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Welcome Welcome to the July 2013 issue of the Social Sciences eNews! Make a Difference Invest in tomorrow's leaders today. Learn how!Follow us on 
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Congrats, class of 2013! Check out photos from commencement ceremonies, courtesy of Grad Images
UC Irvine receives $3.2 million to create endowed chairs in social sciences Donation will recognize experts in mathematics and cognitive sciences
Dosher receives UCI Academic Senate's highest honor Distinguished Faculty Award for Research recognizes dean's work on attention and perceptual learning
UCI again ranks first among U.S. universities younger than 50 Times Higher Education evaluations are based on research and teaching excellence
Monroe named UCI Chancellor's Professor Honor recognizes political scientist for academic merit and scholarly achievements
D'Zmura featured on the Science Channel series Special segment in Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman
Giving back Recipient of Social Sciences Alumni Excellence Scholarship spent his days at UCI giving back to his Santa Ana community
Political science majors earn prestigious campus honors Aldrich and Aeberhard awards recognize UCI's top junior and freshman
Q&A with Estefania Lopez, Macy Award winner 2013 Alice B. Macy Outstanding Undergraduate Paper Award recipient
Dai receives Outstanding Thesis Award 2013 grad plans to attend Oxford in the fall
Sowers receives Alberti Prize for scholarship and service Sociology Ph.D. grad will be joining the Cal State Channel Islands faculty in the fall
Berlin and Feintzeig earn Romney Award Honor recognizes outstanding graduate papers in social sciences
Gubernskaya is the 2013 Outstanding Scholar in social sciences Honor recognizes top grad student for intellectual achievement
Jones receives Outstanding Service Award from social sciences Honor recognizes political science grad student for school and campus contributions
Figinski receives 2013 Lave Prize Honor recognizes most creative use of modeling in social sciences
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The UCI Bren Center was overflowing on June 15 with family, friends, faculty and staff who turned out to show support and bid farewell to the School of Social Sciences class of 2013. Part of the 48th annual commencement ceremonies, undergrads donned caps, gowns, honors cords, Hawaiian leis and other colorful regalia to celebrate their accomplishments. The week prior, doctoral students from social sciences were recognized in a traditional graduate hooding ceremony. Check out pictures from the ceremonies, courtesy of Grad Images.
A $3.2 million gift from Dina and Jean Claude Falmagne will support the establishment of three new endowed chairs in the School of Social Sciences' Department of Cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine.
The chair holders, to be named at a later date, will be recognized experts in the application of mathematics to the cognitive sciences. The endowed chairs were established to honor the late R. Duncan Luce, a UC Irvine Distinguished Professor of cognitive sciences with whom Jean Claude Falmagne served on the faculty for more than 20 years.
Barbara Dosher, UCI dean of social sciences and Distinguished Professor of cognitive sciences, is the 2013 recipient of the UCI Distinguished Faculty Award for Research. The
award is the highest honor bestowed by the UCI Academic Senate in recognition of faculty research excellence.
UC Irvine ranked first among U.S. universities under 50 years old - and fifth worldwide - in a report released today by Times Higher Education. It's the second consecutive
year that the campus has ranked in the top five. UC Irvine will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2015 and is the youngest institution in the prestigious Association of
American Universities.
Kristen Monroe, political science professor and UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality director, has been named UCI Chancellor's
Professor of political science. The designation recognizes scholars who have demonstrated unusual academic merit and whose continued promise for scholarly achievement makes
them of exceptional value to the university.
Mike D'Zmura, cognitive sciences professor, was featured on The Science Channel Wednesday, June 19 for his work on communication and control using EEG brain waves. The segment was part of "How Do Aliens Think?" which was the third episode of season 4 of "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman." Learn more about D'Zmura's research, and catch a synopsis of the show online.
For Jesus Camacho, attending UCI was an easy choice. The Irvine campus offered the political science senior the opportunity to stay close to home and work with his Santa Ana
community through UCI's Saturday Academy of Law and the Student Achievement Guided by Experience program. Camacho served as president of the latter, helping the program
achieve its goal of 1000 hours of community service. He also participated in PREP, a summer program that gives Santa Ana parents an opportunity to experience university life
through weekend dorm stays and participation in college-readiness workshops.
