Candis Welch with Jay Ellis, one of the stars of HBO’s Insecure. Photo courtesy of Candis Welch.

When Candis Welch was studying journalism at California State University, Northridge in 2008, she couldn’t have imagined the professional worlds she would inhabit or the adventures life that lay ahead. She did not know that one day she would be working two full-time jobs — as an executive assistant for the lead actress and co-creator of HBO’s Insecure, Issa Rae, and as a procurement analyst for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Welch knows what it means to persevere in the face of difficulties. She had to deal with the loss of her father in high school, was a first-generation college student and faced the challenges brought on by a diagnosis of spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic muscular disorder that makes it difficult to perform basic functions such as walking or sitting up straight.

She navigates life with endless optimism, and calls herself a “hustler by default.”

“No one will hold your hand (in life and in school),” she said. “No one will do it for you. You just have to get up and get it done.”

As an undergrad student at CSUN, Welch worked multiple jobs, ​​​commuting long distances between Northridge, Long Beach, Inglewood, and Los Angeles. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree in journalism in 2011, she took a job working for the County of Los Angeles in the auditing and control department.

“I was good at my job, but I wanted to challenge myself and do more for the community,” she said.

She left her “cushy job” with the county to pursue a career as an entertainment publicist.

Candis Welch poses with Y’lan Noel, one of the stars of HBO’s Insecure. Photo courtesy of Candis Welch.

She returned to CSUN as a graduate student with a focus in public administration, and began working toward her MPA. While a graduate student, she serendipitously found a job as an executive assistant for Rae through a friend. Rae is best known for her role as the lead in HBO’s ​​series Insecure​, for which she is also the creator and co-writer. Rae first received recognition for her YouTube series Awkward Black Girl​, which she created, wrote and starred in.

Welch began working for Rae at the start of the second season of the web series, and more than five years later they are still working together as they wrap up the third season of Insecure.

“Working with Issa is life-changing,” Welch said. “I am honored to work with someone who is so passionate and creative. For me, to see her evolution as a woman, writer, performer and creator is truly amazing and an honor.”

Welch’s job as an executive assistant involves coordinating Rae’s calendar and daily life, including taking meetings with HBO executives, organizing and delegating tasks and coordinating and managing Rae’s production company, Issa Rae Productions.

Welch said that as an executive assistant she often has to “pray for the best, anticipate the worst, and always have a plan-B ready because the job must get done!”

Upon graduating with her MPA in 2016, Welch took on the additional job of  working for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). She said her work with LAHSA offers her the opportunity to help others, giving her the purpose she was looking for.

Welch is committed to doing both jobs well. “Issa is not someone I pick up in my off-time; it’s a full-time job, just like LAHSA,” she said.

Her job at LAHSA includes drafting grant proposals in both the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, working in case management and going out into the field to check on the status of current shelters.

“I make sure these shelters actually provide the services they are supposed to provide,” Welch said.

Candis Welch. Photo courtesy of Candis Welch.

“We hold them accountable, making sure that the facility is clean, up to standards and has enough beds and staff to take care of our community. That way when people come to the shelter they get everything they need to move on to the next stage of their lives. Getting someone back on their feet is humbling, and I now have a new vision of what humility is and what being grateful looks like.”

With that in mind, Welch encouraged fellow Matadors to get involved with their community.

“We get so lost in our personal lives that we forget what other people go through,” she said. “Every day, people go to food banks to supply their homes, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Imagine if you lost your job today: Would you have enough money to survive until you found another job? And if you can’t answer that, then you’re not too far from needing help as well. No one is ever too good to help, to have passion to help others. Nothing will change with closed minds.”

She advised current students to remain determined and stay focused, no matter what hurdle stands in the way.

“Whether grad or undergrad, there are going to be days you want to give up,” she said. “Some days you are going to ask yourself, ‘What is this even worth?’ Believe me, I was there. I even went to my counselor multiple times saying that I was going to drop out, but I’m so happy I stuck with it and went back to get my Master of Public Administration, because at the end of the day, education is key to success.”

Visit these links for more information on how to help and get involved with community assistance with CSUN:

• Matty’s Closet: csunshinetoday.csun.edu/community/csun-career-center-offers-free-interview-clothes-at-new-mattys-closet-to-help-students-dress-for-success/

• CSUN Food Pantry: www.csun.edu/mic/csun-food-pantry

• Unified We Serve: www.csun.edu/mic/volunteer

• CSUN Alumni Volunteering: www.csun.edu/alumni/volunteer

Two reports CSUN criminology and justice studies professor James David Ballard professor raise concerns about the safety of transporting highly radioactive nuclear waste across the country to storage facilities in the American Southwest. Photo by ©iStockphoto.com vchal

Two reports submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by a California State University, Northridge professor raise concerns about the safety of transporting highly radioactive nuclear waste to two proposed interim storage facilities located about 40 miles from each other in the American Southwest.

Criminology and justice studies professor James David Ballard conducted lengthy analyses of proposals to build nuclear waste interim storage facilities in Andrews County, Texas, and in southeast New Mexico, near the Eddy-Lea county line. Ballard’s reports do not focus on security at the proposed sites themselves, but the risks to people and places along the routes that trains and trucks would take to transport the nuclear waste from their points of origin to the facilities.

Criminology and justice studies professor James David Ballard

“We’re talking about over 100 different points of origin all over the country,” Ballard said. “The nuclear waste would be traveling over thousands of miles of railways and, to a lesser extent, highways, over hundreds of bridges and through many tunnels. It would be traveling through small towns and major cities like Chicago — all across the U.S.

“At any point along the way, the shipment is vulnerable to attack,” he said. “Not just to attack from terrorists, but maybe from somebody who has a grudge against the companies or personalities involved, or someone who wants to make a political statement. The shipments are also vulnerable to human error.  For example, someone hits the wrong switch along the rail line, the trains get going too fast around a curve. The chance of natural disasters also exist — consider one of those 100-year floods that to seem to be happening more and more frequently. This [type of]  event  could wash out a railroad bridge.

“We need to consider these issues before final decisions are made about the facilities,” he said. “We need to consider not just whether the storage facilities themselves are secure, but are the routes to get the waste to the facilities are safe as well.”

Ballard has spent more than two decades studying the nuclear industry and its radioactive waste. Over the years, he has submitted dozens of reports and given testimony to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Congress, National Academy of Sciences and other governmental agencies about the issues he says the government and industry need to take into account as they look for ways to dispose of nuclear waste.

He submitted a 69-page report in September to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with his comments about the proposed Holtec HI-STORM UMAX interim storage facility in New Mexico.  Ballard also submitted a 77-page report to the commission in October with his concerns about the proposed Interim Storage Partners Consolidated interim storage facility in West Texas. Ballard expects to testify before the commission next year about the issues raised by his reports.

Ballard said the companies responsible for the proposed storage facilities and governmental agencies need to “think seriously” about the “what ifs” that could occur if something disastrous happens while the nuclear waste is en route.

“If an accident happens in a rural community, the odds are the responders will be volunteer firefighters,” he said. “Will those volunteer firefighters have the right equipment and training to deal with a radiative emergency? If something happens along a mountain pass, are there more than one or two escape routes for the residents? And if an accident happens in someplace like Chicago, are the people and the government prepared for the long-term consequences?”

