Academic Support

bvenkat@g.ucla.edu

UCLA Institute for Society & Genetics / History

De Neve West

bcallaghan@ucla.edu

Psychology

Rieber Vista

Dr. Bridget Callaghan is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology where she directs the Brain & Body Lab. In her lab, Bridget and her students study how early experiences (particularly with caregivers) get under the skin to influence mental and physical health across the lifespan. Using a diverse range of tools such as brain imaging, heart rate monitoring, and gastrointestinal microbiome analyses, as well as behavioral observations of parents and children, and cognitive tasks, Bridget’s research is aimed at creating personalized mental and physical interventions and supports for people who are struggling after early caregiving adversity.

Bridget was born in Sydney Australia and received her undergraduate BA degree in Psychology and her Ph.D at the University of New South Wales before moving to the USA in 2014 to complete her postdoc at Columbia University. Bridget moved to sunny Los Angeles in 2019 with her husband Beau, and her fur baby (Vinnie). Bridget and Beau welcomed their smiley son Freddie to the world in April 2021. Bridget, Beau and Freddie love to spend time at the beach, at the UCLA pool, and taking long hikes. Vinnie nearly drowned in a water outlet on Christmas Day 2019 (Bridget had to dive in to save him) and so does not partake in water based activities (he also does not like garden sprinklers). Freddie likes to get tickled and laugh.

cvblack@humnet.ucla.edu

Art History & Chicana/o Studies

Sproul Cove and Landing

Charlene Villaseñor Black, whose research and teaching focuses on the art of the Hispanic world, is Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies, and the recent recipient of UCLA’s Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence (2016). She is Associate Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center, and Editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, the leading journal in the field. Since 2011, she has served as Faculty in Residence in Sproul Hall, also advising the Chicano/Latino theme community. She publishes on the politics of religious art and transatlantic exchange, as well as on contemporary Chicana/o art. Her widely reviewed book, Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire, was awarded the College Art Association Millard Meiss prize. Other recent publications include her edited book, Tradition and Transformation: Chicana/o Art from the 1970s to the 1990s, and articles on portrayals of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, race and the historiography of colonial art, enconchado paintings, gender and Hispanic art, early modern art and global trade, and teaching contemporary Chicana/o art. She has held grants from the ACLS, Fulbright, Mellon, Woodrow Wilson, and Getty Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her upbringing as a working class, Catholic Chicana/o from Arizona forged her identity as a border-crossing early modernist and inspirational teacher.

hanscom@humnet.ucla.edu

Asian Languages and Cultures

Hitch Suites

Chris Hanscom is an associate professor of Korean literature and acting chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, and teaches courses on modern Korean literature and on topics in Korean film. His current research focuses on three areas, all in the context of the history of colonialism: modernist fiction in 1930s Seoul; race and racism under Japanese empire; and the relationship between science and literature across twentieth-century East Asia.

After a B.A. in English from Cornell University and study abroad in Korea, Chris (a native of Maine) moved to the West coast for the first time and completed a Ph.D. in Korean literature and culture at UCLA. After a post-doctoral fellowship and some snowy weather at Harvard University and three years of teaching (and more very snowy weather) at Dartmouth College as an assistant professor, he was happy to recently return to UCLA and the great city of Los Angeles.

When he’s not teaching or working on a piece of writing, Chris is usually spending time with his wife Carol, a professional chef by training, and their three daughters. He is always looking for recommendations on good books and good food.

desisr@soc.ucla.edu

Sociology and American Indian Studies

Saxon Suites

cole@gseis.ucla.edu

Education

Rieber Hall

gcarpio@chavez.ucla.edu

Chicana/o Studies

Sproul Hall

ireneachen@ucla.edu

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Olympic Hall

Irene Chen is an associate professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA. She grew up in San Diego, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Harvard, and earned an M.D. from the joint Harvard-M.I.T. program and a Ph.D. in Biophysics at Harvard. Her laboratory studies nanoscale synthetic biological systems to learn about the transition from non-living to living systems and to develop alternative antimicrobial agents. Her spouse, Michael Schindlinger, grew up in New York and attended Berklee School of Music before earning his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Their two sons, ages 5 and 10, excel at keeping things silly.

silvers@ucla.edu

Psychology

De Neve Towers

Jen Silvers is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology where she teaches courses on developmental psychology, emotion and neuroscience. Jen also directs the Social Affective Neuroscience and Development Laboratory, where she and her lab members use neuroscience tools to understand the effects of stress and social relationships on the emotional brain in children and adolescents.

