News

For decades, neuroscience has overlooked a fundamental aspect of human biology: the female brain. 

The intricate relationships between brain function and hormonal shifts—throughout menstrual cycles, pregnancy, perimenopause, and beyond—have largely remained uncharted. 

For example, how is it that nearly 70 percent of Alzheimer’s patients are women, yet less than 0.5 percent of neuroimaging studies in the past 30 years have considered female-specific biological factors? 

A child’s sledding accident. A bad football tackle. A wartime explosion near a service member. These are just a few of the ways traumatic brain injuries can occur, upending a person’s life in an instant. 

Dementia affects nearly 11 million Americans, with that number expected to double by 2050. Families and caregivers are faced with the difficult challenge of managing agitation and emotional distress in individuals with dementia, often leading to increased falls, hospitalizations and caregiver burnout.

But what if cutting-edge technology could help ease this burden?

The UC Noyce Initiative is pleased to announce the appointment of Bryan Kerner as its executive director, effective May 1. Kerner is the first person to hold this position since the Initiative's public launch on December 12, 2023.

UC Noyce Initiative-funded researcher Gene Tsudik was recently (April 11) awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship. He joins 186 other American and Canadian scientists and scholars receiving this highly competitive honor this year.

Tsudik is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at UC Irvine. His research interests include many topics in computer security, privacy and applied cryptography. Some of his recent work is focused on security (especially, malware-resistance) for the burgeoning global ecosystem of so-called Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.

UC Noyce Initiative researcher Chen-Nee Chuah was recently (April 18) selected to be a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS, the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society. The prestigious honor is a lifetime achievement and is reserved for researchers who have made significant advancements to science or its applications.

The UC Noyce Initiative is proud to announce that new funding opportunities are now available to advance collaborative research in quantum technology among five campuses within the University of California system.

The grants, which will range from up to $600,000 to $800,000, will support partnerships between the five UC campuses that are part of The UC Noyce Initiative: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, San Francisco, Santa Barbara. Applications are due April 24, 2024. 

Much of Emily Jacobs’ research focuses on how sex hormones — estrogen, progesterone, testosterone — affect the brain. Where are they acting? On what circuits? And over what time span?

She studies these changes in both men and women, but Jacobs, a neuroscientist and a professor of psychological and brain sciences, is keenly aware that the female brain has, historically, been overlooked.

A few years ago, UC Noyce Initiative researcher and UC Berkeley public health scholar Ziad Obermeyer found that an algorithm that affected health care for millions of patients routinely gave wealthier, white patients better access to care for chronic conditions compared to sicker, less affluent Black patients. 

David Brockman, a retired CalFire captain and avid outdoorsman, built a deck in the backyard of his home last year, without the use of his dominant right hand, which he lost in an accident. The prosthetic hand he used instead was a crude but functional steel hook-and-harness device.

Brockman has tried other artificial limbs, including a high-tech prosthesis called a myoelectric. It looks like a hand and works by using electrical signals from muscles in the forearm. But that one just didn’t work for him.