Ballard said a radiological disaster would not only impact the public’s health and the environment, but it also would affect local businesses, community social structures, the national economy, public policy and the public’s faith in its government.

“We have only to look at what happened with Fukushima to see that Japan and its residents are still dealing with the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, nearly eight years after that disaster,” he said. “No one thought that an earthquake and then [the resulting] tsunami would impact the plant the way they did. But they did.”

Volunteer service to CSUN begins, in many cases, with one spark. Armen Haroutunian ’13 (Finance), 26 years old and five years removed from earning his bachelor’s degree at CSUN, was at a post-work meetup with a friend one night. The friend, a fellow CSUN alumnus, brought along a co-worker who also earned his bachelor’s degree at CSUN.

That co-worker, Ben Gary, pitched Haroutunian on joining the board of CSUN’s Finance, Insurance and Real Estate Alumni Chapter. Haroutunian joined, and despite working full time and going to classes to earn his MBA, he has found time to give back to CSUN and its students through volunteering, including mentoring students.

“Why would I not be involved in a school that’s been home to me?” Haroutunian asked rhetorically.

To honor Haroutunian’s dedication to the university, CSUN celebrated him and 28 other volunteers at the 17th annual CSUN Volunteer Service Awards on Nov. 30.

Haroutunian was recognized in the Chapter category, an award given to those who have gone above and beyond to elevate CSUN through its alumni chapters. Others were honored by colleges and programs in the University category.

CSUN also awarded its three highest volunteer service honors — the Dorothea “Granny” Heitz Award for Outstanding Volunteer Leadership to Earl Enzer, the Dean Ed Peckham Award for Emeritus Service to Steven Oppenheimer and the CSUN for Life Award to Bonnie Faherty and Edward Feldman, given to non-alumni who have championed the university.

Enzer ’83 (Finance), a managing director in the Private Wealth Management Group of Goldman Sachs and former chairman of the CSUN Foundation Board, helped elevate the university during one of the most prosperous periods in its history, a time where fundraising, alumni engagement, and reputation and visibility have risen. He joined CSUN’s Foundation Board of Directors in 2001 and served on it until 2018. He was chairman from 2009-16 and helped provide a new structure and level of expectation on the board. His energy, ideas and follow-through invigorated the board and led to action, as well as alumni and community engagement.

Enzer headed the group of leading alumni and community volunteers who oversee the management of the university’s philanthropic assets and encourage people to invest in the university. Along with former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle, he co-chaired the Special Task Force on Engagement, helping to provide the university with a roadmap to better engage alumni and garner community support. Under his leadership, the board also supported the university in its efforts to create a cohesive look and messaging, building a new identity that better represents CSUN.

During his acceptance speech at the Volunteer Service Awards, Enzer spoke about his desire early in his professional career to help CSUN and the joy he has experienced in giving back to his alma mater.

“One of the things I remembered hearing when I joined the [Pi Kappa Alpha] fraternity was, ‘You get out of things what you put into it.’ And I’ve gotten far more out of my involvement with [CSUN] than it got out of me,” Enzer said. “I look forward to the future and doing more.”

Influential educator, cancer researcher and CSUN stalwart Steven Oppenheimer has impacted countless lives through not only his research, but the education and mentorship he has provided thousands of students — many of whom have gone on to make their own impact. Oppenheimer began teaching at what was then San Fernando Valley State College in 1971 and has received dozens of accolades in his five decades of teaching, including one of the highest honors in the country for an educator.

On Jan. 6, 2010, he was honored with the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, and he received the award from President Barack Obama at the White House. He also had the opportunity to meet with President Obama and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology about issues in science and education.

Oppenheimer deflected the attention to others in his acceptance speech, first recalling the university’s achievement in 2016 of being named by the journal Nature as one of North America’s top 25 institutions for science.

“To be on the Nature list is mind-boggling,” Oppenheimer said. “When I saw this and saw CSUN, and saw no other CSUs and no UCs [on this list], I was flabbergasted. That’s not only [credit to College of Science and Mathematics Dean] Jerry Stinner’s tremendous work, but the work of great chairs of the biology department and other departments. We also have great faculty. We hired so many new faculty, and they played a role in this. But the key is the students. So many great students. They’re the ones who do the work. I always say, ‘They do the work, I tell the jokes.’ Working with the students is what I love to do.”

Faherty has earned four academic degrees, and Feldman has two — all from universities outside of CSUN. However, they have taken CSUN into their hearts and have been devoted to serving the university, particularly its Department of Nursing and the Office of Government and Community Relations. Faherty taught at CSUN from 1997-2001 and later was awarded a Volunteer Service Award from the Nursing Alumni Chapter in 2008. She is an associate professor emeritus in CSUN’s Department of Health Sciences.

Faherty and Feldman are members of The Dean’s Circle for the College of Health and Human Development, and both are members of the President’s Associates. Together, they have given to students, CSUN’s Department of Nursing, The Soraya and the Delmar T. Oviatt Library, among other areas on campus.

“Why would you give anybody an award for doing what they love?” Faherty asked the audience as she accepted the award.

CSUN awarded Volunteer Service Awards to:

Chapter Honorees

Adam Miller (Accounting and Information Systems)

Alec Cheline (Arts)

Rhonda Murotake (Biology)

Amna Waheed (Child and Adolescent Development)

Michele Linares (Communication Disorders and Sciences)

Tony Luca (Environmental and Occupational Health)

Armen Haroutunian (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate)

Joanne Moreno (Health Administration)

Craig Leener (Journalism Alumni Association)

Natalie Juarez (La Raza Alumni Association)

Cynthia Riggall (Public Health)

Joji Ortego (Radiologic Sciences)

Wendy Yost (Recreation and Tourism Management)

Tomas “Tommy” Diaz (Veterans)

University Honorees

Joan Owens (88.5 FM)

Joan Waller (Arts Council)

Jacqueline Hansen (Athletics)

Joni Campanella Roan (College of Health and Human Development)

Honey Amado (College of Humanities)

Jeffrey Marine (David Nazarian College of Business and Economics)

Jenniffer Herrera (Delmar T. Oviatt Library)

John Behring (Michael D. Eisner College of Education)

Matthew Keating (Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication)

Andrea Reinken (The Soraya)

Alexi Sciutto (Student Affairs)

Stephen Kutay (left) and Ellen Jarosz (right) created the pictorial book, “California State University, Northridge History (Campus History),” to honor the past 60 years of the university’s history.

The first official pictorial history book on California State University, Northridge – since the early 1990s – was recently published, depicting the university’s meteoric rise and growth from its founding in 1958 to the present day.

California State University, Northridge’s public radio station, 88.5 FM, previously known as KCSN, was established on campus in the 1960s. Photo courtesy of California State University, Northridge (Campus History).

Ellen Jarosz, head of CSUN’s Special Collections and Archives, and Stephen Kutay, digital service librarian, authored the book, “California State University, Northridge (Campus History),” to showcase the university’s history over the course of the past 60 years. 

Kutay and Jarosz said they wanted to bring the student experience into perspective, to represent the daily facets of the CSUN community.

“It was interesting to learn how the university came into its own. Growing quickly from a satellite of Los Angeles State College, to a university,” said Kutay. “The student body became more diverse over the years. It took this amount of time, in my opinion, to build this culture we have today. You can see this in some of the themes that get revisited over the decades.” 

