 well, 96 well and 384 well plates) as well as slide based imaging. The services include fully automated imaging which does not require any manual labor.
For image analysis we provide services that take advantage of an industrial strength data processing pipeline that offers conventional image analysis through pre-formulated algorithms as well as novel artificial intelligence based image analysis capabilities that enable quantification of complex phenotypes (e.g. neurite outgrowth, colony formation etc.) and also enable image analysis from phase contrast images without fluorescent stains. This platform also offers deep learning approaches towards phenotype classification algorithms useful for categorizing of phenotypic cellular responses.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The NMR Core Facility provides advanced NMR spectrometers and related equipment for the study of macromolecular structure and dynamics in solution by experienced users. In this capacity the core facility primarily provides the research tools in which to perform detailed measurements on complex biological systems. Non-expert members of the DOE laboratory receive access to NMR spectroscopy for more routine applications. These applications include: screening wild-type and mutated protein samples to determine their structural integrity, making small molecule binding affinity measurements, and temperature and denaturant studies of protein stability.
Last updated February 1, 2023
Provides consultation, training, and access to and technical assistance for metabolomics, proteomics (top-down and bottom-up) and targeted small molecule quantitation using mass spectrometry and chromatography.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Protein Expression Technology Center (PETC) facilitates the expression and purification of proteins for structure/function studies. The PETC provides support in all aspects of protein expression from cloning through expression optimization and protein purification. The core also offers peptide and protein display services to identify protein binders (peptides, nanobodies, and DARPins) by bacterial and yeast display. The lab has recently acquired a fluorescent activated cell sorter (FACS) to facilitate display, and other projects, requiring sorting of bacterial and yeast cells. The PETC is a UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics facility but is open to all researchers.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Proteome Research Center is a full-service technology center that offers a comprehensive suite of proteomic services to the UCLA community and other partnering institutions. By bringing together state-of-the-art instrumentation and high- level technical staff, the goal of the facility is to transform traditional experimental paradigms by providing investigators access to powerful analytical workflows for systems-level characterization of complex biological systems, biomarker discovery and validation, and protein complex characterization. Available services include: (1) complex protein mixture analysis using single and multidimensional fractionation strategies, (2) peptide quantitation using SILAC, iTRAQ / TMT, and label-free methodologies, (3) targeted and global PTM enrichment and characterization approaches, (4) identification of protein interaction networks using affinity-based isolation and proximity tagging techniques, and (5) targeted proteomic assay development using parallel reaction monitoring (PRM) for relative and absolute quantitation.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA-DOE and Biochemistry Shared Instrumentation core facility provides the UCLA research community open access to sophisticated equipment for biochemical studies. These facilities house a wide array of detection systems useful for analysis, quantification, and identification of all types of macromolecules and their molecular interactions. It also carries equipment for cell culturing, harvesting, lysis, and high-speed centrifugation useful for biomolecule preparation.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Nanoelectronics Research Facility (NRF) and Integrated Systems Nanofabrication Clean Room (ISNC) have merged to form the UCLA Nanofabrication Laboratory (UCLA NanoLab). UCLA NanoLab is a shared-use clean-room that provides state-of-the-art equipment, facilities, and technical expertise for fabricating the most demanding nano-scale structures and devices. The UCLA NanoLab was created to support all aspects of nanofabrication-related research and to advance research and learning in nano-science. Services include: (1) e-beam lithography, (2) optical lithography, (3) thin-film deposition, (4) dry etch, (5) thermal processing, (6) metrology, and (7) access to integrated bio-suites.
Last updated February 1, 2023
X-ray and EM Structure Determination Core Technology Center in the UCLA-DOE Institute provides state-of-the-art resources to researchers, enabling the detailed 3-D analysis of biological macromolecules that play essential roles in human health. The facility operates as a full service core that offers access to sophisticated equipment and technologies as well as advice and technical assistance in sample preparation, data collection, processing, atomic refinement, and modeling. Services include: (1) aid in crystallization and sample preparation for CryoEM, (2) X-ray and characterization of crystals, (3) In-House data collection of X-ray and micro Electron Diffraction and at the synchrotron, (4) processing and quality analysis of data, and (5) structure determination and display.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Computer Shop provides technical support for research, teaching, and administrative functions. Two IT Programmer/Analysts are on staff to provide electronic design and fabrication for custom electronics solutions to unique situations encountered in research projects. The staff has expertise in Macintosh, IBM clone computers, peripherals, printers, and network interfacing, including installation, setup, upgrades, demonstration, troubleshooting, repair, and modification services. The Computer Shop also provides design, development, and installation of local area networks, specifying hubs, network cards, cable types, and software. Consultation is provided to determine appropriate hardware/software solutions.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The Integrated Nanomaterials Laboratory (INML) is a state-of-the-art nanomaterials synthesis and characterization facility. INML addresses the critical technological needs of the future through material development as nanoscience is integrated with disciplines such as electronics, photonics, renewable energy, chemistry, biology, and physics. Services include: (1) Epitaxial services by molecular beam epitaxy and (2) characterization services by cryogenic-temperature photoluminescence, Micro-Photoluminescence, FTIR, and I-V/C-V.
Last updated February 1, 2023
The UCLA Nanofabrication Laboratory (UCLA NanoLab) is a shared-use clean-room that provides state-of-the-art equipment, facilities, and technical expertise for fabricating the most demanding nano-scale structures and devices. The UCLA NanoLab was created to support all aspects of nanofabrication-related research and to advance research and learning in nano-science. Services include: (1) e-beam lithography, (2) optical lithography, (3) thin-film deposition, (4) dry etch, (5) thermal processing, (6) metrology, and (7) access to integrated bio-suites.
Last updated February 1, 2023
NCATS’ Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program supports efforts to solve system-wide translational research problems in part by developing and implementing ways to improve the success of U.S. clinical trials. One initiative, CTSA Accrual to Clinical Trials (CTSA ACT), was launched to do just that by developing a nationwide network of sites that share EHR data. It contains over 150 million patient records, and ~90% of the CTSA consortium. Building on existing platforms and operating models to create a “federated” network with common standards, data terminology, and shared resources, CTSA ACT investigators are focused on data harmonization (using the same term for the same type of data) across EHR platforms; technical needs assessment and implementation; regulatory approaches to ensure compliance with protocols for data access and participant contact; and governance development to establish proper agreements among institutions. ACT helps clinical investigators conduct cohort discovery before a trial starts, to establish feasibility of a clinical protocol for grant applications, IRB submission, etc. ACT also helps investigators identify additional sites for a clinical trial. By allowing investigators to thoroughly explore patient cohorts and potential sites before finalizing their clinical protocols, ACT increases the odds of successfully completing clinical trial recruitment. NCATS ACT provides infrastructure for streamlined informatics solutions across the CTSA Consortium.
Last updated April 25, 2023
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a broad set of commercial computing, storage, database, analytics, application, and deployment services. AWS is used by the UC locations to host websites and web applications, provide backup and disaster recovery, support high bandwidth computing services, and more. Over the past four years, the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) has developed policies, procedures, and the requisite infrastructure for secured, HIPAA-compliant computing within AWS. DGSOM investigators are now able to spin up, through a self-service portal, on-demand virtual machines (VMs) (per their specifications) with common software packages (e.g., R, python libraries, etc.). Authentication and connections to the VMs are linked directly to UCLA’s credentialing system and behind firewalls, ensuring compliance with all UCLA security policies and with routine auditing in place. Methods for per user charges have been established to support researchers, with active engagement by the DGSOM information technology group (DGIT) to expand and enrich offerings.
As of February 2017, UCLA is an Amazon Web Service (AWS) Educate Institution. AWS Educate is Amazon’s global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to greatly accelerate cloud-related learning to help prepare students for a cloud-enabled workplace. AWS Educate provides four pillars of grant-based support for educators and students: 1) content on the Cloud contributed by top educators and AWS to help build courses; 2) training materials to better understand AWS; 3) collaboration tools such as discussion forums, events, and places to upload and rate content; and 4) credits to access AWS services for free.
Last updated April 25, 2023
The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) is the nation’s largest state health survey in the nation and is conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research in collaboration with the California Department of Public Health and the Department of Health Care Services. CHIS is a web and telephone survey conducted on a continuous basis and covers a wide range of health topics. The survey provides: statewide information on the overall population including many racial and ethnic groups; county-level information for most counties to aid with health planning, priority setting, and to compare health outcomes in numerous ways; and ZIP code, city, and legislative district information via the online Web tool, AskCHIS Neighborhood Edition (NE).
CHIS is conducted on a continuous basis, allowing the survey to generate timely one-year estimates. CHIS data are released annually in the following formats: Health Profiles in easy-to-read, one-page fact sheets containing key health statistics for the state; Publications through the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research; the Center’s Data Access Center with CHIS data that are not publicly available; AskCHIS, a free, online tool that enables the production of customized health statistics at multiple levels; AskCHIS Neighborhood Edition (NE), a free, online tool that enables the generation, mapping, and exporting of customized estimates at a local level; and Public Use Files (PUFs) which contain a full (one-year) cycle of CHIS data in a variety of data formats, including SAS, SPSS, and STATA.
CHIS provides representative data on all 58 counties in California and provides a detailed picture of the health and health care needs of California’s large and diverse population. Participants in the CHIS survey are chosen at random and the sample is extensive enough to be statistically representative of California's diverse population. In addition, the sampling strategy and very large sample size enables us to pinpoint health information by the three ISP groups identified—Children, Older adults, and Disparity groups (e.g., African-Americans, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders). In 2020, 22,661 households in Los Angeles County were surveyed, including 21,949 adults, 1,365 adolescents, and 3,548 children. Although the sample sizes are not enormous for each disparity population, analysis of CHIS data can provide a window for health metrics for prevalent conditions and for the larger special populations.
Last updated April 25, 2023
eMERGE is a national network organized and funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) that combines DNA biorepositories with electronic medical record (EMR) systems for large scale, high-throughput genetic research in support of implementing genomic medicine. In its projects, eMERGE studies and pilots genomic medicine translation through discovery, implementation, tools, and policy. During Phase I and II, the Network deployed more than 40 electronic phenotype algorithms across more than 55,000 participants with dense genomic data. Returning clinical results has been implemented or planned for pilot at sites across the Network. A large-scale survey of patient attitudes regarding data sharing is being sent to 90,000 clinic patients across the country. A multicenter pilot of returning genome sequence information to electronic medical records (EMRs) for use in healthcare is almost complete. Themes of genomics, bioinformatics, genomic medicine, ethnics, data sharing, privacy, and community engagement are of particular relevance to eMERGE.
The eMERGE program started in September 2007 and is currently in its fourth phase, which started in July 2020 and will end in April 2025. The network demonstrated that EMR phenotyping to develop cohorts for genome-wide studies was a robust approach to genetic discovery, defined approaches for enhancing privacy of shared EMR data, and engaged patients and communities in consent and data sharing. eMERGE expanded to include 7 clinical sites in 2011 and 2 pediatric sites in 2012.
eMERGE is openly interested in collaborations. Current external collaborations include the US Air Force, ENCODE, IGNITE, and the larger ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues) community. eMERGE is dedicated to developing tools, identifying best practices, and communicating results for participant consent, data sharing, and returning genomic research results, to benefit the broader medical and scientific communities and the general public.
Last updated April 25, 2023
The GATK Best Practices provide step-by-step recommendations for performing variant discovery analysis in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data. There are several different GATK Best Practices workflows tailored to particular applications depending on the type of variation of interest and the technology employed. The Best Practices documentation attempts to describe in detail the key principles of the processing and analysis steps required to go from raw reads coming off the sequencing machine, all the way to an appropriately filtered variant callset that can be used in downstream analyses. Wherever possible, the organization tries to provide guidance regarding experimental design, quality control (QC) and pipeline implementation options, but those are dependent on many factors including sequencing technology and the hardware infrastructure that are at your disposal, so you may need to adapt recommendations to your specific situation.
Last updated April 25, 2023
Last updated April 25, 2023
Harvard’s i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside) Center produces an open source data warehouse software system that enables clinical researchers to use existing clinical data for discovery research. The i2b2 platform currently enjoys wide international adoption by the CTSA network, academic health centers, and industry. Within the UCLA CTSI, the i2b2 data warehouse system forms the cornerstone for research access to clinical data across the CTSI. All four CTSI partner institutions are using i2b2 or are currently in the process of implementing it. UCLA has implemented it atop xDR; Cedars populates it directly from its Epic EHR; Harbor, through its parent organization, the LA County Department of Health Services (LAC DHS), which implemented it along with their Cerner EHR system; and CDU implemented i2b2 to serve a number of community clinics (Venice Family Clinic, San Fernando Valley Health Center, and the LA Net coalition).
The i2b2 Cohort Discovery System contains data from 2.5 million unique patients at UCLA. i2b2 is secure and designed for UCLA investigators to conduct searches on clinical data from Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center and other UCLA-affiliated clinics and departments. The search results provide a numeric count of patients that are based on de-identified data extracted from UCLA’s clinical data warehouse. Search criteria include demographics, diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-9, ICD-10 and CPT), labs, medications, visit details (including site locations), vital signs and vital status.
Last updated April 25, 2023
Formally launched in May 2014, Los Angeles Data Resource (LADR) is a joint project of major Los Angeles healthcare provider organizations, including UCLA, Cedars, CDU, USC, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and the City of Hope, aimed at enabling research that improves the health of all people in the region using data representing the continuum of care across the region’s major health systems. LADR enables investigators to assess how many patients at each participating institution match criteria for studies they are planning. The resulting counts of potentially eligible patients can then be used to foster research partnerships with co-investigators at the most appropriate sites. The key feature of LADR is its use of "private record linkage" technology to identify data from the same patients across the participating organizations. By creating this linkage, LADR enables institutions to assemble more data on patient treatments and other exposures along with more data on their outcomes, to enable research that could not be conducted by any individual organization. Data on individual patients can only be obtained after further approvals from each institution that chooses to participate in the proposed study. LADR is a cohort discovery tool, meaning only patient counts can be retrieved. These are based on de-identified data extracted from each institution’s clinical data warehouse, transformed into a common data representation, and stored in a separate, dedicated data repository at each institution. LADR allows investigators to conduct interactive searches across the participating organizations based on patients’: (1) demographic characteristics (e.g. age, sex, race-ethnicity), (2) encounter diagnoses (ICD-9 & ICD-10), (3) laboratory test results, (4) medications prescribed, (5) procedures (CPT, ICD-9 & ICD-10), and (6) vital signs and vital status. Patient information and full datasets cannot be accessed through this tool, but it is possible to gather this information outside of LADR. As of 2018, investigators can now search a total of 7.2 million patient records. In addition, the LADR Consortium is launching a Care Coordination Collaborative, focused on working with care coordination stakeholders across its member organizations to identify and implement best practices for capturing and using data on the social determinants of health in the EHR.