Jen grew up in Bethesda, MD and earned B.A. degrees in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Virginia. After spending two years working as a research assistant at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, D.C., Jen completed her Ph.D. and postdoctoral training at Columbia University in New York. Nine years in New York City left Jen with a strong appreciation for bagels and public transportation, but also with an even stronger desire to never walk her dog through snowdrifts again (thanks, LA!).

Jen and her husband, Jason, have a dog child, Sally, and two human children, Ellie and Sebastian. Sally, Ellie and Sebastian enjoy getting all kinds of attention from UCLA students and proving to Jen that she knows a lot less about development than she thinks. The Silvers Buhle family loves all of the joyous things that LA has to offer, especially food, film, art and nature.

jharris@gseis.ucla.edu

Education & Organizational Change

Delta Terrace

JoseLoya@luskin.ucla.edu

Public Affairs

Delta Terrace

mcarriger@tft.ucla.edu

Theater and Performance Studies

Hedrick Summit

Michelle Liu Carriger is an assistant professor of theater and performance studies where she is at work on a book about clothing and performance of self in everyday life by examining fashion controversies in 19th century Britain and Japan. In addition to this research, she is a longtime practitioner of the Japanese Way of Tea and occasional theatre maker. Dr. Carriger teaches Theater history and performance theory with specialities in fashion, reenactment, Japanese performance, feminist and queer theories.

miryung@cs.ucla.edu

Computer Science

De Neve East

Miryung is a Full Professor in Computer Science at UCLA. She received her B.S. in Computer Science from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 2001 and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington in 2003 and 2008 respectively. Between January 2009 and August 2014, she was an assistant professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She also spent time as a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research in 2011 and 2014. Her research group develops development tools and program analysis techniques to improve programmer productivity and program correctness. She studies professional software engineers in the wild and analyzes open source project data to design novel software engineering tools.

Miryung is a fun mom for her eight year old girl Sophia, a loving wife to her husband Alan, a motivating and demanding cheer leader for her graduate students, and an active skateboarder who has enjoyed long boarding for 10+ years. She enjoys all kinds of good food, loves snacking, and likes going to a cross-fit gym to compensate for her snacking habit. She is passionate about gender equity in the technology field and advancement of minority. She has partnered with Monica Hanna and Markeith Royster to teach Fiat Lux Freshman Seminars: “From Impossible to I’m Possible: Analysis of Impostor Phenomenon.”

She lived in Seoul Korea, Seattle WA, Vancouver BC, Austin TX, Munich Germany and LA. Her husband Alan lived in Edmonton Alberta, San Francisco CA, Vancouver BC, Taiwan, Edinburgh Scotland, Hong Kong, Victoria BC, Seattle WA, and Austin TX before moving with her to LA.

neidsheim@ucla.edu

Musicology

Rieber Terrace

Nina Eidsheim (Professor of Musicology, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music), Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice (Duke UP, 2015) and The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music (Duke UP, 2019); co-editing Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies (June 2019); Co-editor (with Josh Kun and Ronald Radano) of the Refiguring American Music book series for Duke University Press; recipient of the Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Cornell University Society of the Humanities Fellowship, the UC President’s Faculty Research Fellowship and the ACLS Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship. She received her bachelor of music from the Agder Conservatory (Norway); MFA in vocal performance from the California Institute of the Arts; and Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of California, San Diego. She’s currently collaborating on a book and performance project with composer and trumpet player Wadada Leo Smith.

khankan@ucla.edu

Life Sciences

Hedrick Hall

suzanne@orl.ucla.edu

Education

Hedrick Hall

Asst. Vice Chancellor, Student Development

Dr. Suzanne L. Seplow (aka Seppy) is a fellow Bruin, receiving her Ed.D. in Educational Leadership here at UCLA. She is currently the Executive Director, Residential and Student Life.

Focusing on learning communities and environmental influences, Dr. Seplow specializes in maintaining living/learning communities that foster positive impacts on student learning.

Suzanne earned her Bachelors degree in Natural Sciences and Biology, with a concentration in Education, from Muhlenburg College in Allentown, PA. She completed her Masters degree from Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City, studying Higher Education and specializing in Student Affairs.

Dr. Seplow teaches an honors service-learning class focusing on citizenship, leadership and service. She also participates in the Fiat Lux series and has taught for many years a class on sexual orientation and gender identity. In addition to these undergraduate courses, Dr. Seplow teaches identity development theory to graduate students in the Masters of Student Affairs program within the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

Suzanne, her partner Robin, and their two children love being part of the residential community and opening up their home to students. They enjoy participating in student programs, open discussions, cultural experiences and other learning adventures.

Her hobbies include anything sports (particularly fantasy football), card games, spending time with family and watching The Voice!

tina.christie@ucla.edu

Education

Centennial Hall

higbie@history.ucla.edu

History

Dykstra Hall