In 1958, CSUN was known as San Fernando Valley State College, and the college graduated just 90 students at its first commencement ceremony. Today, the university is home to about 40,000 students — one of the most diverse student populations in the country. The institution has expanded to boast bachelor’s degrees in 133 programs, 84 master’s degree options, and doctorates in educational leadership and physical therapy, according to CSUN’s Department of Admissions and Records.

CSUN has a multitude of clubs and organizations that have been the center of campus life for students since the 1960s. Photo courtesy of California State University, Northridge (Campus History).

The book starts at the birth of university’s history, “but it is not a linear history,” said Kutay. “There is a narrative represented by photographs we decided to include in it. There are themes [like student activism and community] that represent a difference in time, although it might be about the same subjects.” 

Kutay and Jarosz noted that CSUN’s student and faculty engagement has been a constant force in CSUN’s culture, especially through continuous activism.

The theme of activism is represented in the book and starts to appear in the book’s section on the 1960s, when students and faculty protested for the establishment of equal opportunities for minority students. After multiple events, the university established the Africana and Chicana/o Studies departments.

CSUN’s history of activism has established diversity among students and programs on campus. Photo courtesy of California State University, Northridge (Campus History).

“People are really invested in CSUN. There’s a lot of student engagement, but also a lot of faculty engagement. This is a place the community really values,” Jarosz said. “One thing that jumped out at me was the constant of student activism in the university throughout generations.”

After being contacted by Arcadia Publishing to create the book it took Jarosz and Kutay about a year — with the help of many CSUN staff, including campus photographer Lee Choo and Mark Stover, dean of the Delmar T. Oviatt Library — to put the volume together.

“The process was like creating an exhibit in a book form. The photographs were selected to [cultivate] a long historical narrative,” Kutay said.

After careful research and curation, they laid out all of their chosen archival photographs, one by one. More than 200 images are included in the book, which, Jarosz and Kutay said, “tell the story of how students experience life at CSUN.”

Scenes from a campus protest in the 1960s. Photo courtesy of California State University, Northridge (Campus History).

The images were primarily sourced from CSUN archives, which contain thousands of images organized by topic instead of date, and made for a challenging and time-consuming process to tell a clear story.

“Each photograph required its own investigation,” Kutay said. “Research was sometimes challenging because of limitations in the number of photos and what information was recorded about them. We used multiple sources, including the campus newspaper [The Sundial] and a previously published CSUN history, ‘Suddenly a Giant,’ to gain a perspective into these images.”

For more information about “California State University, Northridge (Campus History),” visit: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467129954.

Dilek Ince at work on the set of “Amal,” which earned her the the Directors Guild of America Jury Award in the category of Outstanding Women Student Filmmakers. Photo courtesy of Dilek Ince.

Dilek Ince knew in middle school that she wanted to be a storyteller when she grew up. By high school, she knew she wanted to tell her stories through film. Once she graduated, Ince packed a solitary suitcase, boarded a plane in her native Turkey and headed to Los Angeles – the land where movies are made.

Ince, who graduated from California State University, Northridge in August with a bachelor’s degree in film, took a huge step forward today in cementing her career as a filmmaker. The Directors Guild of America Student Film Awards has given Ince’s senior film project, “Amal,” its Jury Award in the category of Outstanding Women Student Filmmakers.

A scene from “Amal,” which earned Dilek Ince the DGA’s Jury Award in the category of Outstanding Women Student Filmmakers. Photo courtesy of Dilek Ince.

“I am so happy, and stunned that I am receiving this award,” Ince said. “It’s an honor to receive such an award from the DGA. It is great to be recognized as a female filmmaker.

“I come from a family of lawyers, and they thought I was crazy to come here on my own, not knowing anyone, to pursue my dream to become a filmmaker,” she continued. “Maybe this will help them understand that there is a reason I am in Los Angeles, and that my dreams aren’t so crazy after all.”

Cinema and television arts professor Nate Thomas, head of CSUN’s film program, said Ince’s award was well deserved.

“I always have my eye on the students when they are making their senior film projects,” Thomas said. “We have some really good students, and you know that they are going to make it in this industry. But every once in a while a student will stand out. Dilek is one of those students. You just know that not only is she going to succeed, but she is going to change the world with her art.”

“Amal,” which was written and directed by Ince, tells the story of an American volunteer doctor who witnesses a tragic event that leaves a 7-year-old Syrian girl without a family. The doctor adopts the girl and hopes to bring her home to the United States, but problems arise when a travel ban is placed on Syrians just as the pair arrive in America.

Ince found inspiration for her film in news reports about war.

“Every time I watch the news, my eyes are always drawn to the kids,” she said. “I wanted to show how war affects the children. There are so many children in the world who have lost their families, their homes, everything, including their childhood. They have to become adults at a very young age. They have no choice. No one talks about that. I feel the children are forgotten.”

Ince said among the first things she did when she arrived in Los Angeles 10 years ago was to learn English.

“My dream was to become a director who writes her own scripts, and to do that I had to learn the language because I was going to be the best screenwriter I could be,” she said.

Ince learned English, took extension classes at UCLA, enrolled in classes at Santa Monica College and worked on screenplays and other small film projects on the side. When she was ready to formally study filmmaking, she applied to and was accepted into several universities, including a couple of University of California campuses and New York University.

“But I had heard about CSUN,” she said. “I took a tour of CSUN and its film program. I wanted to study in the best film program, and that was Cal State Northridge.”

She transferred to CSUN as an international student in 2016.

Only five student projects are selected each year to take part in CSUN’s annual Senior Film Showcase. Ince said she was determined to be among those chosen. Students who want to have a project considered have to take a screenwriting class. The instructor warned the students to avoid writing projects that involved subjects that might prove difficult to film, such as hospitals, airports and children.

“My project had all three,” she said, laughing. “I had to decide if I wanted to follow the conventions, or tell the story I wanted to tell. I chose to tell my story.”

Ince, who currently works as a technical director for a film company, said winning the DGA award is an affirmation that she is doing what she was meant to do. She intends to continue to pursue her dreams of writing and directing her own movies.

She added that the experience of coming to the United States by herself as an international student who, at first, did not know English was a challenge, but has taught her that she has the strength to succeed regardless of the obstacles. She said it has also provided her with a perspective that influences how she sees the world as a filmmaker.

“When you live in one country, you think that’s the way the world is,” she said. “Then you go to another country or a place like Los Angeles, which has so many different people with different languages and experiences, and you realize that the world is so much bigger and more interesting. I learn something new every day, and as I learn more, I keep growing as an artist.”

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory announced today the survey of the protoplanetary disks offer insight into the birth of new planets and the formation of solar systems. Among the researchers was CSUN astrophysicist Luca Ricci. Above is an illustration by CSUN assistant professor of art Erik Mark Sandberg depicting what the researchers found.

New images taken by a team of researchers that included California State University, Northridge astrophysicist Luca Ricci offer insight into the birth of new planets and the formation of solar systems, including our own.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, Ricci and his colleagues captured the clearest images yet of 20 young stars in various stages of “giving birth” to planets.

“Until a few years ago, no one thought we would be able to detect the signature of a protoplanet — a large body of matter in orbit around a young star and thought to be developing into a planet — let alone 20,” said Ricci, an assistant professor in CSUN’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. “No one thought we could see the rings around young stars that indicate planets are forming right there. We’re not talking about one star, we’re talking about 20 different stars. Some of them are quite young, about a million years old, or five thousand times younger than our sun, and they have evidence of planets forming around them. You could call them nurseries of new planets.”