Last updated April 25, 2023
Qualtrics is a HIPAA and FERPA-compliant online survey platform that allows users to easily create a survey, collect and store data securely, analyze responses, and present results using professional-quality graphs. It is available to the UCLA CTSI and to UCLA Health faculty, staff, and students at no cost. The service can be used to support academic research, teaching, institutional business, and to reinforce key decisions with insights from colleagues, customers, employees, and more. Qualtrics provides support, user guides, and training to research staff.
Last updated April 25, 2023
REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a secure, web-based application for quickly building and managing online surveys, data collection forms and databases. REDCap provides audit trails for tracking data manipulation and user activity, as well as automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to Excel, PDF, and common statistical packages (SPSS, SAS, Stata R). REDCap also supports high-level data security, access logs, data storage, and onsite and offsite backup. The CTSI and its program areas support and utilize REDCap at UCLA. The electronic capture system (EDC) is a modified version of Research EDC (REDCap) system [version 7.4.23]. REDCap is powered by the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and was created to address common challenges facing academic biomedical researchers using electronic database systems. REDCap is flexible enough to be used for a variety of types of research and provides an intuitive user interface for database design and data entry. It is a secure, web application designed to support data capture for research studies, providing real-time data entry validation (e.g. for data types and range checks), audit trails, and a de-identified data export mechanism to common statistical packages (SPSS, SAS, Stata, R/S-Plus). Another important feature is the ability to easily build real-time reports that can monitor completeness and quality of data. REDCap generates a study-specific data dictionary defined in an iterative self-documenting process by all members of the research team. This iterative development and testing process results in a well-planned data collection strategy for individual studies.
Based on extensive expertise and experience, REDCap has been modified to ensure that it performs at a higher and more secure level as required by clinical trials standards for EDC systems. These standards include Health Insurance Portability and Accountability act (HIPAA), 21 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) chapter 11, and the Good Clinical Data Management Practices (GCDMP) guidelines published by the Society for Clinical Data Management (SCDM). All DOMStat statisticians and data managers are extensively trained in database building and management through REDCap, and are expected to build at least one database on their own as part of their training. DOMStat has additionally built and maintained sample tracking databases through REDCap for multiple projects at UCLA (e.g. projects in lung transplant, kidney transplant, ophthalmology, genetics, lung cancer). Because all faculty and staff are experts in database management and keep diligent project records, any DOMStat member can take over a project or assist with a project when the person assigned to a project is unavailable. DOMStat additionally has expertise in using all tools available through REDCap, including external modules made available through Vanderbilt University and the REDCap community.
Last updated April 25, 2023
The University of California Health System, with 18 health professional schools, six medical centers, and 10 hospitals, has built a secure central data warehouse for operational improvement, promotion of quality patient care, and to enable the next generation of clinical research. The repository currently securely holds data on over five million patients seen since 2012, treated by nearly 100,000 healthcare providers in nearly 200 million encounters, with over 300 million procedures, more than 600 million medication orders, and with nearly 2 billion vital signs measurements and test results. Over 600,000 of these patients are primary care patients. This data warehouse is used to construct several secure web-based dashboards, enabling strategic and operational leaders and clinical directors to see and compare current healthcare quality and costs across the University of California. De-identification of the data has already been completed to enable clinical research projects, under guidance from UC campus institutional review boards, privacy and compliance officers, and information security officers. This data is stored in the OMOP open vendor-neutral data model, enabling a wide range of software tools and computational methods to be used consistently with other state and national efforts. This comprehensive view of UC-wide health data is utilized for comparative analysis to drive population health studies and improve the delivery of patient care across the state of California.
Last updated April 25, 2023
xDR is a large-scale clinical data warehouse that supports data analyses and extractions for research as well as analytics to support clinical quality management functions of UCLA Health. The xDR system is maintained by UCLA Health’s Office of Health Informatics and Analytics (OHIA) and is co-managed by BIP. The xDR contains data derived from multiple clinical systems including the CareConnect Clarity data warehouse; other systems in Radiology, Pathology and other clinical departments; and “legacy” data from older outpatient and hospital billing and managed care systems. xDR is housed within UCLA’s HIPAA-covered entity and is governed by all the privacy and security policies that apply to PHI at UCLA. In 2019, both CareConnect and xDR were migrated to a physically secure data center in Irvine, CA. xDR can now be directly accessed only via a Citrix client and, for research purposes, only by BIP staff who are designated to act as honest brokers for research.
From calendar years 1/1/2019-12/31/2020, the UCLA honest broker team has completed and provisioned 164 research data sets for investigators. These EHR data sets included a total of 3,606,053 patient identities and 2,376,908,250 individual data elements. In addition, to improve our data provisioning efficiency, we are nearing completion of an “e-honest broker” system that automates the extraction of normalized, analysis-ready patient data from the xDR, along with descriptive documentation. xDR and e-honest broker functionality will be enhanced to facilitate automatic streaming into data enclaves.
Last updated April 25, 2023
Biomathematics 170A. Introductory Biomathematics for Medical Investigators. (4) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Intensive elementary statistics course emphasizing design and applications to observational studies and experiments/clinical trials. Statistical topics include study design, descriptive statistics, elementary probability and distributions, confidence intervals and hypothesis testing, sample size and power, linear regression and correlation, analysis of variance, nonparametric statistics. Applications to biomedical literature and design of clinical trials. Letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics 259. Controversies in Clinical Trials. (2) Lecture, one hour; discussion, one hour. Preparation: completion of professional health sciences or M.D. degree. Required of all MS in Clinical Research students. Discussion and analysis of eight published and well-known trials with students, one invited clinical faculty member, and course director. Development of critical ability to evaluate trial design and pitfalls. S/U or letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics M260A-M260B. Methodology in Clinical Research I, II. (4-4) Lecture, four hours. Recommended preparation: M.D., PhD, or dental degree. Requisites: courses 170A, 265A. Course M260A is requisite to M260B. Presentation of principles and practices of major disciplines underlying clinical research methodology, such as biostatistics, epidemiology, pharmacokinetics. S/U or letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics M260C. Methodology in Clinical Research III. (4) (Same as Medicine M260C.) Discussion, four hours. Recommended preparation: M.D., PhD, or dental degree. Presentation of principles and practices of major disciplines underlying clinical research methodology, such as biostatistics, epidemiology, pharmacokinetics. S/U or letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics M261. Responsible Conduct of Research Involving Humans. (2) (Same as Medicine M261.) Lecture, two hours; discussion, two hours. Preparation: completion of one basic course in protection of human research subjects through Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative. Discussion of current issues in responsible conduct of clinical research, including reporting of research, basis for authorship, issues in genetic research, principles and practice of research on humans, conflicts of interest, Institutional Review Board (IRB), and related topics. S/U or letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics M262. Communication of Science. (2) (Same as Psychiatry M230.) Lecture, two hours; discussion, one hour. Presentation of various types of scientific writings and their good practice. Details of writing specific articles: methods, results, discussion. Writing of review article. Grant submissions: aims, background, results, design. Role of appendices. Communication with lay public. S/U or letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics 264. Applied Data Collection and Analysis. (4) Lecture, four hours. Presentation of research project development, including protocol development, data collection, quality control, clinical/electronic health record (EHR) data, structuring data for analysis, and data archival. Lectures, in-class practicums using actual studies and datasets, and student presentations. Letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics 265A. Data Analysis Strategies I. (4) Lecture, two hours; laboratory, two hours. Preparation: MD or PhD degree. Requisite: course 170A. Designed to provide students with hands-on experience developing and testing hypotheses using various types of databases. Topics include developing testable hypothesis, data management, and analysis strategies and written presentation of findings. Experience with full process of hypothesis generation, operationalization of variables, selection of analysis techniques, and presentation of findings so students are better prepared to complete data analysis, interpretation of results, and written presentation of their findings (e.g., for master’s thesis and subsequent articles). Students encouraged to provide their own data. Databases provided for use in completing exercises for those without available data. Letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics 266A. Applied Regression Analysis in Medical Sciences. (4) Lecture, three hours; laboratory, one hour. Requisite: course 170A. Proficiency in applied regression analysis, with focus on interpretation of results and performing computation. Primary topics include simple linear regression, multiple regression, regression model selection, analysis of variance, logistic regression, and survival analysis. Letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics 266B. Advanced Biostatistics. (4) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisite: course 266A. Continuation of course 266A. Some traditional multivariate methods, such as principle components, factor analysis, cluster analysis, and more contemporary methods, including recursive partitioning and missing data. Multilevel and longitudinal analysis. Letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics 285. Introduction to High-Throughput Data Analysis. (4) Seminar, three hours. Requisites: courses M260A, M260B. Introduction to high-throughput data analysis, including DNA microarray technologies and next- generation sequencing technology. Presentation of statistical methods and software for handling complex data produced by experiments using these technologies. Some hands-on training on data analysis provided. S/U or letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Biomathematics 596. Directed Individual Study or Research in Biomathematics. (2 to 12) Tutorial, to be arranged. Individual study on topics not yet covered by offerings of department. May be repeated for credit with topic change. S/U or letter grading.
Last updated June 1, 2020
Established by the Chancellor in the mid-1980s, the Conflict of Interest Review Committee (CIRC) is a peer review panel under the Office of Research Policy and Compliance composed of faculty from a broad cross section of academic disciplines throughout campus. The CIRC is responsible for reviewing personal financial interests disclosed by UCLA researchers, making determinations about whether those outside financial interests constitute conflicts of interest, and making recommendations about how those conflicts of interest can be eliminated, reduced, or managed so that research awards can be accepted and work can commence. In this role, the CIRC serves as the substantive independent review committee required under the State of California Political Reform Act and as the “designated official(s)” required under federal policy/regulation on financial conflicts of interest related to research.
To fulfill its mandate, the CIRC conducts individualized reviews. These reviews take into account factors such as the nature and magnitude of the disclosed financial interest(s), the type of research, and the investigators’ role/responsibilities to identify situations in which financial or other personal considerations may impact the proposed research.
The CIRC is advisory to the Vice Chancellor for Research (VCR). Members are appointed by the Chancellor, generally for three-year terms, and the VCR selects a current member to serve as Chair. If the VCR has a conflict of interest that requires recusal from a particular case, the Vice Chancellor – Academic Personnel will serve instead as the campus official who receives the CIRC’s advice.
Last updated April 26, 2023
The UCLA Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) was established as the local review body responsible for oversight of all research activities – including teaching laboratories – involving the use of hazardous biological material and recombinant or synthetic nucleic acids, as required and outlined in the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant or Synthetic Nucleic Acid Molecules (NIH Guidelines) and the CDC/NIH Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL). The IBC is a faculty-led committee appointed by the UCLA Vice Chancellor for Research (VCR) and consists of experts in various fields, including biosafety, human gene therapy, infectious disease, recombinant DNA, animal containment, plant containment, and occupational health. The IBC is responsible for establishing, monitoring, and enforcing policies and procedures involving hazardous biological materials and recombinant/synthetic nucleic acids to meet applicable federal, state, local, and institutional regulations and guidelines.
The IBC reviews and approves protocols for academic research and teaching laboratories involving the following materials: recombinant/synthetic nucleic acid molecules, as covered by the NIH Guidelines; infectious agents that can cause disease in healthy humans and/or significant environmental or agricultural impacts, as covered by the BMB; select agents and select toxins, as covered by the CDC DSAT regulations; human and nonhuman primate materials, as covered by the Cal/OSHA Bloodborne Pathogen Standard; and genetically-modified animals and whole plants, as covered by the NIH Guidelines. At its discretion, the IBC may also review protocols involving animals or animal specimens known to be reservoirs/vectors of zoonotic diseases.
Last updated April 26, 2023
The UCLA Office of Clinical Research provides services aimed at accelerating the entire clinical research process. The OCR serves the UCLA Health; its services provide help navigating the process from industry-sponsored contracting to IRB submission and reliance to study activation support. In order to deliver these comprehensive services, the OCR is comprised of six groups: Coordination Services & Education (CSE); Financial Coverage & Activation (FCA); Clinical Research Informatics Systems (CRIS); Clinical Trial Contracts & Sponsor Relations (CTC-SR); Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA); and Embedded Clinical Research Innovation (ECRI).
Coordination Services & Education (CSE). CSE is a resource within the OCR that assists UCLA faculty, staff, and clinical research teams with the regulatory, financial, and compliance-related components of clinical research during study activation, conduct, and closeout of a clinical trial. CSE includes three dedicated teams focused on advancing contributions in study activation, study conduct, and study team training and education.
Financial Coverage & Activation (FCA). The Financial Coverage & Activation (FCA) team within the Dean’s Office School of Medicine and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) provides a centralized performance of Coverage Analysis at UCLA (Health System). Nationally recognized as a thought-leader and best practice model for coverage analysis, FCA provides services that include the development of compliant clinical research budgets pursuant to Federal, State, and local laws and regulations as well as to UCOP and UCLA policies. Additionally, the FCA mitigates clinical research billing compliance risk, particularly those associated with multi-million dollar settlements with the federal government.
Clinical Research Information Systems (CRIS). UCLA Clinical Research Informatics Systems (CRIS) leverages technology in concert with workflow re-engineering to ensure efficient, compliant, and nimble clinical research business processes. CRIS produces transparent and actionable business metrics, provides business support and analytics, as well as system configuration, data management/migration, and workflow re-engineering. Other functions include training and end-user support. Additionally, the CRIS team manages and maintains OnCore, which is a clinical trials management system (CTMS) used at UCLA for the management of clinical trials in clinical research. The system maintains and manages planning, performing, and reporting functions at the study and subject level along with participant contact information and tracking of deadlines and milestones. The use of OnCore enables the study team to set up and manage all protocols and subjects in one place, supports clinical research billing, simplifies data management and monitoring, improves patient recruitment and tracking, and automates the flow of information between UCLA-based systems including WebIRB, Proposal and Award Tracking System (PATS), and CareConnect. The CRIS team works collaboratively with Financial Coverage and Activation, Clinical Research Business Partners (CRBP), and Research Connect team members to provide a variety of data solutions and operation management tools for clinical research teams.