Camacho's Santa Ana roots also fed his studies at UCI; under professors Ana Rosa and Louis DeSipio, he pursued research for his honors thesis on Orange County domestic workers
and their families. 
Ivette Aragon, political science and criminology, law and society major, and Ammad Bajwa (pictured), political science major, have been named recipients of two of UCI's top
undergraduate scholarships.
Aragon, a junior going into her senior year at UCI, is the 2012 Dan and Jean Aldrich award winner. The award is named in honor of UCI's founding chancellor and recognizes the
outstanding junior on campus on the basis of merit, academic excellence, leadership, contribution to the campus and community service. The honor carries a $2,500 prize. Bajwa, a freshman going into his sophomore year, is the recipient of the 2012 Nicholas Aeberhard Memorial Award, an honor which recognizes the top freshman at UCI on the basis
of personal integrity, student leadership, academics and involvement in campus and civic activities. The award carries a $5,000 prize. 
Hometown: San Salvador, El Salvador, moved to Culver City, California at age 5
Bowen Dai, economics undergraduate, is the 2013 recipient of the School of Social Sciences Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis Award for honors thesis on unconventional monetary
policy.
A 2013 graduate, Dai will be pursuing his master's degree in economics at the University of Oxford in the fall.
Elizabeth Sowers, '13 sociology Ph.D., is the 2013 recipient of the Kathy Alberti Prize. The award recognizes the recent graduate for outstanding promise as a future
professor, evidenced by excellence in scholarship and her service to professional societies. Her research focuses on labor, globalization, economic sociology and the
logistics industry. With logistics employment rapidly rising in the shadow of lost manufacturing employment, she's interested in learning whether or not the former are "good"
jobs, characterized by stability, solid wages and positive working conditions. In August, she will join the faculty of Cal State Channel Islands as an assistant professor of sociology.
Mark Berlin, political science graduate student, and Benjamin Feintzeig, logic & philosophy of science graduate student, are recipients of the 2013 A. Kimball Romney Award for
Outstanding Graduate Papers.
Berlin's research focuses on issues involving international law and human rights including the design of international treaties, the spread of international law to domestic
legal systems, and compliance with international arrest warrants. The latter was the topic of his winning paper, "Why (Not) Arrest? Third-Party State (Non)Compliance with the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda" which he presented last year at an academic conference in Canada. This fall, he will be a guest researcher at the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany. Feintzeig's research focuses on the foundations of quantum mechanics. In particular, he
studies how quantum mechanics differs from classical physics with regard to probability and determinism, which served as the topic of his winning paper, "Hidden Variables and
Commutativity in Quantum Mechanics."
Zoya Gubernskaya, '13 sociology Ph.D., is the recipient of the Outstanding Scholarship award. The honor recognizes her as the top graduate student for intellectual achievement
in social sciences.
Gubernskaya's research focuses on the relationship between naturalization and health among older immigrants in the U.S., offering insight on the links between immigrant
incorporation and health in later life. In the fall, she will be teaching and conducting research as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Albany.
Jennifer Jones, political science graduate student, has been named the 2013 recipient of the Outstanding Service award in social sciences. The honor highlights her school and
campus contributions.
Jones is the vice president of external affairs for the Associated Graduate Students of UCI and she chairs the external affairs committee. She sits on the board of directors
of the system-wide University of California Student Association and is a member of several of its committees. 
Ted Figinski, '13 economics Ph.D., is the recipient of the 2013 Charles A. Lave Paper Prize for the Most Creative Modeling in Social Sciences.
Established in 2009, the endowment provides a $1500 award each year to an undergraduate or graduate student whose research displays creative use of clear models and data
through which the models may be evaluated. The award honors economics professor emeritus Charlie Lave who passed away in 2008.
Figinski's winning study explores employer hiring practices of National Guard and Reserve members who face a probability of being deployed to active duty. He found there is a small and statistically insignificant "penalty" for those currently attached to the National Guard and Reserve, but that military experience increases the
probability of receiving a request for an interview by 15 to 30 percent. |
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