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, CSUN astrophysicist Luca Ricci and his colleagues captured the clearest images yet of 20 young stars in various stages of “giving birth” to planets. Photo courtesy of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory

Ricci said the new images were “a gold mine of information.”

“The better the definition of the images we can get for the material surrounding young stars, the more information we can get about how planets and solar systems are formed,” he said, “and the more information we get about how our own planet and solar system were formed.”

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory announced the survey of the protoplanetary disks today. Ricci and his colleagues’ workwill appear in a special focus issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Ricci said that until 2015, even the most powerful telescopes in the world were not capable of providing a clear picture of what exactly was happening around young stars.

“It was basically a blob,” he said. “It was a big blob of bright light that illustrated the star and the planets-forming material inside of it. It was even bigger than our solar system. It was very likely that something of this kind generated another solar system, but we could not find clear evidence of it. We had to make a supposition based on what we already knew.”

Then, in 2015, researchers used the ALMA telescope to take a new image of a young star and its rings being shaped by the gravity of baby planets. ALMA is currently the world’s most powerful observatory for studying the universe at the long-wavelength millimeter and submillimeter range of light. It is designed to spot some of the most distant galaxies ever seen, and to probe the areas around young starts for planets in the process of forming.

“With this new picture, we got to actually see the rings and dark gaps between the rings formed by the young planets and their gravity as they pull on material, dust particles and gas, as they grow and get bigger,” Ricci said. “But it was one image and one young star. While we learned so much from that one image, it raised questions about what we can learn if we have images of more stars.”

Ricci and his colleagues used ALMA from May to November 2017 to capture images of 20 different young stars, and all of them showed signs of planets being formed around them.

“In some cases, you can actually see the spirals around the stars, and even a large bump in one of the stars’ rings, likely indicating protoplanetary activity,” he said.

CSUN astrophysicist Luca Ricci. Photo by Lee Choo.

“Twenty stars surrounded by disks tell us that planetary systems like our own are forming out there,” Ricci said. “A planetary system like our own, if you look at it now, where everything seems kind of calm. You have planets traveling in space. They’re silent. They don’t interact with other planets in the system. They just keep orbiting the sun. In some ways, we’re in a pretty inactive system.

“But with these stars,” Ricci said, “they have a lot of material in their disks. All these planets are interacting with their environment. What we think is going on is that by interacting with their environment, the planets change. They are growing. They are going into orbit. Some are moving toward the star. Some are moving away from the star. Some of these young planets can interact with each other. This is the first time that we can start studying the features of all these interactions in real systems, and it is out of these interactions that the architecture of thatplanetary system will be formed, much like what happened with our own solar system.

“The architecture of our solar system was defined by what was going on with our own protoplanetary disks 4.5 billion years ago,” he said, “and now we’re seeing the same phenomenon going on right now hundreds of light years from us.”

Ricci said the images they captured will provide a new set of resources for researchers across the world.

Ricci already has his eye on the potential for new images and possible discoveries from the Next Generation Very Large Array (NGVLA) telescope. Though still in the planning stages, Ricci said that when the new telescope is up and running in about 10 years, it will have the ability to directly image the formation of Earth-like planets, trace the complex organic molecules in star-forming regions, probe the dense gas history of the universe during the epoch of galaxy assembly, detect pulsars in our galaxy, and much more.

“You saw the images that we captured with ALMA; the possibilities of what we can see with this new telescope are mind blowing,” he said. “This is one fascinating aspect of scientific research: the more learn, the more you want to learn. Learning about the universe makes our desire to understand everything grow more and more without an end.”

Ricci’s fellow researchers included Sean M. Andrews, Jane Huang,Karin I. Öberg and David J. Wilner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Xue-Ning Bai of the Institute for Advanced Study and the Tsinghua Center for Astrophysics at Tsinghua University in China; M. Benisty of the Unidad Mixta Internacional Franco-Chilena de Astronomía, the Departamento de Astronomía at the University of Chile and the Université Grenoble Aples in France; T. Birnstiel of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany; John M. Carpenter and V.V. Guzman of the Joint ALMA Observatory in Chile; C.P. Dullemond of the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University, Germany; A Meredith Hughes of the Van Vlack Observatory in the Department of Astronomy at Wesleyan University; Andrea Isella and Erik Weaver of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University; Laura M. Pérez and Nicolás Troncosco of the Departamento de Astronomía at the University of Chile;and Shangjai Zhang and Zhaohuan Zhu of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

A closer look at four the young stars in various stages of “giving birth” to planets. Photo courtesy of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Photo by David J. Hawkins.

CSUN alumna Katie Hill prepares for her first day on the job as California’s most famous freshman member of Congress.

The epiphany hit Katie Hill ’11 (Honors English), ’14 M.P.A. (Public Sector Management) during her senior year, thanks to a flyer she spotted while strolling through California State University, Northridge’s Jerome Richfield Hall. It was a career panel aimed at English majors:

What to do with your English degree if you don’t want to teach?

It was 15 minutes before the session was scheduled to start, and Hill was dressed in undergraduate casual: sweatpants and a tank top. But it felt like fate, so Hill made a beeline for the program. Among the panelists was CSUN alumnus Phil Matero ’87 (Special Major), M.A. ’95 (English), head of the nonprofit Los Angeles Conservation Corps, which provides at-risk young adults and school-aged youth with opportunities for success through job skills training.

“I went up to him wearing my tank top and sweatpants, and before long, he’d helped me get a job writing for LA Conservation Corps — even before I’d graduated,” Hill recounted this week in an interview at Santa Clarita City Hall.

It was a fortunate moment of chance and Matador connection that launched Hill on a remarkable ascent — from that first job in nonprofit work to another LA nonprofit, People Assisting The Homeless (PATH), where she made a rapid rise to executive director, and now, to Congress.

On Nov. 6, as part of California’s sweeping “blue wave” in the midterm election, voters in the state’s 25th Congressional District elected Hill, 31 — after what she dubbed “the most millennial campaign ever,” due to her age, tireless work for the homeless and LGBTQ rights (she identifies as bisexual) and her scrappy, grassroots campaign run primarily by 20-somethings.

2019 will mark her first term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and her first-ever elected office, for that matter. Hill, a Democrat, defeated incumbent Republican Steve Knight in the former red stronghold district, which includes Hill’s native Santa Clarita, Simi Valley and stretches all the way to Lancaster and Palmdale. Hill and her husband live on a rescue animal farm in Agua Dulce with their dogs, horses and baby goats.

In 2017, on International Women’s Day, Hill declared her candidacy as part of “a wave of young women seeking elective office,” according to a profile in The New Yorker magazine. She earned support from Emily’s List, a political action committee that aims to help elect pro-choice Democratic female candidates to office, and endorsements from celebrities such as Kristen Bell. Hill and her staff also were featured in a two-part documentary on Vice News Tonight on HBO.

On Dec. 10, Hill was still moving at breakneck speed. She’s preparing for her first day on the job in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 3, 2019, when she’ll be sworn in with the 116th Congress with her family watching from the House gallery. She’s addressing logistics large — “staffing up” to take over Knight’s three district offices — and relatively small, such as buying a Congressional winter wardrobe. That December morning, Hill noted, she’d signed a lease on a new place to live in D.C., where she’ll share a place with one of her fellow freshman members of Congress.