Clinical Trial Contracts & Sponsor Relations (CTC-SR). The Clinical Trials Contracts & Strategic Relations (CTCSR) office at UCLA administers and has authority to negotiate and execute various agreements for industry-supported clinical trials including clinical trial agreements (CTA’s), confidentiality agreements (CDA’s), inbound and outbound subcontracts, and remote monitoring agreements. CTCSR coordinates with UCLA’s Conflict of Interest Review Committee (CIRC) as needed when a personal financial interest is disclosed by a UCLA researcher in relation to a clinical trial. Additionally, CTCSR serves as a primary consultative resource for faculty, staff, and business partners on matters concerning agreements under CTCSR’s purview.
Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA). The Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) provides a broad spectrum of support for clinical investigators and their study teams in the conduct and navigation of clinical research regulatory requirements. Services provided by this office include: Scientific and Feasibility Review, Data and Safety Monitoring, internal monitoring and auditing support, FDA and Sponsor inspection/audit preparation and guidance, ClinicalTrials.gov registration and results reporting assistance, FDA IND/IDE guidance and support, regulatory binder preparation, and more. The mission of the ORA is to guide and support the UCLA clinical research community through the different compliance requirements associated with the conduct of clinical research.
To see OCR services and programs, see the boilerplates "CTSI-supported collaborations and initiatives" section.
Last updated April 26, 2023
The UCLA Office of Contract and Grant Administration (OCGA) assists the campus research community in reviewing, approving and submitting proposal applications and negotiating and executing contracts and grants from government and non-profit sponsors. OCGA has primary responsibility for the interpretation of University-wide and campus policy, sponsor guidelines, and applicable federal and state laws and regulations related to governmental and non-profit sponsored activities. OCGA also executes all outgoing Subawards issued under grants or collaborative agreements.
Last updated April 26, 2023
OHRPP is the administrative arm of the UCLA Human Research Protection Program (HRPP). The OHRPP, in partnership with the research community, is responsible for ensuring the safety and welfare of participants in Human Research Projects conducted under the aegis of UCLA. The OHRPP provides the campus and the five UCLA Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) with professional guidance and administrative support. The IRBs are the committees designated by UCLA to review the conduct of research involving human subjects that is conducted by UCLA faculty and staff (conducting studies involving human subjects within the course and scope of their duties) as well as UCLA students (conducting studies involving human subjects within the course of their studies). The function of the IRBs is to ensure adherence to all federal, state, local, and institutional regulations concerning the protection of human subjects in research.
Last updated April 26, 2023
The primary role of the Office of Research Administration (ORA) is to provide the campus with professional guidance and administrative support for all sponsored research activities. ORA maintains accurate records and administrative oversight of research projects and ensures proper administration of contracts and grants awarded to CTSI researchers at UCLA through the following mechanisms: Office of Contract and Grant Administration (OCGA), Office of Research Policy and Compliance (ORPC), Extramural Fund Management (EFM), Office for the Protection for Research Subjects (OHRPP) and Research Safety and Animal Welfare (RSAWA).
Last updated April 26, 2023
Reporting to the Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer, the Office of APB supports UCLA executive management and campus-level strategic planning by providing objective, accurate, and timely data and analysis to inform central and unit decision making processes. It acts in an advisory role to the Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost in the allocation and administration of all campus funds. In addition, the office interacts with the Office of the President (OP) to ensure that the campus resource base and its flexibility are maximized and that the campus academic performance and programs are accurately characterized in systemwide reports. Working with academic units, APB also plays a key role in providing guidance and support at the programmatic level. APB develops and maintains official campus data and statistics to generate institutional information and analyses used by the college, schools, and departments in program planning and resource management. Official institutional data are also provided to accrediting organizations, federal departments, the state legislatures, and ranking agencies as part of the accountability reporting schedule.
Last updated April 26, 2023
The UCLA Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are the committees designated by UCLA to review the conduct of research involving human subjects that is conducted by UCLA faculty and staff (conducting studies involving human subjects within the course and scope of their duties) as well as UCLA students (conducting studies involving human subjects within the course of their studies). The function of the IRBs is to ensure adherence to all federal, state, local, and institutional regulations concerning the protection of human subjects in research. UCLA IRB review is required for both funded and non-funded human subjects research. University policy requires all non-UCLA investigators wishing to access any UCLA facilities, patients, or personnel (faculty, staff or students) for human subjects research to submit an Application for Administrative Review to the UCLA OHRPP for confirmation that the research does not require UCLA IRB review or Certification of Exemption from UCLA IRB review.
The five UCLA IRBs are supplemented by multiple arrangements for accepting the reviews of external IRBs. The UCLA Office of the Human Research Protection Program (OHRPP) provides support to the UCLA IRBs and for arrangements with external IRBs.
Last updated April 26, 2023
The UCLA Technology Development Group (TDG) supports UCLA’s research, education, and service mission by commercializing intellectual property rights; facilitating collaborations with industry for next-generation scientific breakthroughs; advancing UCLA entrepreneurship and research; protecting the university’s interest by managing risk; and promoting economic growth in California. The scope of activities includes commercially evaluating new technologies; determining patentability and commercial value; prosecuting patents; marketing and licensing inventions; facilitating UCLA faculty startups; engaging industry to facilitate research collaboration; negotiating license agreements and Material Transfer Agreements; and receiving and distributing royalties and other income to the inventors, the UCLA campus, and its departments. In FY21, 348 new inventions were disclosed via TDG. TDG collaborates with CTSI researchers who seek to commercialize their intellectual property.
Last updated April 26, 2023
CareConnect is UCLA's electronic health record (EHR) program. The system integrates functions of approximately 65 software applications into a single system accessible across the health system and is available around-the-clock to clinical faculty and staff members. Services include scheduling, registration, referrals, and authorizations for UCLA managed care members at all clinics, clinical applications - pharmacy, Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE), documentation, radiology, rounding lists - at all hospitals, Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) and documentation at a group of clinics and procedure areas in our hospitals (Wave 0), and CareConnect Lite as a replacement for cView at all clinics (except those in Wave 0).
An estimated 18,000 faculty and staff members use CareConnect, including physicians, pharmacists, nurses,
advanced-practice nurses, other clinicians, trainees, students, and staff members working with scheduling,
registration, billing, patient placement (ADT), and hospital information management (HIM). The CareConnect
program is led by a team with expertise in EHR implementation and deep institutional knowledge of our health
system. The CareConnect program is overseen by an Executive Oversight Board composed of leaders from UCLA
Health System and David Geffen School of Medicine, which developed 11 principles to guide development and
implementation of CareConnect.
Last updated April 27, 2023
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is a Level 1 Trauma Center with an NIH-funded General Clinical Research Center. The 72-acre facility is composed of the 8-story, 553-bed hospital, and a 52,000 square foot Primary Care and Diagnostic Center in addition to a complex of buildings, wooden barracks, and trailers. The on-campus the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, with an annual budget of over 50 million dollars, provides extensive laboratory and administrative facilities for faculty investigators. Other buildings on the campus include the St. John's Cardiovasular Research Center, the Walter P. Martin Research Building, the Professional Office Building, the Imaging Center, and the A.F. Parlow Library of the Health Sciences. The total building space is approximately 1,000,000 square feet.
All of the approximately 300 full-time faculty as well as some of the more than 450 part-time and voluntary professional staff hold faculty appointments at the UCLA School of Medicine. They devote their time to the clinical care of patients, research, and teaching at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. The nearly 450 residents and fellows training at Harbor also contribute to these endeavors. The hospital sponsors 34 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education accredited residency and fellowship programs as well as other graduate medical training programs. The hospital also serves as a major training site for medical students from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
The emergency room has been enlarged and a number of special care units have been constructed from what were formerly ward rooms. In 1994, the 50,000 square foot Edward J. Foley Primary Care and Diagnostic Center was opened. Over the years the hospital and medical programs of the facility have grown and improved steadily.
Last updated April 27, 2023
Information Services & Solutions (ISS), one of the three central components of UCLA Health IT, develops and maintains the central technology infrastructure and provides services and applications to over 20,000 people comprising UCLA Health, Practice Group, and School of Medicine. ISS is committed to delivering progressive technology solutions that effectively support the patient care, research, and teaching missions of the Health Sciences and offer an increasingly integrated set of computing and communication services. ISS aims to serve more than a fixed collection of hospitals, clinics, classrooms, labs, and offices; rather, it strives to bring UCLA expertise to the community by participating in health exchanges and investing in technologies that shorten the distance between people such as real-time access to information, telemedicine services, and web-based access to resources.
Last updated April 27, 2023
Established in 2009, the Pediatric Neuromuscular Disease Clinic meets twice a month and the majority of patients seen have Becker or Duchenne muscular dystrophy (B/DMD). Additional patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), myotonic dystrophy, or congenital muscular dystrophy are seen on select clinic days. The clinic can accommodate patients for multidisciplinary visits. Most B/DMD patients are seen two times per year for routine care and more frequently when needed. Physicians available in the multidisciplinary clinic include medical specialists (e.g., neurology, genetics, cardiology), pediatricians, neurologists, neurology fellows, and pediatric and adult neurology residents. The clinic can serve both adult and pediatric patients; most clinic staff members, including Dr. Perry Shieh, are fully credentialed to provide specialist services to both children and adults. Older patients who do not require child-related services are seen in a multidisciplinary clinic or on dedicated days, depending on insurance coverage and needs. Other clinic staff members, including Drs. Stanley Nelson and Nancy Halnon, are available to evaluate for disease- or treatment-related complications and manage steroid-dependent patients in conjunction with primary care physicians.
Last updated April 27, 2023
Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital (NPH) is a 74-bed acute psychiatric hospital and is among the leading centers in the world for comprehensive patient care, research and education in the fields of mental health, developmental disabilities and neurology. A key part of UCLA Health System, NPH is the major psychiatry teaching facility of the UCLA Center for the Health Sciences. The staff of NPH is composed of faculty from the departments of psychiatry, neurology, medicine, pediatrics, as well as members from the professional disciplines of nursing, psychology, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, speech pathology, social work, and special education. Patients of NPH and their families participate actively in their plan for treatment, during hospitalization, and after discharge, and special procedures and personnel are employed to ensure the most effective involvement of families in the care of patients.
NPH is licensed by the State of California and accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO). The mission of Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, in association with the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, is to serve the healthcare needs of the community, its patients and their families through excellence in research, education and the delivery of neuropsychiatric and behavioral health services.
Research programs at the Neuropsychiatric Institute enable the staff to develop and apply the newest and most appropriate therapeutic methods. The institute also conducts educational programs at the undergraduate and postdoctoral level. Additionally, the Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital at UCLA has been ranked “Number 5” in the nation in Psychiatry by U.S. News & World Report for 2021–2022.
Last updated April 27, 2023
Founded in 1955, UCLA Medical Center became Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in 2008, reopening in a 10-story structure that takes hospital design to a new level. The latest medical advances are provided in a welcoming environment that is filled with light and open space to enhance a sense of wellness and promote healing. Situated on four acres on the UCLA campus in West Los Angeles, the hospital encompasses Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA, and UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital. This was one of the first total replacement hospital projects to be built in accordance with the latest California seismic safety requirements. Every floor of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is dedicated to a particular specialty and equipped with state-of-the-art support equipment and supplies. Every floor has its own satellite pharmacy, dialysis storage, respiratory therapy workrooms, and resident doctor sleep rooms. In addition, each patient room has the capacity to convert into an intensive care unit (ICU) to allow for the continuous care of a critically ill patient in a single room.
As the primary teaching hospital for the David Geffen School of Medicine, the 520-bed, 1,050,000-square-foot medical center provides patient care in nearly all medical specialties. In 2021, UCLA Health hospitals ranked #1 in both Los Angeles and California and rose to #3 nationally in an annual evaluation published by U.S. News & World Report—the highest set of rankings UCLA received in its history. Furthermore, the medical center has Magnet Status for Nursing Excellence, is a national leader in organ transplantation, and receives more than 50,000 emergency patients annually.
Key hospital features include: surgical suites with full audiovisual integration systems and leading-edge medical equipment; a GONDA Observation Unit run by a hospitalist team—a special short-stay unit for patients requiring observation for a specific symptom; “The BirthPlace, Westwood” allows mothers to give birth and recover in a comfortable, home-like setting that easily and quickly transforms into an efficient operating room for delivery; a Level 1 trauma center with multiple trauma rooms and a dedicated CT scanner that enables doctors to diagnose patients upon arrival; intensive care units that employ a "line of sight" approach that ensures 360-degree access to critically ill patients; and room service food delivery that allows patients to personalize their menu orders and arrange for delivery at a convenient time.
Last updated April 27, 2023
The Compliance Program was developed to ensure UCLA’s legal, regulatory, Regental, UC policy, and other compliance requirements are followed and maintained. The goal of the program is to provide guidance and address compliance concerns across campus. The Compliance Program has an Oversight Committee on Audit, IT Governance, Compliance, and Controls which is a standing committee composed of campus leadership responsible for providing policy direction and oversight regarding campus-wide accountability and compliance matters. The committee is supported by the UCLA Ethics and Compliance Officer with collaboration from various campus partners.
The Compliance Program was developed in the context of UCLA’s core teaching, research, patient care, and public service missions. The specific purposes of the program are to maintain and enhance quality of care; demonstrate sincere, ongoing efforts to comply with all applicable laws; revise and clarify current policies and procedures in order to enhance compliance; enhance communication with governmental entities with respect to compliance activities; empower responsible parties to prevent, detect, and resolve conduct that does not conform with applicable laws and regulations; and establish mechanisms for employees to raise concerns about compliance issues and ensure that those concerns are appropriately addressed.
The Compliance Office supports the program through educational programs, updates on changes to the laws and regulations that impact operations, reviews to evaluate compliance, and investigations of allegations of non-compliance.
Last updated April 27, 2023
The UCLA Dental Clinics in Westwood and the UCLA Venice Dental Center are the patient care branches of the UCLA School of Dentistry. As an education institution, UCLA’s procedures and policies differ from those of a private dental practice. While patient care is always the foremost concern, the clinics are equally responsible for the education and training of students and residents. Before becoming a patient at a clinic, patients are first screened by a faculty member to determine if the treatment needs are a good fit for the teaching environment. A full series of X-rays or basic X-rays will be taken as needed, determined by the screening faculty. Once the screening process is complete and a patient is accepted as a potential teaching case in a student clinic, he or she will be scheduled for a comprehensive oral examination to assess the general state of their oral health and create a full-mouth treatment plan.
