The UC Irvine Podcast

This August, 12 black first-year medical school students will arrive at UCI — the most ever. What prompted that record-setting achievement? Much of the credit goes to a growing program at the School of Medicine called LEAD-ABC, which recruits top-level black medical school students and allies who are dedicated to working with those communities to pursue their degrees at UCI. LEAD stands for Leader...

Rick Coulon, UCI's associate vice chancellor for operations, has been putting a lot of thought and planning into the upcoming resumption of closer-to-full-scale activities on campus following the months' long curtailment to prevent the spread of coronavirus. He discusses the steps he and his colleagues are taking to prepare in this episode of Anteater Insider.

Technology has played a crucial role in UCI’s ability to shift to remote work, instruction and even patient care. As UCI starts to reengage operations, the campus has an opportunity to develop a new normal around technology. Tom Andriola is vice chancellor of information technology and data at UCI and he tells the Anteater Insider about the rapid transition to off-campus operations, the sheer scal...

Interim provost and executive vice chancellor Hal Stern is leading UCI’s plan to re-engage with campus operations after a state-wide, stay-at-home order was issued in March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Anteater Insider podcast, he describes this methodical re-engagement approach, which started last week with the resumption of some research functions. It and it will continue over th...

UCI is reengaging operations and more people are getting ready to come back to campus, with university leaders generating plans and implementing measures to ensure a smooth, safe transition. Bernadette Boden-Albala, the director and founding dean of UCI’s Program in Public Health, talks with the Anteater Insider about those plans, where Orange County stands on COVID-19, and why it’s safe to return...

Pramod Khargonekar, UCI's vice chancellor for research, is the first guest on Anteater Insider, a new podcast series from UCI's office of Strategic Communications & Public Affairs. The vice chancellor discusses the plans and procedures UCI has put in place to enable increasing numbers of researchers to come back to campus, when necessary, to do their work.

In this episode of the UCI Podcast, Alison Holman, an associate professor at UCI’s Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, speaks with UCI's Aaron Orlowski about the different ways the coronavirus pandemic has affected our ability to keep track of time. An expert in trauma, Holman says the COVID-19 crisis has stripped us of our expected futures, unmooring us.

In this special edition of the UCI Podcast, infectious disease experts Drs. Ming Tan and Saahir Khan of the UCI School of Medicine examine the past, present and future of global pandemics, and where we stand as the global community works to solve the coronavirus riddle and the deadly COVID-19 disease it causes.

In March, the UCI Medical Center became the first hospital in Orange County to provide COVID-19 testing. Dr. Ed Monuki, chair of pathology who leads UCI Health’s testing efforts, discusses how the campus came together to address this community need and how future testing for the coronavirus and its antibodies will play an important role with the resumption of our regular daily activities, like goi...

If you were to point on a U.S. map where COVID-19 has hit the hardest, it would be New York City. And that’s where Dr. Robert Rowe, a critical care fellow and attending physician in emergency medicine with UCI Health, volunteered in the intensive care unit at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. The Elmhurst neighborhood has been called the “epicenter of the epicenter” of coronavirus infections in...

Jesse Borelli is an associate professor of psychological science at UCI, and she studies the links between close relationships, emotions, health and development, with a particular focus on risk for anxiety and depression. In this special UCI Podcast, she discusses how to stay safe and sane during social distancing.

Andrew Noymer is an associate professor of public health at UCI, and he’s an expert on public health responses to pandemics like COVID-19 and their long-term consequences. In this special UCI Podcast, he discusses how and when life will return to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic. The good news is, social distancing seems to be working. In Orange County, COVID-19 infection rates are lower than pr...

The Confronting Extremism Program in UCI’s Office of Inclusive Excellence has issued a call for proposals to promote understanding about equity in the age of the COVID-19. In addition to bringing to light some of the best qualities of ingenuity and empathy in individuals, the worldwide coronavirus crisis has exposed and exacerbated fault-lines of inequities in society. Douglas Haynes, vice chancel...

The entire University of California, Irvine community has taken unprecedented steps to confront the coronavirus pandemic. UCI Health is on the front lines of the crisis response. In this episode of the UCI Podcast, two key members of the UCI Health staff -- Linda Dickie, senior director of quality & patient safety, epidemiology & infection control; and Joe Brothman, director of environmental healt...

With spring break around the corner, it is important to keep in mind best practices for staying well and considering your risk of exposure to the virus through travel activity. As you make plans to travel for spring break, or for other purposes Dr. Bernadette Boden-Albala, dean of UCI’s program in public health, shares some best practices for your safety and well-being while on your trip.

Douglas Haynes, vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion at the University of California, Irvine, joins Sheri Ledbetter on this episode of the UCI Podcast to discuss some of the sensitive cultural and racial aspects of the present time, particularly with regard to the growing awareness of the threat of novel coronavirus.

As medical director of the UCI Student Health Center, Dr. Albert Chang has gotten a lot of questions from UCI students, faculty, and staff about coronavirus. The respiratory infection was first detected in central China recently and has spread to several international locations around the world, including the United States. In this episode of the UCI Podcast, Dr. Chang talks with Sheri Ledbetter o...

Geoffrey Abbott, professor of physiology & biophysics in the UCI School of Medicine, is the senior author of a study on botanical folk medicines published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He and his colleabues tracked the relationship of the human KCNQ5 potassium channel – known for its regulation of vascular smooth muscle tone – to genetic and culturally diverse herbal...

In mid-December 2019 dozens of UCI faculty researchers, staff scientists and graduate and undergraduate students made the trip from Irvine up to San Francisco to attend the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, a gathering of Earth and space scientists from around the world. The UCI Podcast was there too, and here is our report.

In this year-in-review edition of the UCI Podcast, Chancellor Gillman shares his insights on a brilliant 2019 at the University of California, Irvine. By any measure, it was a great year. The campus became the No. 1 choice for California’s high school graduates, reflecting our commitment to providing access, support and opportunity for all students. In August, Money magazine rated UCI the best col...

Rena Beatrice Goldstein is a graduate student in UCI's Department of Philosophy. She's the driver behind Ask A Philosopher, a program that seeks to engage the public in philosophical thinking and discussion. For this episode of the UCI Podcast, we caught up with Goldstein and colleagues at the Ask A Philosopher pop-up kiosk at the Sit Stay Cafe in Huntington Beach.

Basketball is back at UCI, and that means another season with Big West championships potentially in store for both the men’s and women’s teams. In this edition of the UCI Podcast, Trent Rush – the voice of Anteater basketball – catches up with head coaches Russell Turner and Tamara Inoue. Both are coming off record years. The 2018-19 men’s team was the best in UCI history. It won a record 31 games...

On the latest UCI Podcast, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – Distinguished Professor of comparative literature and English at UCI – shares the amazing story of his captivity, which led to the writing of his influential novel Devil on the Cross. In 1977, armed police pulled the Kenyan writer from his home and jailed him in one of Africa’s largest maximum-security prisons. His crime? He had written a play about c...

When KUCI first broadcasted in 1969, the counter-culture college radio station brought unplanned, wacky programming to the nation’s largest planned community. This month, the highly admired station turns 50 and can be heard throughout most of Orange County and on the Internet. It’s our place to turn for compelling talk, UCI sports and innovative new music. But some UCI lifers like to recall KUCI’s...

James Bullock, UCI professor and chair of physics & astronomy, became dean of the School of Physical Sciences in the summer of 2019, taking over for Kenneth Janda. In this UCI Podcast interview, Bullock talks about the past, present and future of the school, of which he has been a faculty member since 2004.