“I can equate this experience with college orientation,” Hill said, grinning. Indeed, she’d just returned from two weeks of “Congress Camp,” the new member orientation held at Harvard’s Kennedy School. In keeping with the college metaphor, her class of 63 newly elected Democrats elected Hill as their “freshman leadership representative.”

With the House majority, she plans to hit the ground running in her first days in office, and Hill is spending these transition weeks zeroing in on the role she’ll play.

“What will I actually be doing that’s helpful and effective for our community?” Hill said. “How will I be influencing the ACA (Affordable Care Act), and HR-1,” a bill aimed to block conflicts of interest and gerrymandering, and shore up the Voting Rights Act, some of the pillars of her campaign.

A daughter of a police officer and emergency-room nurse who live in the district, Hill attended College of the Canyons before transferring to CSUN to pursue her English degree. As a multigenerational Matador, she said, it felt like a natural fit. Hill’s grandmother, Sarah Campbell ’71 (Anthropology), and her dad, Mike Hill ’98 (Organizational Systems Management) also earned their bachelor’s degrees from CSUN.

“I knew [CSUN] was a good option because it was close by, and it’s a great university,” Katie Hill said. “My grandfather, who was a poli sci professor at UCLA, was a huge influence in my life. He had gotten Alzheimer’s, so I wanted to stay close by and be with him.” She also worked nearly full time in Santa Clarita while in school, Hill said. Her grandfather passed away in 2011.

She raved about her undergraduate and graduate school experiences at CSUN.

“I went into the Honors English cohort at CSUN, and I spent a lot of time in Sierra and Jerome Richfield Halls,” Hill said. “I loved that cohort — we were very close. It shaped a lot of who I am.”

While working at PATH, Hill said, she realized that she wanted to pursue a master’s degree as she rose through the ranks of nonprofit leadership. She returned to CSUN, completing a Master of Public Administration degree in 2014.

“It was totally conducive to working people,” Hill said of the master’s program. “I knew the program was immediately applicable to what I was doing in my work. I can’t recommend that program highly enough.”

Congresswoman-elect and CSUN alumna Katie Hill gives an interview on Dec. 10, 2018, at Santa Clarita City Hall. Photo by David J. Hawkins.

Police uniforms weren’t designed for women when Anne Glavin joined the force at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the mid-1970s.

When she chose her career, there were only 20 women in law enforcement in the state of Massachusetts, and they had to fight multiple forms of discrimination, including a 6-foot height requirement to join the force.

The department issued Glavin a short-sleeve, men’s shirt. Her badge read “patrolman.” Somehow, the female-specific items were even worse: a navy skirt, a straw hat designed for women but much different than the men’s, and a criss-cross tie.

Wearing that, Glavin said, she felt ridiculous.

She ditched the skirt and bought some uniform pants — also men’s. She got a new hat and tie, both like the men’s. She asked for a more gender-appropriate badge (maybe she could get one that said “patrol officer”?) and settled for one with “man” blotted out with silver paint.

This was the uniform and a few of the tools she needed, but her work transforming the face of university-based law enforcement was just beginning.

Glavin is retiring this month after 43 years as a peace officer, including more than 16 as chief of the California State University, Northridge Department of Police Services. As the first woman to serve as a police chief at a major university when MIT promoted her to that position in 1987, she helped pave the way for women in law enforcement. Her work also removed barriers for women to serve, as she helped study discriminatory practices in agility testing and height requirements for the job of police officer in Massachusetts — requirements that were later eliminated.

She felt she had nothing left to accomplish at MIT when she learned of a new challenge and opportunity at CSUN in 2002, Glavin said. Her ground-breaking work continued on the West Coast. Under her watch, CSUN’s force became a nationally accredited, collaborative unit that engaged with the community to defend against uniquely 21st-century threats.

“Chief Glavin will be missed,” said CSUN President Dianne F. Harrison. “In every situation, she brought professionalism and a sense of calm that I always appreciated. Her commitment to community policing and safety, emergency preparedness, crime prevention, law enforcement accreditation, training, and sexual violence prevention have made her a model for her peers in the CSU and nationwide, and she did so while breaking down barriers for women in law enforcement. CSUN is grateful for her service to the campus and broader community, and we wish her the very best in retirement.”

In honor of her distinguished service at CSUN and her 43 years in university law enforcement, Harrison bestowed Emeritus status upon Glavin.

Glavin is most proud of her work to achieve department accreditation by the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) in 2008, certifying that CSUN’s department follows the best professional practices and standards in the field consistent with the unique needs of the campus community. CSUN is still one of just four universities in the 23-campus California State University system to be accredited.

Not only has the university been re-accredited three times, but Glavin served as president of IACLEA and CSUN Capt. Scott VanScoy serves as a national assessor for the organization, verifying the compliance of other departments across the country.

From the beginning of her time at CSUN, Glavin implemented programs to make officers more visible and more familiar to students and community members. Officers patrolled mainly in cars in 2002, so Glavin quickly worked to establish patrol efforts including foot, bicycle and motorcycle patrols.

As a deterrent to crime in the student housing area on the north side of campus, Glavin established a two-person community policing team that spent all its time in Student Housing. Officers received budgets to host ice cream and pizza socials, to better get to know CSUN students, and they were encouraged to join in on pickup basketball games around the dorms.

Such activities changed the perception of officers on campus, Glavin said.

“They’re not just cops in blue uniforms — they’re people,” she said.

Glavin also established a K-9 unit featuring dogs that can detect explosive devices. Two dogs and their human partners are used for security at highly attended events such as commencement, and they are also rented to other organizations for security at important events.

“The dogs are more beloved than any of the human beings on our force,” Glavin said. “People want their pictures taken with them.”

CSUN is one of the most diverse universities in the nation, and Glavin’s department took care to serve its constituents fairly, including cultural sensitivity training with the Anti-Defamation League. The training and other department policies help nurture an environment to help victims of hate crimes feel comfortable in reporting them to police.

Glavin’s department also implemented a full-time public education program, including crime prevention education offered to students, faculty, staff and the community.

“It truly is a partnership,” Glavin said. “We can’t do it all. We need the community’s help. We get a lot of support, and I’m grateful for that. I hope that happens for the next chief as well.”

Glavin plans to return to New England for her retirement.

Research associate Salimeh “Sanaz” Mohammadi (left) and physics graduate student John Paul Talledo (right) stand with CSUN physics professor Sattar Taheri-Araghi (center) in his lab, where they discovered a new class of bacterial tolerance against antibiotics . Photo by Lee Choo.

A group of researchers led by CSUN physics professor Sattar Taheri-Araghi has discovered a new class of bacterial tolerance against antibiotics that could have wide implications for the future of antibiotics in medicine.

Taheri-Araghi and his team were studying how antimicrobial peptides — which are part of the innate immune system of multicellular organisms, such as humans, animals and plants — function in a population of Escherichia coli bacteria. They are a large group of bacteria that are commonly found in the environment and food. While most strains of E. coli are harmless, there are some that can cause infectious disease.

In the battle with antimicrobial peptides, it was found that some E. coli cells essentially act as cannon fodder — sacrificing themselves to antibiotic assault while other cells continued to grow and replicate. Surprisingly, the dead cells absorbed and retained the antimicrobial peptides upon death, rendering the antibiotics less effective.