Last updated April 27, 2023
UCLA Health is a self-supporting non-profit organization, owned and operated by the Regents of the University of California, to support the clinical activities of the professional schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and public health. UCLA Health is comprised of: the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center (520 beds); the Mattel Children’s Hospital (131 beds); the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA (74 beds); the UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica (281 beds); UCLA Health Clinics; UCLA Faculty Group; and the David Geffen School of Medicine. Additionally, the Westwood campus includes the Jules Stein Eye Institute and Doris Stein Eye Research Center, the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior Neuropsychiatric Institute, and the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of over 70 NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers. Outpatient facilities include a six-story, 380,000-square-foot ambulatory care center housing the Family Health Center for primary care of routine illnesses; the Children's Health Center; Internal Medicine clinics; a Surgery Center; and a 104,000 square foot building housing the outpatient, training and research programs of the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital and the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. This building also houses the UCLA Medical Center rehabilitation program.
UCLA Health boasts 3,200 total faculty, of which 3,050 are clinical faculty and 150 are basic science faculty. UCLA Health also boasts 1,300 residents and fellows as well as 3,800 registered nurses, part of a net total of 32,000 employees. More than 300 UCLA physicians are listed among the best doctors in America, with many ranked as Super Doctors. Altogether, UCLA Health hospitals and clinics have over 2.8 million annual outpatient visits, with nearly 670,000 unique patients per year, and UCLA Health sustains 36,000 hospital stays and 73,000 Emergency Department visits per year.
A unique feature of UCLA is the presence of the Center for the Health Sciences (CHS) complex (one of the largest health-science centers in the country) that includes a hospital, School of Medicine, School of Dentistry, School of Nursing, School of Public Health, and California NanoSystems Institute on the same campus as the Division of Life Sciences and 7 other professional schools. This centralized complex ensures that all UCLA investigators have offices and/or a lab well within a close walking distance.
For more than 60 years, UCLA Health has provided the best in health care and the latest in medical technology to the people of Los Angeles and throughout the world. A self-supporting non-profit organization, owned and operated by the Regents of the University of California, UCLA Health’s mission is to deliver leading-edge patient care, research, and education, and its vision is to heal humankind, one patient at a time, by improving health, alleviating suffering and delivering acts of kindness. As an academic medical center, UCLA Health is able to offer patients the latest technologies as well as access to potentially life-saving new therapies and leading-edge clinical trials. With a comprehensive array of research and clinical centers, addressing topics from stem cell biology, AIDS, gene therapy, neurosciences, women's health and geriatrics, UCLA continues to define what an academic medical center can be.
Last updated April 27, 2023
UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital cares for the physical and emotional well-being of children, from newborns to young adults. With a dedicated entrance from Gayley Avenue, UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital is located on the third and fifth floors of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. UCLA's facilities are designed to serve the most critically ill children with sophisticated, compassionate care in an environment that is both welcoming and healing to children and their families. In 1998, Mattel Children's Foundation, a philanthropic arm of Mattel, Inc., pledged $25 million toward construction of the hospital. With Mattel's continued support, UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital is expanding pediatric services locally; broadening its global presence to enhance and improve the health of children worldwide; and promoting the global sharing of UCLA Health’s best practices and research. In total, Mattel has 131 inpatient beds, which includes 44 beds in the pediatric unit, 22 beds in the neonatal ICU, 18 beds in the pediatric ICU, and 6 beds in the pediatric cardiac ICU. Annually, Mattel Children’s Hospital serves more than 6,000 inpatients and 40,000 outpatients. The Mattel Children’s Unit at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, includes a 25-bed pediatric unit and a 16-bassinet Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Each nursing unit has its own minor procedure room so young patients can undergo certain treatments away from their sleeping area to avoid associating pain or distress with their own room. The outpatient Children's Health Center, located adjacent to the hospital at 200 UCLA Medical Plaza, serves more than 42,000 patients each year, and includes an 8-bed procedure area and 25 patient rooms as well as laboratory, radiology, and pharmacy services.
Last updated April 27, 2023
UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica, serves as the cornerstone of UCLA Health's Santa Monica medical campus. The 281-bed, full-service medical center provides the complete continuum of healthcare services, from prenatal and neonatal care to geriatric medicine, in a technologically advanced and welcoming facility. It combines the expertise of an academic medical center with the accessibility of a community hospital to offer patients the best of both medical worlds. The medical center features several outstanding programs and services on or near its 4.5-acre medical campus. These include: the Nethercutt Emergency Center, which treats nearly 50,000 patients annually and serves as Santa Monica's only Emergency Department (ED) approved for pediatric care; The BirthPlace, one of Southern California’s most comprehensive maternity centers, where approximately 1,500 babies are delivered each year; a 25-bed Pediatrics Unit, which operates as a unit of UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital and serves as Santa Monica's only inpatient unit for pediatric care; the UCLA Rape Treatment Center and its Stuart House facility for sexually abused children serve as national models for the treatment of rape victims and their families; the UCLA Breast Center, Santa Monica, located within the UCLA medical building, provides personalized, multi-disciplinary breast care in a compassionate and supportive environment; UCLA Radiology, which performs state-of-the-art imaging services in several locations throughout the Santa Monica campus; and the UCLA Spine Center which provides comprehensive medical and surgical treatment for all spinal disorders and strives to be at the forefront of spinal research. The hospital also has an alliance with the Orthopaedic Institute for Children, formerly known as Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital.
Founded in 1926 as Santa Monica’s first hospital by local physicians Drs. William S. Mortensen and August B. Hromadka, the medical center has evolved over the years to better serve Santa Monica and surrounding communities. In 1942, the hospital became part of the Lutheran Hospital Society, where it remained until 1988, when it joined UniHealth America. In 1995, the hospital was acquired by the University of California and became an integral part of UCLA Health’s expanding network of medical services. It was rebuilt in phases following the 1994 Northridge earthquake and is now designed and constructed to the latest seismic standards. More than 25% of the medical campus is dedicated to green and open spaces, including a 40,000-square-foot garden facing 15th Street and the 18,000-square-foot Harman Garden Plaza. Both areas offer a tranquil setting where patients, visitors, and staff members can enjoy fresh air, sunshine, and sea breezes.
Last updated April 27, 2023
Located next to the Ronald Reagan UCLA medical center, the UCLA Medical Plaza offers an accessible, friendly environment for a broad range of outpatient services, including more than 80 specialty clinics. The plaza is composed of the following facilities:
Last updated April 27, 2023
The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System (VAGLAHS) is one of the largest health care facilities within the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is one component of the VA Desert Pacific Healthcare Network (VISN22) offering services to Veterans residing in Southern California and Southern Nevada. VAGLAHS consists of two ambulatory care centers, a tertiary care facility and 8 community based outpatient clinics. VAGLAHS serves Veterans residing throughout five counties: Los Angeles, Ventura, Kern, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. There are 1.4 million Veterans in the VAGLAHS service area. VAGLAHS is affiliated with both UCLA School of Medicine and USC School of Medicine, as well as more than 45 colleges, universities and vocational schools in 17 different medical, nursing, paramedical and administrative programs. The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System is accredited by The Joint Commission. The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System directs the Department of Veterans Affairs’ largest educational enterprise. VAGLAHS serves as a major training site for medical residencies sponsored by the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and USC School of Medicine, as well as more than 45 colleges, universities and vocational schools in 17 different medical, nursing, paramedical and administrative programs. Over 500 University residents, interns, and students are trained at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System each year. The institution sponsors 16 medical residencies and numerous associated health residencies and internships in dentistry, podiatry, optometry, pharmacy, clinical psychology, social work and dietetics.
Last updated April 27, 2023
The UCLA Advanced Heart Failure Program, under the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center and UCLA Heart Transplant Center, is an integrated service dedicated to providing attending-level phone consultation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They have over the last 2 years been re-organized in the integrated Advanced Heart Failure Program with the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center, Mechanical Circulatory Support Center and Heart Transplant Center. The referring physician will speak to the attending cardiologist on-call within five minutes to facilitate the prompt and appropriate evaluation and care of the patient. The Advanced Heart Failure Program provides direct access to the team responsible for the management of all aspects of advanced heart failure, including inpatient and outpatient NYHA Class III and IV patients with heart failure. The team also accepts referrals of patients for heart transplantation and mechanical circulatory support (VAD) implantation.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Bioinformatics IDP offers rigorous and integrated training for students interested in undertaking research at the interface of computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, and biomedicine to address the fundamental challenges of data-rich research in biosciences. This interdisciplinary PhD program consists of an integrated one-year core curriculum, research rotations, over 50 elective courses, and faculty mentors spanning biology, mathematics, engineering, and medicine. UCLA has a strong record of bioinformatics research and graduate training. In 1999 the faculty established a graduate core curriculum in bioinformatics, which has been offered continuously since that time, and recently has been greatly expanded, demonstrating the faculty’s commitment to collaborative teaching and to long-term development of an integrated bioinformatics program. These initiatives have been recognized by a large number of awards of multi-investigator Project and Training grants in bioinformatics from NIH, NSF, DOE and other funding sources.
The central mission of the Bioinformatics Interdepartmental Graduate Program is to train talented and highly motivated students to become next-generation leaders in the field of Bioinformatics. The program was established in 2008. In the past 10 years or so, the program has enjoyed a tremendous growth in size and impact. It has graduated 20 students and now has more than 45 Ph.D. students in the program. It has a diverse group of over 50 faculty members spanning over 10 academic departments in the Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Life Sciences, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Public Health. These exceptional faculty mentors include HHMI investigators and members of the National Academy of Sciences.
The faculty are deeply committed to this mission and provide in-depth, attentive mentorship for students throughout their graduate careers and beyond. Students in the program enjoy a vibrant intellectual environment including the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences, the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, and the NIH Big Data to Knowledge Center of Excellence at UCLA. The program offers exceptional institutional resources and facilities for genomic and biomedical big data production and advanced high-performance computing. It is also home to a NIH Training Grant in Biomedical Big Data, and the students receive extensive fellowship support from a large list of training grants at UCLA. The program is devoted to community outreach and diversity, and deeply committed to recruiting and training students from underrepresented groups in Bioinformatics.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Graduate Programs in Biosciences is a re-envisioning of training in the biological and life sciences. Building on the strengths of the ACCESS program (one of the nation’s first unified admissions and first year training programs for graduate students in the biosciences), GPB provides an organized network of programs that offers students breadth and flexibility to best pursue their interests across the wide range of bioscience graduate programs. At the same time, GPB introduces the benefits of individually tailored education in smaller training communities, defined by research themes, not traditional departments. The UCLA GPB is a consortium of 10 home areas and their affiliated graduate programs, organized to provide the best possible research training and professional development for graduate students pursuing advanced studies in the life and biomedical sciences. The Bioinformatics IDP is one home area within GPB. Each home area has designed a specific course of study to prepare students for careers in bioscience research in their chosen area of specialization. While the specifics are customized at the home area level, there is a general training progression, with the first year involving research rotations in different laboratories to gain research experience and identify a faculty member to serve as the advisor for research; and coursework to ensure that students have a strong concept foundation and develop advanced skills needed to critically evaluate the literature, recognize important questions in the field, design effective approaches, critically analyze data, and communicate clearly through oral and written forms of expression. Subsequent years focus on formal research and development of professional skills. The GPB is the umbrella administrative organization under which the Bioinformatics IDP exists, providing a unified framework for graduate training in the biological and life sciences at UCLA.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The California Center for Population Research (CCPR) was established in 1998 and has since been a leading research center for research and training in demography. CCPR is comprised of over 140 active faculty researchers from an array of academic disciplines, such as epidemiology, public policy, economics, sociology, and public welfare. CCPR researchers span several schools, including the College of Letters and Sciences, the Division of Social Sciences, the School of Public Health, the School of Medicine, and the School of Public Affairs, as well as academic departments within UCLA.
The CCPR is an interdisciplinary research organization. CCPR supports and fosters innovative and ambitious research and training in population science. The center provides research resources, services, and environments to enhance research quality. CCPR trains the next generation of population scientists to carry out informed research in social, economic, and public health. CCPR seeks deeper understanding of the demographic and social determinants of health and the effects of health on population dynamics and socioeconomic well-being.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA represents a new paradigm in the world of scientific research, serving as a dynamic environment for innovative research partnerships and team science initiatives that leverage the unique properties of matter at nanoscale dimensions. The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) is a hub of interdisciplinary research, translation, and education where scientists from diverse fields find common purpose in addressing grand challenges of the 21st century. At CNSI, engineers and oncologists create drug delivery systems to treat cancer. Chemists, physicists, and neurologists develop nanoelectronic sensors for mapping the brain. Environmental engineers and biologists use nanobiotechnology to clean pollutants from water. The CNSI is where collaboration drives discovery, creativity triggers innovation, and ideas that will define our future become a reality. With locations at the University of California’s Los Angeles and Santa Barbara campuses, the CNSI leverages public and private investment to drive collaborative nanoscience research across disciplines, translates discoveries into knowledge-driven commercial enterprises, and educates the next generation of scientists and engineers.
As one of four Governor Gray Davis Institutes for Science and Innovation (GGDISI), the CNSI builds on a visionary investment in future education, research, and technological resources given by the state of California. CNSI provides unique educational opportunities for the modern scientific leader by engaging learners from primary school students to established scientists and industry professionals. The Institutes leverage an unprecedented public-private partnership to affect research areas critical to sustaining California’s economic growth and its competitiveness in the global marketplace. These Institutes open the doors to new understanding, new applications, and new products through essential research in biomedicine, bioengineering, nanosystems, telecommunications, and information technology.
CNSI is a 188,000 square foot, world-class research facility centrally located in UCLA’s Court of Sciences. The CNSI facility provides collaborative research space for new initiatives, sophisticated tools and technologies to support its mission to encourage university collaborations with industry, and to enable discovery. In addition, the building offers modern community areas designed to stimulate exchange and collaboration among researchers. The interactive areas include a 260-seat theater, lobby space, conference and break rooms, and a presentation and discussion space along with outdoor terraces. The CNSI building creates an array of opportunities for scholarly achievement, business exchange, and visionary research.
The CNSI Technology Centers provide unrestricted access to fully integrated R&D infrastructure, professional support and collaborative research opportunities in the fabrication, characterization and screening of nanomaterials, systems, and devices. Directed by a group of leading scientists, the Centers develop technologies that promote discovery through direct grant support, user proposals and industrial partnerships. Access to these facilities is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for students, postdocs, staff, faculty and industrial scientists, and is managed through the CNSI Laboratory Management System (CLMS).
CNSI houses multiple state of the art Technology Centers, including the Electron Imaging Center for Nanomachines (EICN), the Advanced Light Microscopy and Spectroscopy (ALMS) Laboratory, the Nano & Pico Characterization (NPC) Laboratory, the Molecular Screening Shared Resource (MSSR), the Integrated Nanomaterials Laboratory (INML), and the UCLA Nanofabrication Laboratory (NanoLab).
