UCLA - University of California - Los Angeles

06/05/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 06/05/2025 22:40

Watch: Bruin Talks symposium showcases how research and the arts ‘heal, inspire and illuminate’

The day before his formal inauguration, Chancellor Julio Frenk kicked off UCLA Connects: Bruin Talks, which brought together six of UCLA's leading scholars and artists from across disciplines for a series of presentations and conversations that showcase the incredible depth, breadth and impact of Bruin scholarship and innovation.

With Brian Kite, dean and vice provost of graduate education at UCLA, as the emcee, speakers at the June 4 event included world-renowned astrophysicist and Nobel Prize winner Andrea Ghez, groundbreaking transplant surgeon Abbas Ardehali, pioneering civil rights scholar and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, famed mathematician and Fields Medal recipient Terence Tao, internationally celebrated opera and drama director Peter Sellars and widely watched politics, media and elections expert Lynn Vavreck.

"UCLA is home to approximately 5,400 faculty members, and each is advancing knowledge, sparking curiosity and serving society," Frenk said in his introductory remarks. "Through their work, they speak not only for their disciplines, but for a university that is bold in thought, ambitious in reach and deeply committed to the public good. At a time when the impact of research and the arts is not always fully valued, this symposium showcases the ways in which they heal, inspire and illuminate."

You can watch the full recordings of each Bruin Talk and a preview of their presentations below.

Abbas Ardehali

  • Professor of surgery and medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
  • William E. Connor Professor of Cardiothoracic Transplantation
  • Director, UCLA Heart and Lung Transplant Program

Dr. Ardehali and his team have created a way to keep hearts and lungs alive and working outside of a human body, and he is the first surgeon in the United States to perform a transplant using one of these techniques.

"The pivotal study that showed this [mechanical circulatory support for organs] is safe and works was this study pioneered at UCLA, that's subsequently led to the FDA approval of this technology now being a common practice throughout the country.

"We're now working with the FDA to be the first center In the world to use this technology using the recipient's own blood to resuscitate the donor organ before we open their chest.

"What is most exciting to me, what keeps me working every day is the fact that we can potentially engineer better organs for transplantation."

Watch Ardehali's Bruin Talk

Kimberlé Crenshaw

  • Distinguished professor of law, UCLA School of Law
  • Promise Institute Professor of Human Rights

"What started as a ban on a few concepts - critical race theory being one of them - has now exploded into dozens of words and concepts that have been censored in governmental websites, reports and policies. Words like Black, discrimination, disparity, equity, equal opportunity, inequality, intersectionality, implicit bias, racial justice, oppression, segregation, systemic - and women. So I ask you, how do we possibly learn from our past, or understand our present should these concepts be purged from our work?

"The coordinated effort to render certain ideas literally 'unspeakable' not only undermines our democracy, but robs us of the capacity to name and historicize our current realities.

"Could it be that the desire to silence our ideas reflects the recognition that these ideas make a difference?"

Watch Crenshaw's Bruin Talk

Andrea Ghez

  • Professor of physics and astronomy, UCLA College, physical sciences
  • Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics
  • Director, UCLA Galactic Center Group
  • 2020 Nobel Prize winner in physics

"The story I'd like to share with you today is how we've been able to discover a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy and transform our understanding of the universe. But this is also a story of how UCLA understood the opportunity to invest in a new and emergent field and put itself at the forefront of discovery.

"Our project didn't seem important to a lot of people, but the University of California and UCLA gave us the tools to look deep into the universe, and we were able to bring something incredible into focus. We showed the world something that's impossible to see directly and discovered more questions than answers. And that's what UCLA does every day. We ask questions. We explore those things still shrouded in darkness, and we bring new knowledge and understanding into focus. And I'm so proud and grateful to be part of this incredible institution."

Watch Ghez's Bruin Talk

Peter Sellars

  • Distinguished professor, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture
  • Recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Erasmus Prize

"Art is the only place that you can actually create a zone of permanent justice. It's the only place where you can create a zone of permanent healing. It's the place where you create a zone where nobody wins and nobody loses, because every time you set up another situation where somebody won and somebody lost, you've set up the conditions for the next war. How do we create an ecosystem where everybody benefits and everybody invests in the community and in each other, humanly? Where the profit is extraordinary. Human beings. Every human being is a miracle. How clueless are we about that? How utterly clueless."

"Students are here to move the world forward. And that's what makes teaching the greatest honor of your life and the hardest thing in your life. Teaching class is much harder than directing a film, because the students here are asking you really deeply the questions that no one else will ever ask. And they're insisting that the answers be real."

Watch Sellars' Bruin Talk

Terence Tao

  • Professor of mathematics, UCLA College, physical sciences
  • James and Carol Collins Professor in the College of Letters and Science

"Another way in which mathematicians are different, at least have not caught up to other sciences, is that we still find it hard to collaborate. … Thanks to new technologies, and a new culture, new workflows are emerging. One project that I started here at UCLA last year is called the equational theories project, in algebra. Historically in algebra we study one law at a time and do a case study and study all its consequences.

"But we wanted to do a population survey. We took 4,000-odd laws and asked: How do they interact with each other? Which laws imply other laws? What is the landscape of algebra? … This ended up being 22 million problems that we had to study.

"There's no way that a single person or single program can do this. You have to collaborate. But then there is another problem: If you have people come in and have 22 million proofs and one of them is wrong, your whole project doesn't work. That was not feasible, until recently. Nevertheless, we did this in three months with 50 people - some at UCLA, some international. Most have not met. Professional mathematicians, computer scientists, just members of the general public who like solving puzzles."

Watch Tao's Bruin Talk

Lynn Vavreck

  • Professor of political science and communication, UCLA College, Social Sciences
  • Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics and Public Policy

"Calcification makes the stakes of elections seem very high because the other side is further away than ever on person-based issues where compromise is hard, and victory is always within reach for both sides.

"21st-century politics feels different because it is different. But I don't want this to bring you down. I want it to motivate you. The role of higher education is never more important than when politics is stuck. When people can no longer imagine compromise, the university is one of the few places still designed to reward complexity. As a college professor, I can't make politics feel better. But, as administrators, alumni and friends of this great institution, together we can do something else. We can train people to live and thrive across difference, to engage across lines of identities and experiences, and to ask better questions about power and about fairness and about belonging."

Watch Vavreck's Bruin Talk

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