Taheri-Araghi, who takes quantitative approaches to study biological systems using single-cell techniques, investigated the action of a human antimicrobial peptide, LL37. With his team of researchers, they analyzed video microscopy images of hundreds of E. coli cells under attack by LL37 peptides.

“We saw something unexpected,” Taheri-Araghi said. “Once a cell died, it turned bright, indicating the absorption of a large number of fluorescently-tagged antibiotic molecules by a dead cell. But instead of fading away, it continued to stay fluorescent as it retained antibiotics. Meanwhile, other cells managed to grow and replicate.”

“The military analogy is a really effective one,” he said. “The cells that died really do act like a cannon fodder, attracting the resources from the ‘enemy,’ which in this case are the antimicrobial peptides. Once E. coli cells die, they soak up and retain the antibiotic agents, sort of acting like a diversion, essentially neutralizing the antibiotic attack and allowing the surviving bacteria to grow and replicate almost unchecked.”

The paper, “Heterogeneous Absorption of Antimicrobial Peptide LL37 in Escherichia coli Cells Enhances Population Survivability,” was published today in eLife, a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal for the biomedical and life sciences.

Joining Taheri-Araghi as co-authors are CSUN biology undergraduate student Mehdi Snoussi, physics graduate student John Paul Talledo, former CSUN biology undergraduate student Nathan-Alexander Del Rosario, research associate Salimeh Mohammadi, Bae-Yeun Ha, a physics professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and Andrej Košmrlj, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University.

“At this point we don’t know how this is happening at the molecular level, but we do know that it is happening,” Taheri-Araghi said. “This research opens the doors to a lot of questions that were never asked before. Our findings have profound implications for the evolution of bacteria — which have been around for billions of years — as well as in medicine for the design and administration of novel antibiotics.”

Košmrlj’s group at Princeton was able to reproduce and explain the experimental observation with a mathematical model. The authors are hoping that their study will inspire further research on bacterial tolerance to antibiotics as well as on the evolution of bacteria under antibiotic stress.

California State University, Northridge’s sustainability efforts have earned the campus an official certification as a “Bee Campus USA Affiliate.” The certification is awarded to campuses around the country that show a dedicated effort to the protection of bees and other pollinators.

CSUN has had a long history of bee-friendly activities, and faculty, staff and students plan to do much more. Rachel Mackelprang, associate professor of biology, is a beekeeper on campus who has done intense research on the gut bacteria of bees. She also leads a team of students that harvests honey and sells it to CSUN students, faculty, staff and members of the community. The “Bee a Matador” honey can be ordered through the Marilyn Magaram Center for Food Science, Nutrition and Dietetics, or bought at upcoming Associated Students Farmers Market days. The farmers market takes place on campus every Tuesday during fall and spring semesters.

“Bee Campus USA is an important recognition for the campus because we are already doing so much to help local pollinators,” Austin Eriksson said. “If you looked around campus three years ago, you would have noticed much more grass. Today, we have removed upwards of 360,000 square feet of grass and replaced it with local drought-tolerant landscaping.

“Many of the plants selected for the drought-tolerant plant palette are pollinator friendly, especially to our local pollinators,” Eriksson said. “CSUN received this affiliation because we have made a commitment to support pollinators and pollinator education.”

CSUN has committed to minimize its use of pesticides that are harmful to bee populations, and the university has joined 57 other U.S. campuses in improving college landscapes for pollinators. Bee Campus USA is an initiative of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Ore., with offices across the country.

The Bee Campus USA certification requires that a campus committee provide a forum for members of the campus community to get involved in providing pollinator education, and establishing or restoring habitat that provides food, nesting sites and “overwintering sites” for pollinators. The committee will include Austin Eriksson, CSUN’s director of Energy and Sustainability, and his team; the Institute for Sustainability; Physical Plant Management; and Mackelprang and her students.

Some of the other things CSUN will do to create a pollinator-friendly campus include: developing and maintaining a campus pollinator habitat plan, hosting an annual campus event to raise awareness about the importance of pollinators, and offering workshops to students who are interested in learning more about these topics.

“The program aspires to make people more PC — pollinator conscious, that is,” added Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society. “If lots of individuals and communities begin planting native, pesticide-free flowering trees, shrubs and perennials, it will help to sustain many, many species of pollinators.”

For more information about Bee Campus USA and the Xerces Society, visit https://www.beecityusa.org/current-bee-campuses.html 

Three California State University, Northridge alums have hit the ground running in their journalism careers, earning positions at the “Big Three” rival news networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) in New York, including work on some of the most popular shows on TV — The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Good Morning America and the Today show.

CSUN alumni Kelcey Henderson, Cammeron Parrish and Lauren Turner Dunn fostered friendships at CSUN and are keeping the connection going across the country despite the competitive nature of their careers.

Henderson ’18 (Journalism) currently works for NBC as a news associate, Parrish ’18 (Journalism) for ABC as a digital news associate and Turner Dunn ’18 (Journalism) for CBS as a production assistant.

Turner Dunn currently works for CBS as a production assistant primarily for the second season of Whistleblower, an investigative news program hosted on the network’s digital platform CBS All Access.

“This is just the beginning,” she said.

Her other roles in the network include research and finding media sources for the CBS Weekend News broadcast, and she has also assisted with audience services on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Parrish works as a digital news associate for ABC, a multi-function role on the news desk facilitating communication between reporters and producers, and searching for national headline stories as they break, including gathering content for Good Morning America.

Working on a news desk for a major network isn’t new to Parrish. As a desk intern for KABC in Los Angeles, he developed the skills he uses now and discovered the interest in fact-checking and following up on stories — the majority of what his current position entitles.

“That experience got me to where I am here in New York,” Parrish said. “The one difference is that now I’m working for the national network. It’s broader, it’s bigger, and you really have to compare working in a local market. My job now is to fish out for those stories that make the national cut.”

Henderson’s role as a news associate at NBC as part of the NBCUniversal Page program – a skill and experience-based rotational program with the company that allows her to experience four different areas within the network, with her current role being working on Today.

“There are so many aspects and avenues to journalism, so I really love how this program allows you to rotate and puts you where it seems fit for you and where you see for yourself,” she said.

At the end of the one-year program, Henderson has the ability to apply for any open position within the four areas she has worked in.

Despite their hectic schedules, adjusting to life on the East Coast and jump-starting their careers, the three make an effort to find time for each other.

“Our schedules are crazy, but we can find time to do things with each other and it makes it better,” said Henderson.

The three often meet up and check out the city or grab a bite, and Henderson and Parrish will meet up for church service every week.

During their time within CSUN’s Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication, the three students were heavily involved in campus organizations such as the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) and the Black Student Union (BSU).

Henderson and Parrish both worked for The Sundial. Parrish was a podcast content creator and later a podcast producer, while Henderson produced digital content for a segment she created called CSUN: Do You Know? — a show where Henderson would ask students around campus about various news topics to gauge opinions. The segment is still being produced by current students.

Henderson and Turner Dunn were both recipients of the Mary Bayramian Arts Scholarship, an $8,000 award through The Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts.

“If it weren’t for CSUN, I wouldn’t have had the connections and opportunities I have now,” said Henderson. “I’m just thankful for all the opportunities that CSUN has provided me from the beginning, and how that has all shaped the way to where I am now.”