Last updated April 28, 2023
The USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health (CBPH) is one of 14 centers in the Demography and Economics of Aging Centers Program and has been sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) as a joint center combining epidemiological and demographic expertise for over 15 years. The overarching goal of the Center is to enhance understanding of biological and other processes that contribute to population health at older ages and thereby contribute to more effective program and policy efforts to improve health and reduce health disparities. The Center represents a unique and highly successful collaboration between the Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Multicampus Program in Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology in the Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), each of which focuses on research and teaching on aging. Since its inception in 1999, the CBPH has leveraged the unique combination of demographic and epidemiological expertise of the Center directors, along with the interdisciplinary expertise of Center faculty affiliates, to become a leader in the development of the field of biodemography. The Center is at the forefront of efforts to promote theory-based integration of biological measurement into population-based studies and on-going development and validation of biological measurement protocols. Dr. Seeman is co-Director of the center.
CBPH is dedicated to providing a synergistic research environment for the integration and translation of research findings from a variety of disciplines to understand population health. The Center takes a multidisciplinary approach by linking demographers, biologists, economists, psychologists, epidemiologists, health policy specialists, medical researchers and clinical geriatricians. This integration of biological, epidemiologic and medical risk information which characterizes Center research is fundamental to understanding and projecting demographic trends and differences in population health.
The CBPH aims:
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Center for Cancer Prevention and Control Research is a joint program of the School of Public Health and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA. Since its inception in 1976, the Center has been nationally and internationally recognized for its pioneering work in cancer prevention and control research. NCI-designated Cancer Centers are a major source of discovery of the nature of cancer and of the development of more effective approaches to cancer prevention, diagnosis, and therapy. They also deliver medical advances to patients and their families, educate health-care professionals and the public, and reach out to underserved populations. They are characterized by: strong organizational capabilities; institutional commitment; trans-disciplinary, cancer-focused science; experienced scientific and administrative leadership and state-of-the-art cancer research and patient care facilities.
The Center conducts rigorous peer-reviewed research in three major areas:
The Healthy and At-Risk Populations Program focuses on the prevention and early detection aspects of the cancer control continuum. The program’s research portfolio encompasses a broad range of studies including: investigations in tobacco control; nutrition; physical activity; breast, cervix, prostate and colorectal cancer screening; control of vaccine preventable cancers (liver, cervix); and expanding interests in economic and community level factors as predictors of cancer related outcomes. A central theme characterizing this program is a major emphasis on cancer disparities research, bringing cancer prevention and control to low-income, minority, and other socially and medically underserved populations locally, nationally, and internationally.
The Patients and Survivors Program has as its major goal the reduction in avoidable morbidity and mortality among patients with cancer and long-term survivors of cancer. The two main scientific thrusts of the program are: Quality-of-life outcomes along the developmental phases of the life span continuum (e.g., children, young adult survivors, adult cancer patients and survivors, elderly cancer patients and survivors), including late medical and psychosocial effects; and Quality of cancer care, its measurement and evaluation. The program also houses the UCLA-LIVESTRONG Survivorship Center of Excellence and the UCLA Family Cancer Registry.
The Molecular Epidemiology Program focuses on: (1) Primary prevention: examining environmental exposure (smoking, diet, infection, air pollution, etc.) and genetic susceptibility and cancer risk, as well as exploring gene-environmental interactions in cancer risk; (2) Secondary prevention: evaluating biological markers (somatic mutations and hyper-methylations of tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes, gene copy numbers, etc.) for early detection, as well as intermediate markers as surrogate end-points for chemoprevention; and (3) Tertiary prevention: assessing blood and tissue-based biological markers (tumor markers, SNPs, etc.) for cancer prognosis and survival prediction.
Last updated April 28, 2023
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is one of the most common and devastating genetic diseases of childhood, affecting approximately 1 in 5000 boys. Progressive muscle degeneration leads to loss of ambulation by age 12, loss of upper arm use in the teen years, and heart and respiratory failure leading to death in the 20's. The Center for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy at UCLA leads the nation in translational science focused on Duchenne and is the first comprehensive Duchenne clinic in the western United states. Established in 2006, the CDMD at UCLA was built as a result of collaborations among UCLA scientists, clinicians, and researchers who are now poised to achieve significant advances in research, clinical care, and treatments for Duchenne that are improving, and will potentially extend, the lives of those afflicted. The center’s efforts span from education and outreach to cutting- edge research, drug discovery, clinical trials, and care. Funding for the CDMD's remarkable achievements to date has come from a combination of research grants and private philanthropy. The goals of the CDMD are to identify additional disease modifying drug targets; perform intelligent drug design; improve access and care in the clinical setting; and increase clinical trial participation.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities is a multidisciplinary, community-focused research, policy, and training center at UCLA. Established in 1996, the Center is a joint effort of the David Geffen School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. The Center also includes faculty from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Policy & Social Research, School of Law, and the College of Letters and Sciences. Integrating expertise across disciplines ensures that the solutions we develop are theoretically sound and highly practical. The Center also partners with leading organizations across the country to create and spread forward-thinking ideas and strategies. Its mission is to promote children’s lifelong health, development, and well-being in the context of their families and communities. The Center creates and translates innovative ideas into optimal outcomes. The solutions developed enable parents, practitioners, and policymakers to bring about meaningful change in children’s health. The Center’s work focuses on four areas: systems innovation and improvement, research and evaluation, training and model programs, and policy. In combination, these areas offer strategic, integrated techniques for transforming care and improving the long-term health of children and families.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The BRITE Center’s mission is to support the innovative use of research, science and policy development to help eliminate disparities in physical and mental health for communities that are traditionally underserved by academic research. The acronym BRITE comes from the center’s tagline: to Bridge Research, Education, Innovation, Training and Education on minority health disparities.
As part of an academic-community partnership, researchers and academic institutions can play a powerful role by bringing better science into the study of how issues such as discrimination, chronic stress, and social exclusion harm individual health. By drawing from diverse fields such as clinical psychology, law, public policy, medicine, neuroscience, psychobiology, and sociology, and from the experiences of community residents and organizations, the center applies a unique framework designed to study both the external influences that contribute to disparities, and the science behind internal, physical effects on brain function and the body. This two-part strategy allows the center to address the social, environmental and behavioral factors that influence health and well-being in order to help shape programs and policies that have an opportunity to change our health care system.
Since its founding, the center has worked to: improve the health of racial, ethnic and sexual minorities; advance health disparities science and research; and increase the capacity of racial/ethnic and immigrant communities to conduct research. Through its fellows and research staff, the center has also increased the number of minority students trained in addressing health disparities and committed to conducting research with this focus. In addition, by investing in the creation of data cohorts, the BRITE Center provides an ongoing opportunity for other researchers in the field to work with understudied racial/ethnic groups such as Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians, Latinos, Americans Indians, African Americans, and gay, lesbian and bisexual populations.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Center for Health Advancement provides enhanced analysis and evidence-based information to help policy makers decide which policies and programs can best improve health and reduce health disparities. The Center analyzes a wide range of timely health improvement opportunities, identifying those supported by strong evidence. It presents and disseminates the results of these analyses in plain language to those who make and influence public and private sector policies and programs. The Center also provides training and technical assistance to facilitate implementation of recommended approaches. The Center brings together faculty from multiple Departments of the Fielding School of Public Health and other UCLA Schools with a wide range of subject matter and methodological expertise, including expertise in non-health sectors, such as education, transportation, housing, environmental protection, community planning, agriculture, public welfare, and economics. It has strong collaborations with governmental public health agencies, foundations, academic institutions, and other not-for-profit organizations. Within the health sector, its work is focused on how alternative investments to wasteful expenditures in health care can yield greater returns.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Los Angeles Community Academic Partnership for Research in Aging (L.A. CAPRA) is a collaboration between UCLA, CDU, City of Los Angeles Department of Aging (DOA), Los Angeles County Community and Senior Services, and Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. L.A. CAPRA was created in 2010 with a grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The special academic–community partnership is rooted in deep mutual respect and a shared vision for implementing and testing practical evidence-based interventions to empower older adults to stay as active and healthy as possible. With an interdisciplinary scientific team and vast network of community partners, L.A. CAPRA provides infrastructure to facilitate and implement community-partnered research across the (arguably) largest and most ethnically diverse urban center in the United States. With partner Multipurpose Senior Centers in every single council district (15) across Los Angeles, L.A. CAPRA has the potential to reach 669,747 seniors aged 60 years and older with its innovative programs. L.A. CAPRA, in partnership with RCMAR/CHIME, facilitates bi-directional collaborations between the CTSI and its community partners to conduct research to improve quality of life of minority seniors across Los Angeles. L.A. CAPRA maintains an active Community Action Board (CAB) that vets and provides substantive input on academic research proposals to enhance their impact.
Last updated April 28, 2023
Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) Branch seeks to increase the number of highly trained, underrepresented biomedical and behavioral scientists in leadership positions to significantly impact the health-related research needs of the nation. Nationally, groups found to be underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral research include, but are not limited to, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Alaska Natives and natives of the U.S. Pacific Islands. The MARC program is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. This honors program intends to prepare highly able minority students for graduate programs at outstanding universities throughout the United States. The MARC program pays for a portion of tuition and fees, provides stipends to undertake research projects in UCLA faculty labs during the academic year, provides stipends to undertake research projects at other universities during the summer, provides funding for conferences, and provides mentoring and preparation via honors courses, journal clubs and workshops.
Last updated April 28, 2023
In 1997, the National Institute on Aging/National Institutes of Health established the Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) initiative as part of the effort to reduce health disparities between minority and non-minority older adults. The Center for Health Improvement for Minority Elderly (CHIME) is housed in the UCLA Department of Medicine. Working alongside other RCMAR centers, the focus of CHIME is on training and mentorship of minority junior-level faculty who will advance their career by conducting research on minority elders. RCMAR provides a basis for developing innovative approaches for diversifying the translational science workforce of the CTSI. Since 2012, CHIME and the CTSI have co-funded 32 pilot awards for underrepresented minority faculty and jointly provided educational, research and career development support. As CTSI awardees, these faculty have access to all educational opportunities through the KL2 and other educational programs. We propose to continue this close collaboration with the UCLA CHIME which has greatly improved diversity in our scientific community and in the UCLA pipeline for future K awards and mid-level faculty.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity (formerly named Center to Eliminate Health Disparities) focuses on eliminating disparities in incidence, prevalence, mortality and burden of disease experienced by disadvantaged and underserved populations. The Center concentrates on “keeping the public healthy” by targeting health promotion, disease prevention, and access to quality and timely care for all in need. The center is tied to Kaiser Permanente, America's leading nonprofit integrated health plan, which serves more than nine million people from 38 hospitals and 608 medical office buildings in eight states and the District of Columbia. Thanks to the dedication of approximately 192,000 employees and physicians, in a single year it can schedule more than 36.5 million outpatient visits, deliver 93,675 babies, perform 221,660 inpatient surgeries, and conduct 14.8 million prescriptions refills. Dr. Michael Gould, Director for Health Services Research and Implementation Science at the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation, serves on the UCLA CTSI External Advisory Committee.
The Center is a collaborative “center without walls” whose members include academic, government, foundation and private/non-profit investigators. Targeting the underserved, the Center promotes population-based intervention approaches to health promotion and disease prevention and control. In addition, it explores barriers preventing more effective collaboration with local health departments and other key partners engaged in the practice of public health.
Officially launched in October of 2004, the Center aims to advance the understanding of health disparities across the lifespan and foster multidisciplinary research to improve the health of underserved communities. With a primary focus on Los Angeles County, and a secondary focus on surrounding counties, the Center facilitates community and academic partnerships in research, trains new investigators in health disparities research, and assists community partners in implementing effective health disparity reduction programs.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The partnership between CDU and UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center seeks to “Eliminate Cancer Health Disparities in Minority and Underserved Populations.” The Division of Cancer Research and Training at CDU and the JCCC have partnered on research projects for many years. The current partnership is funded by a multi-million dollar U54 grant through the National Cancer Institute for the years 2009-2023. The overarching goals of the CDU-UCLA Cancer Partnership Program are to significantly increase the number of minority scientists in cancer research and to enhance the cancer outreach programs at CDU to address significant disparities in cancer among minority populations. Research projects and pilots in partnership between CDU and UCLA are aimed at addressing health disparities in the areas of breast, colon, prostate, and gynecological cancers. Two additional resources, Clinical Research Resource and Recruitment Resource, aim to diversity patient and researcher recruitment into cancer health disparities research activities. The program components are 1) research projects; 2) the mentoring of students and junior investigators; 3) the training seminar series; 4) enhancing CDU’s integrated clinical and tissue biorepository database on minority subjects; 5) enhancing community participation; 6) improving clinical trials; and 7) increasing faculty recruitment.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The UCLA Center for Prevention Research conducts prevention research that address the needs of children, adolescents, young adults and their families. The Center is a partnership of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, the UCLA Department of Pediatrics and a wide range of community partners. The Center is innovative in its approach to community service, partnering with ethnically and economically diverse communities in Los Angeles County to identify opportunities for the Center to provide technical support to community groups for program implementation and assessment. In addition, the Center has partnerships with the L.A. Unified School District, L.A. County Department of Health Services, and other local groups. The center's mission is to address the needs of children, adolescents, young adults, and their families; build empowering relationships with community partners in Los Angeles and beyond; and directly benefit communities and/or transform local, state, and national policies.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Children's Discovery and Innovation Institute (CDI) was founded to enhance the culture for innovation and groundbreaking collaborative research spanning from molecule to community. The goal of CDI is to connect all research and training activities related to improving children’s health, spanning from discoveries at the bench through translation to the bedside to rolling out to community practice through collaborations and networks established locally, nationally, and globally. The CDI pioneers advancements in pediatric medicine in four core areas of research: brain, behavior and development; nutrition, metabolism, and growth; cancer and regeneration; and infection, inflammation, and immunity. Each of these areas focuses on prevention, screening, treatment and training opportunities for the next generation of pediatricians. A mentorship program in the four primary research areas enables younger physicians and scientists to learn from UCLA’s world-class experts in pediatric medicine and collaboratively related disciplines.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Collaboratory is a central component of QCBio that provides the experimental and empirical research environment where bioscientists and computational scientists work together to design systems and conduct experiments to improve the understanding of biological systems. As large-scale data analysis is often limited in most bioscience laboratories, the Collaboratory’s main mission is to facilitate genomic data analysis by bringing together UCLA bioscience faculty with QCBio faculty and a select group of QCBio post-doctoral fellows dedicated to the Collaboratory. Individual post-doctoral fellows are assigned to work on specific bioscience research projects to develop tailored methodologies for genomic analysis. The post-doctoral fellows are responsible for organizing intensive tutorials to train UCLA students and postdocs in the latest next-generation sequence analysis techniques. In addition to providing computational expertise to bioscience researchers at UCLA, the Collaboratory has also set up and maintains a next-generation sequence data analysis server, and develops methodologies to process new types of data.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging brings together faculty, students, and staff with a variety of backgrounds - physics, mathematics, engineering, biology, chemistry, and medicine - to pursue innovative technologies and science to accelerate our understanding of biology and medicine. Innovative technology programs, linked by systems biology, microfluidics, nanotechnology, and molecular imaging, provide the tools to conduct integrated science in a unique, interdisciplinary setting.
With an initial focus on cancer and immunity, our goal is to develop new technologies to observe, measure, and understand biology in cells, tissues, and living organisms. Through molecular imaging - taking pictures of the living chemistry of cells and tissues of the body, we can watch biology in action in living organisms. The Crump Institute's ultimate objective is to provide medicine with new science and technologies to judge the state of health, and identify the early transitions to disease for the development and use of new therapies as part of the new era in molecular medicine.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Center for Cancer Prevention and Control Research is a joint program of the School of Public Health and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA. Since its inception in 1976, the Center has been nationally and internationally recognized for its pioneering work in cancer prevention and control research. NCI-designated Cancer Centers are a major source of discovery of the nature of cancer and of the development of more effective approaches to cancer prevention, diagnosis, and therapy. They also deliver medical advances to patients and their families, educate health-care professionals and the public, and reach out to underserved populations. They are characterized by: strong organizational capabilities; institutional commitment; trans-disciplinary, cancer-focused science; experienced scientific and administrative leadership and state-of-the-art cancer research and patient care facilities.
The Center conducts rigorous peer-reviewed research in three major areas:
The Healthy and At-Risk Populations Program focuses on the prevention and early detection aspects of the cancer control continuum. The program’s research portfolio encompasses a broad range of studies including: investigations in tobacco control; nutrition; physical activity; breast, cervix, prostate and colorectal cancer screening; control of vaccine preventable cancers (liver, cervix); and expanding interests in economic and community level factors as predictors of cancer related outcomes. A central theme characterizing this program is a major emphasis on cancer disparities research, bringing cancer prevention and control to low-income, minority, and other socially and medically underserved populations locally, nationally, and internationally.
The Patients and Survivors Program has as its major goal the reduction in avoidable morbidity and mortality among patients with cancer and long-term survivors of cancer. The two main scientific thrusts of the program are: Quality-of-life outcomes along the developmental phases of the life span continuum (e.g., children, young adult survivors, adult cancer patients and survivors, elderly cancer patients and survivors), including late medical and psychosocial effects; and Quality of cancer care, its measurement and evaluation. The program also houses the UCLA-LIVESTRONG Survivorship Center of Excellence and the UCLA Family Cancer Registry.
The Molecular Epidemiology Program focuses on: (1) Primary prevention: examining environmental exposure (smoking, diet, infection, air pollution, etc.) and genetic susceptibility and cancer risk, as well as exploring gene-environmental interactions in cancer risk; (2) Secondary prevention: evaluating biological markers (somatic mutations and hyper-methylations of tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes, gene copy numbers, etc.) for early detection, as well as intermediate markers as surrogate end-points for chemoprevention; and (3) Tertiary prevention: assessing blood and tissue-based biological markers (tumor markers, SNPs, etc.) for cancer prognosis and survival prediction.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine (DLAM) is an integral part of the vibrant UCLA research enterprise and includes faculty members with a broad array of basic, translational, and clinical research interests in areas that include Bioinformatics, Cancer Biology, Immunology/Inflammation, Metabolism, Neuroscience, and Regenerative Medicine. Departmental researchers seek to better understand disease pathogenesis and translate these findings to the clinic. . Departmental research has continued to thrive and grow over the past decade. Faculty publish their findings in many of the top biomedical journals such as Cell, Immunity, Molecular Cell, Nature Immunology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DLAM comprises 166,741 sq. ft. of animal facilities. The department is staffed by four full-time veterinarians, eleven veterinary technicians and research associates, 92 animal technicians (including their supervisors) and 19 support staff (clinical and diagnostic labs; administrative personnel and training personnel). All veterinary and technical staff are located on site and available at all times. Animal technicians and veterinary technicians monitor animal health daily including weekends and holidays. Veterinarians examine animals that are reported as sick or injured and conduct routine facility rounds at least weekly. If animals exhibit any indications of illness, injury or distress, veterinary staff confers with research personnel to recommend and agree on appropriate treatment or euthanasia.
Animals are housed in UCLA IACUC-approved animal facilities under temperature and ventilation controlled conditions. Facility staff ensure animals receive fresh food, water and clean bedding on a regular basis (weekly, bi-weekly or more often). Animal care staff carry out routine husbandry procedures including changing cages, feeding and watering. Animals are checked daily by animal care staff to assess their health condition. Animal care and veterinary attention is available 24/7, 365 days a year on an on-duty or on-call basis.
Three dedicated facilities are available for the breeding and maintenance of mice. Dedicated technical personnel with expertise in breeding colony management are available to provide breeding services and consultation.
Last updated April 28, 2023
Life Sciences has nine academic departments: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Integrative Biology and Physiology; Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics; Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology; Psychology; Society and Genetics; Department of Life Sciences; Computational & Systems Biology IDP; and Neuroscience IDP. The faculty are nationally and internationally recognized for their contributions to science and education. Their research is broadening the understanding of how living systems work– to improve mental health, physical health, the health of our planet; and to find biological solutions to meet our growing demands for food and fuel. The students are among the best in the country, and the division is committed to the best education and training possible, to prepare students for their future careers.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSEIS) is committed to continuing research in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The School consists of two academic departments: the Department of Education and the Department of Information Studies. The Department of Education was ranked first overall in the nation according to U.S. News & World Report's 2018 report. The Department of Education's research is geared toward improving learning and teaching in the classroom, the workplace, and the home. The department is internationally known as a leader in the study of student testing and assessment, teacher and continuing education and development - particularly in urban, multi-ethnic environments, early childhood development, and issues of access, equity and quality facing higher education.. The Department of Information Studies is internationally recognized for research in areas such as digital archives and libraries, multimedia databases, social implications of the Internet, organization of knowledge and information policy. Researchers focus on all kinds of environments where information is stored and retrieved, including the World Wide Web, museums, corporations, schools, universities, and public libraries. The Department of Information Studies was ranked 14th in U.S. News & World Report's last survey of Library and Information Studies graduate schools.
Last updated April 28, 2023
Founded in 1945, the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science is recognized around the world as a leader in engineering education, research and service. UCLA Engineering has developed generations of rigorously trained engineers and has been the home for solutions to challenges in fields including energy, sustainability, healthcare, communications, transportation, infrastructure and information technology. The school is known as the birthplace of the Internet because in 1969 the very first transmission on what would become the Internet was sent from UCLA Engineering’s Boelter Hall. The school is also the birthplace of major innovations in reverse-osmosis technology for clean water, semiconductor design and development, pollution research and more. The school’s curriculum offers a hands-on, multidisciplinary education to prepare students to take on the challenges of the times and to make impacts in ways that one cannot yet imagine. Its proximity to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the UCLA Anderson School of Management facilitates excellence in the growing field of biomedical and bioengineering research, as well as entrepreneurship. The talented and diverse faculty members at UCLA Engineering are among the top engineering educators and researchers in the world. Many affiliated faculty have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the highest distinction for engineers in the U.S., and have received numerous other awards. The CTSI has partnered with the Institute of Risk Sciences in the School of Engineering to create a Center for SMART Healthcare which will facilitate collaborations between academicians and industry partners.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The ICNN provides advanced analysis and informatics support to a highly interactive user group consisting of neuroscientists at UCLA, who are conducting basic, clinical, and translational research. These investigators have access to excellent facilities for genetics and genomics experimentation; the lack of corresponding resources in analysis and informatics constitutes a bottleneck in their research. ICNN faculty experts in statistical genetics, gene expression analysis, and bioinformatics will oversee the activities of highly-trained staff members who will accomplish three goals: providing expert consultation and analyses for neurogenetics and neurogenomics projects; developing and maintaining a shared computing resource that will include a computational cluster for computation-intensive analyses, web-servers and state of the art software tools for a wide range of applications (including user-friendly versions of public databases, as well as workstations on which ICNN users will be trained to employ these tools; providing hands-on training in analysis and informatics to the users. ICNN is developing a whole-genome data analysis pipeline, aimed at filtering and prioritizing genetic variation identified in whole-genome sequencing studies for further study.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) is a cooperative of faculty and technologists working to advance the existing body of computing knowledge and expertise at UCLA. An interdisciplinary research institute with an emphasis on the integration of high performance computing, applied algorithmic research and development, computer science, and informatics, IDRE is central to UCLA’s data science initiatives.
The IDRE mission is to support, advance and guide a campus-wide program to position UCLA as a world leader in research and education in computational thinking, using high performance computation, data visualization and data analysis of large data sets and databases. IDRE’s vision is to sustain UCLA as a world leader in the innovative use, application, and development of computational, data, and information sciences, and digital technologies that drive cultural and societal change. IDRE supports research and innovative scholarship that takes advantage of new technologies and encourages collaboration between faculty from different departments and disciplines at UCLA, the opening of new research questions, and the enrichment of the learning environment. The goal of this campus-wide collective is to make UCLA a world leader in high-performance computing and visualization research and education.
IDRE programs are focused on the challenges and opportunities associated with five areas critical to advancing innovative research and scholarship: Computation and Storage, GPU/Many Core, Pipeline to Leadership Class Facilities; Statistical Computing/Data Informatics; and GIS, Visualization and Modeling. Through the IDRE Research Technology Group (RTG), IDRE provides services and support aligned with the five program areas. IDRE’s unique computational capability includes High Performance Computing resources and expertise, Grid and Cloud Access Services, Cluster Services, the Grid Portal, and UCLA’s data center system.
Last updated April 28, 2023
For nearly 60 years, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has played an instrumental role in advancing the field of public health in the areas of research, training and service. Our world class faculty in collaboration with students have made research discoveries that have improved the health of communities large and small around the world; our talented students come from all over the globe to receive training and mentoring from our faculty, then take their knowledge to become leaders in communities as far as the Congo and as near as East LA; through our field study programs, faculty and students bring information and education to underserved communities, that have changed behaviors and saved lives. Departments include biostatistics, community health services, environmental health sciences, epidemiology, and health policy and management as well as over a dozen research centers, more than 200 faculty (over 60 full-time), and more than 600 students representing 27 nations.
Last updated April 28, 2023
Founded in 1974, UCLA’s cancer center has been officially designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as a comprehensive cancer center with exemplary programs across the broad spectrum of basic research, clinical investigations, patient care, and cancer control and prevention. Specialized outpatient care includes both surgical and medical oncology since 1976. Of the 70 NCI cancer center programs nationwide, only 50 have received the gold-star comprehensive status. UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC) receives this honor for maintaining the highest standards of excellence in patient care, education, basic science, clinical research and cancer prevention. Specialized outpatient care includes both surgical and medical oncology. According to the mission of UCLA JCCC, as defined by the NCI) NCI-designated cancer centers are a major source of discovery of the nature of cancer and of the development of more effective approaches to cancer prevention, diagnosis and therapy. They also deliver medical advances to patients and their families, educate healthcare professionals and the public and reach out to underserved populations. They are characterized by strong organizational capabilities; institutional commitment; trans-disciplinary, cancer-focused science; experienced scientific and administrative leadership and state-of-the-art cancer research and patient care facilities. JCCC has established an international reputation in a number of areas, such as developing new cancer therapies, providing the best in experimental and traditional treatment, and expertly guiding and training the next generation of medical researchers. Numerous successful targeted therapies were developed based on basic science done in UCLA laboratories and later clinical research with UCLA patients. A few of the more well-known therapies include: Herceptin, a targeted breast cancer drug and the first approved treatment that attacks cancer at its genetic roots; Gleevec, a once-a-day pill that targets a common form of adult leukemia called chronic myelogenous leukemia, or CML; Sprycel, also a pill that targets CML; Tarceva, a targeted lung cancer drug; Avastin, a targeted drug for colorectal cancer and lung cancer. These treatments are just the most well-known of JCCC’s firsts. With a membership of more than 450 physicians and scientists, JCCC is one of the largest comprehensive cancer centers in the nation. They handle more than 156,000 patient visits per year and conduct hundreds of clinical trials, providing the latest in experimental cancer treatments. The Center’s depth allows them to offer a wide array of benefits to patients. The Cancer division, housed in this center, is ranked 21st in the nation as of the 2018-2019 edition of the U.S. News & World Report.
Last updated April 28, 2023
Established in 1966, the UCLA Stein Eye Institute vision-science campus is the fulfillment of an ambitious plan by ophthalmologist, businessman, and philanthropist Jules Stein, MD, and Bradley R. Straatsma, MD, JD, founding director of the Stein Eye Institute and founding chairman of the UCLA Department of Ophthalmology, who created a bold plan for preventing blindness through comprehensive programs for patient care, vision-science research, education and training of the next generation of physicians, and eye health outreach both local and global. Under the leadership of Bartly J. Mondino, MD, director and chairman since 1994, a broad agenda of program building and expansion has been implemented: the first Stein Eye Center opened in Santa Monica in 2012; the UCLA Department of Ophthalmology created the nation’s preeminent organization for ophthalmic care and vision research by forging a historic affiliation with the Doheny Eye Institute in 2013; and the Edie & Lew Wasserman Building, a landmark research and patient-care facility with a state-of-the-art outpatient surgical center, opened in 2014. Combined, UCLA Stein Eye Institute, Stein Eye Center, Doheny Eye Center UCLA, and UCLA-affilliated hospitals provide patients across the Southland with access to the finest vision care.
The Stein Eye Institute at UCLA, a worldwide leader and innovator in eye care, has long been recognized for outstanding advancements in vision sciences and the highest quality patient care. Consistently ranked as the best eye care center in the Western United States by U.S. News & World Report and Ophthalmology Times, the Stein Eye Institute offers a full range of services for patients of all ages—services that are provided in private consultation with some of the most skilled and highly qualified eye and vision care specialists in the world.
The primary areas of basic vision science represented within the Institute are biophysics, chemistry and biochemistry, genetics, immunology, microbiology, molecular and cell biology, neurobiology, pharmacology and physiology. Research areas within the field of ophthalmology include cataract, external ocular and corneal disease, glaucoma, neuro-ophthalmology, ophthalmic pathology, orbital and ophthalmic plastic surgery, pediatric ophthalmology and strabismus, and retinal disease.