During their senior year at CSUN, Henderson and Parrish met up in New York with Turner Dunn for a friend trip, unaware that a year later they would all be offered jobs in the city.

“I never thought I would end up here in New York. The trip with Kelcey and Cammeron was my second time here. We never knew we were going to live in New York. It’s crazy,” Turner Dunn said.

After applying to a variety of positions, never intending to work in the same city, it was Henderson who started the domino effect.

“Kelcey got her job, I had my interview and before getting on the plane Cammeron called us and told us that he got his job,” Turner Dunn said. “Immediately I told myself OK, I really have to get this job now.”

With optimism about the future ahead, these Matadors reflect on the past and offer advice to current students looking to start their own careers.

“Really try to figure out what it is you want to do because that will help you when you go further out the way. Explore all your options and don’t be so closed minded about things,” said Parrish. “You never know if you might like something until you try it. Be open to change. If you don’t like it, you’ll know that it doesn’t work for you.”

“Sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone and get out of those normal things for you to find those opportunities out there,” said Henderson. “There’s always so much that we can learn-being on campus, and there’s so much more that the real world can teach us.”

The three emphasized the importance of making invaluable connections, getting involved as much as you can and enjoying the college experience.

“I honestly wouldn’t be in New York without CSUN,” said Turner Dunn. “It goes to show that the work that you put in really makes a difference. Take every opportunity, trust your gut, follow your dreams.”

California State University, Northridge recently officially opened the doors to the university’s latest building, the newly minted Lilac Hall, which is dedicated to multidisciplinary research. Faculty and staff welcomed guests for a grand opening ceremony on Dec. 10 at the 10,000-square-foot building on Plummer Street/North Campus Drive that will serve as a collaborative research hub.

CSUN President Dianne F. Harrison greeted deans, professors, students and other members of the community to Lilac Hall, which opened for research in August. Guests explored the space and learned more about the noteworthy work already underway including augmented-reality projects as well as a lab that uses ultrafast lasers to study nanoparticles.

“Having this space dedicated to research is remarkable,” Harrison said. “Lilac Hall is not just a building. It is a concrete reflection of CSUN’s commitment to research. Lilac Hall is already positively impacting students and will continue to do so for years to come.”

The university broke ground on Lilac Hall in February 2017. Researchers in various fields have moved in over the past few months, launching research in the field of materials science (the research and discovery of new materials), as well as health disparities analysis spearheaded by the undergraduate biomedical research training program BUILD PODER (Building Infrastructure to Diversity Promoting Opportunities for Diversity in Education and Research). BUILD PODER is funded by a five-year, $22 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Professor Aziz Boulesbaa heads the work in materials science conducted in the laser lab, which opened in November. The lab uses femtosecond lasers (lasers with pulses lasting one femtosecond, or one millionth-billionth of a second) to study the flow of energy and electric charges in nanomaterials. The overarching goal is to design more efficient solar energy devices and nanomaterial-based photothermal therapies for cancer treatment.

Most of the equipment used in the lab was designed and built by Boulesbaa himself.

“What you see here is my vision. You can’t find this on the market,” Boulesbaa said. He joked, “I bought all these parts on eBay!”

The research on advancements in health equity is led by four principal investigators: psychology professors Carrie Saetermoe, Gabriela Chavira and Maggie Shiffrar; and Crist Khachikian, associate vice president of Research and Graduate Studies.

Thomas Chan, one of the four professors in the BUILD PODER health equity cluster, and his students are researching the ways augmented reality can improve the cognition and mental health in aging adults. Augmented reality involves adding computer-generated perceptual information such as images or sounds to real-world environments.

Other professors in Lilac Hall are studying health disparities faced by African American mothers; environmental and social factors affecting obesity in Latinos; and “cultural mismatch,” a feeling students from group-oriented cultures, such as the Latina/o culture, can have when they adjusting to a culture focused on the individual — such as American college campuses.

For more information on the four BUILD PODER health equity professors and their research, please click here.

Ultimately, the new building will house BUILD PODER’s new center dedicated to community-academic research partnerships. Its overall mission is to improve the health of the Los Angeles region by studying and solving health disparities based on socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, gender or age within the community.

Saetermoe said BUILD PODER understands the importance of the opportunity of working in the university’s new research-focused building.

“NIH officials have been extremely impressed by the support our university has provided to build this space, to institutionalize cluster hire opportunities, and to be bold and innovative about the future of research on our campus,” Saetermoe said. “They are astounded at our commitment to really jumpstart research on this campus.”

Gryllus Navajo; new species of Red-colored cricket found in Red Rock county of South-Eastern Utah and North-Eastern Arizona. Photo by: J. Hogue, Collections manager of biology department

The world is filled with billions of insects that creep, crawl, fly or buzz, but few are more well known in our society than crickets.

California State University, Northridge biology professor David Gray – with 20 years’ experience researching the ubiquitous, chirping insects – recently unveiled something new in the world of crickets: Gray and his team discovered 17 new species of cricket in the western United States.

“I think people sort of aren’t surprised if there are new insect species found in the Amazon jungle, but something new that’s in the U.S. and as big, noisy and conspicuous as a cricket surprises people,” said Gray. “Everyone knows what a cricket is and, that there are undiscovered species here now, is quite remarkable.”

With the help of sound recorders, Gray was able to distinguish the songs of male crickets and classify them accordingly – classifications later confirmed by DNA sequencing.

“I listen for them, catch them and record them while they’re captive,” said Gray. “The fieldwork to catch the crickets could be anywhere, from the remote wilderness to small towns.”

There are an estimated 1,000 species of cricket around the world. More than 100 species can be found in the U.S., with many sharing physical characteristics in shape and appearance.

“The key to identifying different species is the call of the males,” Gray said. “When you hear crickets ‘chirp chirp,’ those are the males calling to attract females for mating, and those calls differentiate the various species.”

Adult males are the only the ones capable of producing chirp songs, he said.

Gray, who joined CSUN’s faculty in 2001, specializes in behavioral ecology and evolution. His research initially focused on birds but soon transitioned to crickets.

“Working with birds was super fun, but there wasn’t a lot of data,” Gray said. “I thought I should switch to something that was easier to collect a lot of data. faster. I switched to crickets not knowing anything about them or having any real love for them, but because they would be a good research system.”

During his years at CSUN, more than 50 undergraduate students have participated in his research program.

With immense biodiversity in the world, Gray said, there are many things still to be discovered in our own backyard.

Gray is working to submit his finding to the scientific journal Zootaxa for review. He expects his work to be published in July of next year.

For more information on Gray’s work, visit https://gryllid.wordpress.com/.

“The earthquake is inevitable. But the disaster is not.”

As always, seismologist and earthquake preparedness expert Lucy Jones got straight to the point. Along with State Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Jeff Gorell and numerous other elected officials, the former U.S. Geological Survey scientist visited California State University, Northridge on Thursday afternoon to stand with CSUN President Dianne F. Harrison and commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake.

At 4:31 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day that year — a magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck the San Fernando Valley, killing 72 people. It injured 9,000 people, destroyed 22,000 homes across the region and caused catastrophic damage throughout the CSUN campus. Among the victims were two CSUN students who perished in the collapse of Northridge Meadows apartments.