Last updated April 28, 2023
The STAR Program is a unique post-doctoral research-training program for the development of physician-scientists. Many clinical fellows are interested in pursuing a science career, but without prior formal training, they often lack the tools to be successful. Started in 1993, the STAR program was designed to fill this void in research training. STAR Fellows complete clinical training toward board certification while also pursuing a formal research degree. The program offers one of four research career tracks: 1) basic science PhD, 2) health services PhD, 3) Master of Science in Clinical Research in the UCLA CTSI Training Program in Translational Science (TPTS), and 4) postdoctoral research training for those who already have an MD PhD. By providing research training at the end of clinical training, trainees have better alignment of clinical and research interests and greater “momentum” as they transitioned to research faculty positions. Since 1993, the program has had 202 graduates, of whom 81% initially pursued a research career and 72% remain in research. Just over half (53%) received career development awards, and 25% have so far received investigator-initiated NIH (R01) or equivalent grants. Graduates of the program include Division Chiefs, Center and Institute Directors, and multiple individuals in leadership roles at UCLA Health and other leading institutions across the country. Based on publicly available data, graduates of the STAR program have secured over $250 million in grant funding since the year 2000. The outcomes of the STAR Program appear superior to that reported from clinician-scientists training programs.
Last updated April 28, 2023
Established in 1935, UCLA Anderson School of Management provides management education to some 1,600 students enrolled in full-time, part-time and executive MBA programs and doctoral programs. UCLA Anderson and many of its academic programs and departments are perennially ranked among the best in the world. The mission of UCLA Anderson is to be a global leader in management education, research and service. All of UCLA Anderson's academic programs, student and alumni activities and organizations, career management services, centers of influence and administrative programs share in this mission. One of the most technologically advanced business school facilities in the world today, UCLA Anderson utilizes computing and communication technologies that have transformed management education. Students and faculty are part of a virtual community that is fully networked -- an environment in which a natural path of communication is electronic. More than 3,000 network ports connect every classroom seat, breakout area and library reading room and the UCLA Anderson community also enjoys wireless connectivity throughout the school's complex. Award-winning faculty renowned for their research and teaching, rigorous academic programs, successful alumni and world-class facilities combine to provide an extraordinary and practical learning environment.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The Center for Health Advancement provides enhanced analysis and evidence-based information to help policy makers decide which policies and programs can best improve health and reduce health disparities, in order to promote shared policy decision-making among well-informed voters, journalists, and politicians. The Center is creating a comprehensive, evidence-based guide to what works for population well-being – like a Consumer Reports for health and social policy. The goal is to make rigorous policy analysis fun to consume and easy to browse. Successes include a study showing that cuts to after-school programs could impair the health of California’s poorest schoolchildren. This study led to state legislators reinstating means testing to prioritize funding for poorer schools and students. Information on economic and health disparities in affected communities from the Center’s study on transit alternatives for Wilshire Boulevard was included in LA County Metro’s final Environmental Impact Assessment for the Westside Subway Extension – a multi-billion dollar project spanning over a decade with the potential to transform transportation in Los Angeles. A Center Health Impact Assessment showing that free transit passes for students would help reduce truancy helped persuade the Metro board not to increase youth fares in the recent fare adjustments. And population health projections from the Center’s Health Forecasting Model are now being used by hospitals throughout Southern California in their community benefit planning and reports to the IRS.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) was founded in 1994 with a mission is to improve the public’s health through high-quality, objective, and evidence-based research and data that informs effective policymaking. CHPR advances its mission through policy analysis, policy-relevant research, public service, community partnership, media relations, and education. Since its inception it has produced high-quality, objective, and evidence-based research and data that have informed effective policymaking and improved the lives of millions of Californians. The CHPR is the premier source of data on the health and health insurance status of California's diverse population and it has made a huge impact on efforts to improve the health of all Californians, particularly those who are underserved. More than any other organization in the California, the Center has made it possible for health issues and challenges to be looked at, understood and addressed based on sound, credible data. The Center has achieved several noteworthy developments and milestones, which include housing the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the nation's largest state health survey and a unique source of data on many ethnic, racial and sexual minority groups that are underrepresented in other surveys. In addition to housing CHIS, the Center has also developed innovative prediction tools that help policymakers such as AskCHIS Neighborhood Edition (NE), which gives users the ability to look at health data at the neighborhood level. The CalSIM microsimulation model, developed in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Labor Center, helped both the California Department of Health Care Services as well as Covered California understand how many people were likely to seek coverage as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was being implemented in 2014. The predicted estimates were proven accurate as the program unfolded. The Center’s research and analysis informs and educates state legislators and policymakers from the smallest counties in the north to sprawling San Diego County in the south on topics ranging from the link between soda and obesity to the effect of food insecurity on vulnerable groups to the inadequacy of federal measures of poverty for senior citizens. The CHPR has partnered with numerous collaborators including The California Endowment. The California Wellness Foundation and others to train thousands of people in community and advocacy groups to empower themselves by understanding and using health data in their work. In addition to the research and policy analysis capacity, the CHPR disseminates data and research findings across multiple channels to enable a wide range of users to access and utilize our work. Dissemination modalities include:
CHPR is located in 17,500 square feet of off-campus research space near the School of Public Health. The Center supports its research and public service programs with a strong administrative support unit. The Center is connected to the UCLA IT backbone and all workstations are securely connected to center-level resources that are highly secure. The Center also maintains HIPPA level secure data center. The CEC’s staff at the CHPR will have office space and facilities through CHPR, including secure, networked computers, telephones, copiers, printers and access to conference rooms as well as administrative/financial management support.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The UCLA Center for Health Services and Society’s mission is to strengthen resiliency and improve the mental health of local and national diverse populations through rigorous research, effective programs, and partnering with community-based and policy agencies. The center maintains a strong focus on improving preventive and treatment services for mental illnesses across the lifespan while also exploring broader societal issues, such as understanding the social and historical context for services and illness and building new strategies to promote community strength and resiliency through healthcare, media and communication, and the arts. The Center houses UCLA clinical faculty that includes adult psychiatrists and psychologists, child and geriatric psychiatry specialists, and staff, including doctoral level social scientists, master's level statisticians, and research and administrative staff.
Our values include: Community—collaborating with diverse partnerships to create an environment that promotes healthy development and well-being across the lifespan, Compassion—promoting respect, understanding and dignity towards persons and their families living in under-resourced communities, Creativity—using media, technology, and the arts to address stigma and engage populations, Communication—leveraging advances in mobile health technologies to improve access, engagement, and empowerment in mental health care, Commitment—dedicating effort and resources to engaging communities in all phases of research, from design to dissemination and Knowledge—employing rigorous partnered-research to promote a culture of health equity through two-way knowledge exchange and policy reform.
Last updated May 9, 2023
UCLA was among the first academic centers in the world to offer clinical-grade whole-exome sequencing, and it has now accrued an unparalleled experience more than ten years and thousands of analyses. This clinical test, performed under strict CLIA-compliant clinical laboratory conditions, utilizes so-called “next-generation” or “massively parallel” DNA sequencing platforms to obtain full DNA sequence of all the protein-coding regions in the human genome, about 30 million nucleotides of genetic code comprising about 23,000 genes. The technique thus allows testing not only of the small subset of known genes associated with genetic disorders but also any and all other genes that might be involved or yet to be discovered. And all 23,000 genes are interrogated in parallel, in a single test, offering the chance to quickly put an end to the “diagnostic odyssey” that so many patients with mysterious presentations typically go through, taking many years, visits to countless specialists, and tens of thousands of dollars of laboratory testing and imaging.
From the beginning, this service has been structured in a holistic fashion, with strong emphasis on interdisciplinary academic and clinical input. Every case is analyzed intensively by the unique “Genomics Data Board” that meets weekly and comprises the laboratory directors, bioinformaticists, clinical geneticists, pathologists, genetic counselors, clinical fellows and, whenever available, the ordering physicians. Only unanimously agreed-upon findings are reported out. While it is quite conservative in designating a DNA variant as causative (pathogenic), the center’s overall diagnostic yield has been extremely high (25-50%); such a return is much higher than virtually any other genetic test. In addition, the test has yielded a number of new disease gene discoveries. This success has been reported in high-profile journals and at international meetings. Lastly, the group took an early leadership role in evaluating the need (or not) for routine confirmation by Sanger sequencing of variants detected next-generation sequencing, and in the important and rather heated discussions at the national level about reporting of incidental/off-target findings. Given its uniformly high coverage across the genome, it is unusual for findings to be at all ambiguous, but if there is the slightest concern about that, the center has immediate access (just across the hall) to confirmation in the Orphan Disease Testing Center. In partnering with the UCLA Clinical Genomics Center, CTSI and Precision Health have refined a system for storage and analysis of EHR data that directly links with individual genomic data.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM) is one of the top ranked medical schools in the United States. Since opening in 1951, DGSOM has grown into an internationally recognized leader in research, medical education, patient care, and public service. DGSOM engages the efforts of more than 2,800 full-time faculty representing 17 distinct fields of PhD training, in the biosciences; many of these faculty have been recognized with national and international awards and honors. The medical school is consistently among the top in the nation in research funding. DGSOM receives more than $559M annually in NIH research funding, contributing to a total nearly $1.4 billion annually in research awards at UCLA The School of Medicine’s education and training currently encompasses 1,300 trainees across 99 programs, over 850 medical students, 320 doctoral students, and 400 postdoctoral fellows. There are now nearly 300 endowed chairs. The school focuses on six overarching goals: ensuring that academic medicine continues to thrive at UCLA, fostering interdisciplinary efforts, increasing the financial transparency of the school, transforming the culture of the school to ensure all individuals are welcome and valued, enhancing mentorship and leadership training programs, and elevating the school’s internal and external communications. UCLA’s medical school ranks No. 10 in primary care, No. 13 in Most Diverse Medical Schools, and continues to be highly ranked in U.S. News & World Report's 2023-24 Best Medical Schools.
Last updated May 16, 2023
A hub of deep expertise, the Department of Human Genetics helps partners across UCLA interpret data and leverage genomic technology to improve study design and solve medical problems. We demystify genetic complexities to provide vital insights for a range of clinical and research applications. We strive to improve the care of as many patients as possible by pushing our capabilities, developing novel ways to address unanswered questions.
UCLA launched the Department of Human Genetics during the start of a new age of medicine. Researchers around the world had nearly finished mapping and sequencing human genes, producing mountains of raw genomic data. The new department aimed to lead the scientific community in using this novel data to better understand and treat human disease. When our department opened its doors, genomic data was inscrutable to everyone. Today, we use genomic data to develop patient-specific treatments and prevention strategies that save lives.
The Department is dedicated to turning the mountains of raw genetic data into a detailed understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of human disease. The key to such understanding is the realization that genes not only code for specific proteins, but they also control the temporal development and maturation of every living organism through a complex web of interactions. The department serves as a focal point for genetics research on the UCLA campus, with state of the art facilities for gene expression, sequencing, genotyping, and bioinformatics. In addition to its research mission, the Department offers many exciting training opportunities for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and medical residents.
Last updated May 9, 2023
For more than 60 years, the Department of Medicine at UCLA has engaged in world-class medical research, teaching, and patient care. Across 14 sub-specialties, our physicians are world-renowned experts in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of complex and routine illnesses. UCLA investigators are situated within the following divisions and centers: Cardiology, CARE Center, Center for East-West Medicine Clinical Immunology and Allergy, Clinical Nutrition, Dermatology, Digestive Diseases / Gastroenterology, Endocrinology, General Internal Medicine, Geriatric Medicine, Hematology Oncology, Infectious Diseases, Nano Medicine, Nephrology, Pulmonology / Pulmonary and Rheumatology.
The UCLA Department of Medicine (DOM) physical computing area is maintained and secured under strict rules for data protection. The servers are protected by firewall and physically located in dedicated data centers with limited, controlled access for DOM personnel only. Access to the files is restricted to a limited number of network hosts and protected by encrypted user authentication where applicable. All the data stored on DOM-maintained servers are automatically archived nightly to removable media by professional staff of the DOM. The archive schedule is a 4-week media rotation with monthly archived sets; three weeks worth of media are stored in an offsite facility. On the network, access to files is protected via account and password protocols. Regular review of these protocols ensures state of the art network security.
All UCLA faculty and staff use PCs with Windows 7 Professional or iOS operating systems and the attendant suite of Microsoft applications for word-processing, e-mail, graphics, and spreadsheet needs. In addition, a variety of statistical packages (e.g., R, SAS, SPSS, and Stata) and systems development tools (e.g., PHP, MySQL, C++) are available.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The primary objective of the Department of Medicine Statistics Core (DOMStat) is to provide statistical analysis collaboration to investigators across the translational research spectrum (basic science, bioinformatics, observational studies, clinical trials, electronic health records research and health services). DOMStat offers faculty and staff level statistical collaboration for grant proposals, data analysis, manuscript preparation, and other research activities requiring statistical input.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The Department of Neurology at UCLA was founded by Augustus S. Rose, MD, in the 1950s in the UCLA School of Medicine. Since then, it has grown from a few faculty members in that era to more than 100. The department is also home to 125 trainees and is associated with seven affiliated hospitals. The department offers comprehensive consultation, diagnosis, and treatment services for adult and geriatric patients with disorders of the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and muscles. Clinical services are organized into general neurology and subspecialty programs. The department has significant expertise in the following specialty areas: stroke, EEG, EMG, brain mapping, computational neuroimaging, neuro-infectious diseases, Alzheimer’s Disease, critical care neurology, epilepsy, neuromuscular diseases, movement disorders, multiple sclerosis, dementia, neuro-behavior, neurogenetics, neuro-otology, headache, neuro-oncology, neuro-rehabilitation, and sleep disorders. Clinical services are organized into general neurology and subspecialty programs.
The Department is research intensive and has been ranked #1 in NIH funding for many years. As of the 2019-2020 edition of the U.S. News & World Report, this division is ranked 6th in the nation. The faculty of the Department of Neurology are distinguished scientists and clinicians who have been ranked #1 or #2 in NIH funding since 2002. New and renovated laboratory space typifies the efficient, effective and handsome surroundings in which the department is situated. The Department of Neurology is divided into disease-specific and method-specific programs including all of the major categories of neurological diseases and methods that include neurogenetics and neuroimaging as well as health services research.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine is an integral part of the vibrant UCLA research enterprise and includes faculty members with a broad array of basic, translational, and clinical research interests in areas that include Bioinformatics, Cancer Biology, Immunology/Inflammation, Metabolism, Neuroscience, and Regenerative Medicine. Departmental researchers seek to better understand disease pathogenesis and translate these findings to the clinic. Each month, approximately 500,000 samples, including 10,000 biopsy and cytology cases, are analyzed to guide the care of patients in UCLA Healthcare, and through its referral network regionally and nationally. Departmental research has continued to thrive and grow over the past decade. Faculty publish their findings in many of the top biomedical journals such as Cell, Immunity, Molecular Cell, Nature Immunology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Last updated May 9, 2023
GIM & HSR is home to >100 faculty members and includes 20 clinicians with advanced degrees and training in translational and health services research. This group includes outstanding clinician investigators and social scientists and has a close working relationship with the more than 420 clinicians throughout the Department of Medicine. The Division housed a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program for over 40 years that recently transitioned into the National Clinician Scholars Program—involving nurses as well as physicians—with co-sponsorship from UCLA, VA, LAC Department of Mental Health (DMH), and LAC Department of Health Services (DHS) and has had continuous NRSA funding since 1988 in HRSA’s Primary Care Research Program. Division members specialize in a variety of translational research areas and are leaders in scholarship on quality and access to care, health status and outcomes assessment, and health economics, making major contributions in studies of diabetes, HIV, behavioral healthcare, health insurance, racial and socioeconomic variations in care, appropriateness, and other topics.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The Early Academic Outreach Program (EAOP) is an academic preparation program established in 1976 by the University of California to expand postsecondary education opportunities for California's educationally disadvantaged students. UCLA EAOP works with students to help them become competitively eligible applicants for college admission, going beyond minimum eligibility. EAOP works collaboratively with families, educators, schools, communities, and various campus departments to provide pre-college students with challenging academic enrichment activities to promote and cultivate a college-going culture. EAOP is one of the state's most successful pre-collegiate student academic development programs. UCLA EAOP works with over 15,000 students in middle school and high school each year. This includes working with over 80 schools in 10 school districts. Since 1991, approximately 60% of EAOP seniors meet UC eligibility each year, 82% attend a postsecondary institution upon high school graduation and 62% attend a 4-year institution, with 25% attending a UC school.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The UCLA Health Care Institute (HCI), housed under the UCLA Anderson School of Management, has taught a management systems approach for successful implementation of health promotion interventions in Head Start for nearly 20 years. By building leadership and management capacity in organizations serving early childhood needs, HCI enables early childhood organizations to empower families with knowledge, tools and resources to prevent disease and adopt sustainable, healthy lifestyles. HCI has a portfolio of low literacy health education topics that are culturally sensitive and includes: sick day management and injury prevention; trauma informed care training; mental health and wellness; oral health promotion; and diabetes and obesity prevention. Since 2001, the HCI has trained over 200,000 families in 7 languages and in 50 states. Its training methodology is used by over 300 Head Start grantees and has consistently delivered measurable outcomes in improving knowledge, changing behavior, and reducing unnecessary utilization of health care services.
HCI provides a structured set of tools and processes for strategic implementation of health promotion, and incorporates various learning formats: in-person education sessions, reading materials and toolkits, webinars and parent trainings. Organization teams also participate in a mock parent-training session that allows teams to experience firsthand what parents would experience during a parent training session. As a result, HCI can: increase school attendance, increase parent’s work attendance, increase staff, parent, and community engagement, improve the health literacy of staff and families, and strengthen community partnerships.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The Institute of Technology Advancement (ITA) is an off-campus technology development center established by the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science to accelerate the transition of high-impact innovative research from UCLA to technology development and commercialization. Start-up funding for the institute was donated by the Henry and Susan Samueli and the Easton Foundation. ITA provides operational flexibility for university researchers, industry, government, and investment partners alike. The flexible organizational structure of ITA complements existing capabilities of the university and industry, allowing the center to move quickly to promote the transition of discoveries to development and commercialization. ITA supports three types of research activities:
ITA, as an organization and through its business-savvy Technology Strategists, is a conduit to local, state, government agencies, industry, and venture capital investors. Each Technology Strategist has a specialized domain of expertise and relationships with various funding resources.
Last updated May 9, 2023
At the convergence of the fields of social work, urban planning and policymaking, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs identifies and develops emerging areas of research and teaching, cultivating leaders and change agents who advance solutions to society’s most pressing problems. Founded in 1994, UCLA Luskin incorporates the best practices in scholarship, research and teaching in the fields of social work, urban and regional planning, and policymaking. Faculty of the Luskin School of Public Affairs are actively engaged in research that addresses pressing national and regional issues including immigration, drug policy, prison reform, health care financing, transportation and the environment, national security, economic development, and an aging U.S. and world population. The school also enjoys a student body of 555 students across its various disciplines, including Public Policy, Social Welfare, and Urban Planning.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The Charles R. Drew/UCLA PRIME-LA program leads to the regular MD with special emphasis on leadership and advocacy to address healthcare disparities in medically underserved populations in California (and the US). The Program in Medical Education (PRIME) is a dual degree program leading to the MD and a master’s degree in an area that complements the mission of the program.
Cohorts are composed of approximately 18 students. Students identify with one of two programs: PRIME-LA Westwood or PRIME-LA CDU. A commitment to serve in, and experience working with, diverse medically disadvantaged populations is paramount.
During the first two years PRIME-LA students will complete the DGSOM UCLA core curriculum. In the third-year students will participate in clinical clerkships that include Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Surgery, Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Neurology, Obstetrics and Gynecology and Radiology. During the fourth year, students will complete an advanced degree that designs and implements a project related to improving health for the underserved. Advanced degree options include MBA, MPH, and MPP. The fifth year will be within the Urban Underserved College. The "Colleges" at DGSOM further prepare students for residencies and future role as leaders.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The NHLBI Proteomics Center at UCLA consists of an international effort led by Dr. Peipei Ping. The central scientific goal aims to provide fundamental information on the proteome biology of cardiovascular diseases, an essential component for the Human Proteome Project. This collaborative effort has been encouraged by the UCLA leadership to advance our scientific and education missions via international collaborations. Our Center thrives to support creative investigations in proteomics science and to provide a training environment for young investigators from UCLA and from the scientific community at large.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The Orphan Disease Testing Center (ODTC) is uniquely appropriate for providing clinical confirmation of any and all mutations identified in subjects. UCLA’s ODTC was established two decades ago on just this model: to offer confirmation of DNA sequence variants identified in research laboratories and to generate an official clinical report from a laboratory that is fully licensed and accredited under CLIA, CAP, and the State of California. The laboratory director, Dr. Wayne Grody, is board-certified in Clinical Molecular Genetics, Clinical Genetics, Clinical Biochemical Genetics, Anatomic and Clinical Pathology, and Molecular Genetic Pathology. He has also maintained a continuous leadership role over many years in establishing quality assurance and ethical guidelines for molecular genetic testing through numerous governmental and professional organizations that are now in practice nationwide. In this way, all of the regulatory burdens are transferred away from the research laboratory, and the DNA results can be provided legally and appropriately to physicians and patients for purposes of future medical management.
The laboratory specializes in what is sometimes called "custom DNA sequencing", in which any mutation in any gene can readily be assessed, as long as the locus is provided by the referring research laboratory. For example, the laboratory provides validation of variants generated by the Clinical Genomics Center at UCLA that generates Whole Exome Sequencing data. In addition, the group has strong translational research interests, and were the first laboratory to be awarded NIH funding from the Office of Rare Diseases to support rapid and reliable translations of research tests to the clinical setting. Precision Health will utilize the Orphan Disease Testing Center to confirm all variants that we plan to report back to patients.
Last updated May 9, 2023
Two previous research laboratories, the Clinical and Translational Research Laboratory (CTRL) and the Clinical Immunology Research Laboratory (CIRL) have been restructured into the Pathology Research Portal (PRP). The Pathology Research Portal (PRP) is a CAP accredited laboratory, which functions as the biospecimen liaison between researchers and clinical testing. The laboratory provides coordination for sample receiving, accessioning, processing, short term and long term storage, dispatching to multiple core facilities for testing, and result retrieving. PRP also provides shipping and temporary storage services as well as customized services to meet various research needs. PRP is staffed by one supervisor and nine laboratory technicians. It occupies approximately 5,000 square feet of space located on the A-level of the Center for Health Sciences (CHS) building. The facility works with investigators both inside and outside the UCLA enterprise on a collaborative and fee-for-service basis.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The UCLA School of Dentistry was established in 1964 in response to the need for a public school of dentistry in the greater Los Angeles area. Although the UCLA School of Dentistry is fairly young, its achievements and accolades rival, and even surpass, those of other research-intensive dental schools that have been around for more than a century. Since its inception, the School has focused on achieving and maintaining excellence in four main areas: a comprehensive dental education, cutting-edge research, quality patient care and public service. Over the past five decades, these four main areas of focus, along with dedicated and talented students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends, have propelled the School of Dentistry to being one of the premier dental schools on the national and international stage. Sponsored research at the School has almost tripled since 1995. In large part, this increase reflects UCLA's internationally renowned faculty and a strong focus on faculty-student research. The School’s academic programs provide a range of opportunities to integrate clinical training with basic or applied research, and multidisciplinary research is highly valued. UCLA provides a research home for dental, undergraduate, and graduate students, with a unique opportunity to participate in significant oral health research. The School of Dentistry is an important CTSI partner, collaborates on research projects, and is on CTSI’s leadership to ensure accurate representation of Dentistry School collaborations and opportunities within the CTSI.
Last updated May 9, 2023
Founded in 1949, UCLA School of Law has garnered a reputation for artful teaching, influential scholarship and enduring innovation. As the first public law school in Southern California and the youngest top-ranked law school in the United States, UCLA Law has consistently pushed new boundaries in the study and practice of law. Over the decades, UCLA Law has developed a depth and breadth of academic offerings unsurpassed by any other law school in the nation. The Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy is among the best anywhere. UCLA Law is one of four among the top 20 law schools with a specialization in Business Law and Policy–and the only one to offer a specialization in Critical Race Studies. UCLA Law’s faculty also has emerged as one of the most influential nationwide. Our professors are leading scholars in areas including bankruptcy, corporate law, constitutional law, critical race theory, entertainment law, environmental law, intellectual property and tax law.
Today, the UCLA Law alumni community is more than 15,000 strong and extends around the world. Alumni live and practice in virtually every state, the District of Columbia, multiple U.S. territories and more than 50 foreign nations. These graduates excel in their chosen fields, from private practice to business to government to public interest and beyond. UCLA Law has a long tradition of distinction on the bench, with more than 320 alumni who are serving, or have served, on courts throughout the country. Six UCLA Law alumni are now judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit–the largest number of graduates from any one law school who are serving on the court.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The UCLA School of Nursing is a significant force in developing nurse leaders to inspire individuals across the lifespan to achieve health, wellness, and quality of life. The School embraces diversity and is committed to attracting and supporting the best and the brightest students, faculty and staff. Innovative academic programs ensure that nurses are educated to assume leadership roles and to respond to the healthcare needs of diverse populations. The School aspires to lead the field in the use of pioneering instructional technology, clinical laboratories, and communication and evaluation systems to optimize acquisition of knowledge and skills, from basic to advanced practice. The School of Nursing is an important CTSI partner, collaborates on research projects, and participates in the CTSI’s leadership to ensure accurate representation of our joint endeavors.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The UCLA Department of Public Policy offers the Master of Public Policy (MPP). MPP students can pursue interdisciplinary Global Public Affairs and Leaders in Sustainability certificate programs. Joint degrees with Law, Management, Public Health, Medicine, and Social Welfare offer an even broader range of skill and expertise development. An undergraduate Minor in Public Affairs is also available. The school takes people who are passionate about making a difference in the world and give them the tools they need to do so. The master’s program combines the best of rigorous policy education with a flexibility and responsiveness that enables us to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world. A career in public service is no longer limited to working in government. By giving students a diversified tool kit of quantitative and analytical skills and the flexibility to design their own program of study— while drawing on all the resources of one of the world’s top research universities—the school produces graduates who are equipped to become real leaders in policy making, wherever that process takes place.
Last updated May 9, 2023
Recognized as one of the world's leading centers for the management of cerebral vascular disease, the UCLA Stroke Center treats simple and complex vascular disorders by incorporating recent developments in emergency medicine, stroke neurology, microneurosurgery, interventional neuroradiology, stereotactic radiology, neurointensive care, neuroanesthesiology, and rehabilitation neurology. Care is coordinated from the moment of first contact, in the emergency department or outpatient clinics, through acute treatment and neurological rehabilitation. The UCLA Stroke Center provides comprehensive diagnostic and therapeutic care of patients with disorders of blood vessels of the brain and spinal cord, including: ischemic stroke, transient ischemic attack, carotid stenosis, cerebral hemorrhage, aneurysms/subarachnoid hemorrhage, vascular malformations of the brain, and spinal vascular malformations. The UCLA Stroke Center opened one of the nation's first dedicated inpatient stroke units which offers state-of-the-art management of patients with brain infarction, brain hemorrhage and other cerebral vascular diseases. Other on-site facilities include a neurological intensive care unit, neurosurgical operating rooms, neuro-endovascular therapy suites, a clinical cerebral blood flow laboratory, stereotactic radiology rooms and an outpatient clinic.
Last updated May 9, 2023
The University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program was established in 1984 to encourage outstanding women and minority Ph.D. recipients to pursue academic careers at the University of California. The current program offers postdoctoral research fellowships, professional development and faculty mentoring to outstanding scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at UC. The goal of the program is to provide research opportunity and career development for scholars whose work will enhance the diversity of the academic community at the University of California. Approximately 75% of UC President's Postdoctoral Fellows have received tenure track faculty appointments. Since 2003, over 100 former fellows received faculty appointments at University of California campuses.
Last updated May 9, 2023
Funded by the NIH Common Fund, the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) is an initiative to facilitate the diagnosis of conditions that have eluded diagnosis through the coordinated action of leading clinical and research centers. The UDN has two main goals: To provide answers for patients and families affected by mysterious conditions, and to learn more about rare and common diseases. The UDN is made up of clinical and research centers across the United States, UCLA housing one such center, which are all working to improve diagnosis and care of patients with undiagnosed diseases. UCLA’s UDN, under the Department of Human Genetics, supports a comprehensive “bedside-to-bench” clinical research to aid physicians in their efforts to give long-sought answers to patients living with mystery diseases. Their goal is to accelerate and expand clinical genomics, enabling quickly and definitive diagnosis and clarify the best ways to treat patients.
Last updated May 9, 2023