It was a seminal moment for the university, which reopened for spring semester classes just two weeks after the disaster struck. The slogan shared at the time was, “Not just back. Better.” And the CSUN staff and faculty were true to their word. It took herculean efforts to coordinate with all agencies — city and state emergency responders, federal disaster assistance, elected officials — but CSUN faculty returned to teach, and students tromped through the mud to attend classes in portable classrooms for years. The Class of 1994 graduated on time.

Numerous buildings and parking structures on CSUN’s campus sustained severe damage, including the iconic Delmar T. Oviatt Library, whose east and west wings were badly damaged. The quake was the most expensive U.S. natural disaster until Hurricane Katrina’s toll on New Orleans in 2005.

CSUN itself rose from the natural disaster like a phoenix from the ashes, taking advantage of federal assistance dollars to modernize the campus and complete new parking structures and new buildings that included University Hall (administration), Manzanita Hall (journalism, film, communication studies), Chaparral Hall (biology and botany), Sequoia Hall (health and human development) and many more.

“I’m honored to be here today to represent the university and the strides we have made regarding emergency preparedness and earthquake safety for our nearly 40,000 students and close to 5,000 staff and faculty,” Harrison said Thursday, as she stood side by side with city and state officials.

“We at CSUN know all too well the devastation, the pain, the heartbreak that an earthquake can cause,” she said. “Twenty-five years ago on this very day, a powerful earthquake rocked Southern California and forever altered the lives of so many, including lives lost.

“The history of CSUN is sadly intertwined with the memory of the destructive Northridge earthquake. When CSUN faced disaster back in 1994, friends and strangers alike supported us in our time of need. The community came together like never before — the city, the state, the federal government worked together to solve problems and get people the help they needed. This is also the legacy and history of CSUN, and I am so proud of the resilience of our community.”

Harrison thanked State Assemblymembers Jesse Gabriel (D-Northridge) and Adrin Nazarian (D-Sherman Oaks), LA City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, Gorell, Jones and Glenn Pomeroy, CEO of the California Earthquake Authority (CEA), for helping CSUN commemorate the anniversary and pushing for increased earthquake safety and preparedness for homes, schools and businesses.

Hertzberg, who lost his own home in the 1994 quake, announced a plan to sponsor state legislation for $1 billion more for the nonprofit CEA to “brace-and-bolt” retrofit single-family homes to their foundation. He noted that the Northridge earthquake cost the region $25 billion in damage.

“As nonprofits and public and elected officials, we have an obligation to figure it out and fix it — to protect the public,” said Hertzberg, the state senate majority leader. “The question is, are we ready? Are we ready to deal with the financial and human costs of the next Northridge? We need to be smart and creative, and to protect people not just from what happens after the fact, but to get ahead of the game.”

California faces a 99.9 percent chance of a damaging quake (magnitude greater than or equal to 6.7) in the state in the next 30 years, according to UC Berkeley seismologist Peggy Hellweg. Hertzberg noted that 1.2 million older houses statewide have not been retrofitted and are vulnerable to damage in a major earthquake.

“A code-compliant retrofit could cost about $3,000, and it could prevent a family from losing everything — it could be the difference between life and death,” Hertzberg said.

Gorell, who serves as deputy mayor for public safety, lauded the efforts of city safety and building officials to retrofit buildings throughout the city. By 2024, the city plans to retrofit all 12,865 multi-family residential buildings with so-called soft story ground floors (including those that have residences built over carports and garages) — the design that doomed the Northridge Meadows apartments.

He also used Thursday’s anniversary as an opportunity to call on all CSUN students, Angelenos and residents throughout Los Angeles County to download and use the free mobile app ShakeAlert LA, a new early-alert system that can provide a few seconds of warning — to allow people to slow their cars down and pull over, stop an elevator and get out, or move away from glass windows. The app has had more than 373,000 downloads in the LA area, Gorell said. He also urged city residents to sign up (via email, text or phone) for Notify LA, the city’s emergency alert system.

Jones, head of the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society, which she founded in 2016, was with the USGS for 30 years — including in 1994, when she served as a voice of information and calm for Californians in the temblor’s aftermath.

“I’m probably the only one up at this podium that doesn’t think Northridge was a big earthquake,” Jones said. “It was only a 6.7. What it means to be a big earthquake is not stronger shaking at some site, it’s strong shaking at many more sites. Half a million people received strong shaking in the Northridge earthquake. When we have a 7.8 on the San Andreas fault, we’ll have about 10 million people receiving an equivalent level of shaking, and that’s why it’s different.

“We haven’t done anything to prepare our houses,” she said. “You don’t have to lose your house! You’ve got a choice to make, and we need to encourage more people to [retrofit]. We know it’s coming, we can do something about it. And the fact that over the last few years, we are seeing this incredible level of political will to move on it, is really encouraging to me. We are seeing an engagement and understanding.”

On Nov. 26, California State University, Northridge student Heather Lethcoe watched in awe as NASA’s InSight lander approached the dusty, clay-red surface of Mars — headed for the target Lethcoe’s team helped identify.

Mars is about 140 million miles from Earth. Lethcoe, a geographical information science (GIS) junior, and a team of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory selected the ideal landing spot for InSight and its equipment with the aid of high-resolution images and data collected by NASA.

As an intern at JPL, Lethcoe’s job with InSight was to conduct surface operations. Specifically, she was tasked with selecting the best landing site for the two instruments aboard InSight — a seismometer and heat probe — which are designed to explore the interior of Mars.

“To be part of the InSight landing was truly exciting. It was really intense and surprisingly emotional for me,” Lethcoe said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — especially for an undergrad like me — to be working on a project like this. I am truly humbled by the experience.”

Lethcoe works with two other interns under the supervision of Matthew Golombek, project scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover mission, and Nathan Williams, a planetary geologist with particular interest in the remote sensing of planetary surfaces.

“Heather has been of great help both with the InSight mission that landed on Mars on Nov. 26, 2018, and with the upcoming Mars 2020 rover over the past year and a half that she’s been an intern with us,” Williams said. “[Lethcoe’s] experience with GIS and eye for detail are key components we need to safely land and operate spacecraft on Mars.”

InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a lander with a mission to map out the deep structure of Mars. It’s the first robotic explorer to study in-depth the inner parts of the Red Planet, including its crust, mantle and core. Studying the inner layers of the planet could reveal new insight about the early formation of planets in the inner solar system, including our own.

InSight’s seismometer and heat probe will study the planet from just one spot. The instruments will search for signals below Mars’ surface, such as marsquakes and heat.

Lethcoe has been deemed the “mapping expert” among her fellow interns because of her expertise in studying the images of Mars’ surface and then identifying the best potential landing sites for the lander to conduct its research. These high-resolution images are printed from geographical information software that Lethcoe and her team examine, searching for areas near the planet’s equator that are flat, smooth, low-lying and likely to be obstacle-free from things like rocks or hills.

“They call me the expert, but most of the time I feel like I barely know what I’m doing,” Lethcoe said. “I definitely have to rely on my team. I am very fortunate to work with such great people.”

Finding potential landing sites was no easy feat. The lander operates by using power from solar panels, so the site had to be as close to the sun as possible, making a spot close to Mars’ equator ideal. Subsurface soil is also key to a lander’s success, as it is softer, less rocky and the lowest point on the ground. For these reasons, Lethcoe and the team chose a plain called Elysium Planitia, which is a flat, smooth plain just 4 degrees north of the equator.

Landers are different from rovers in that they are not mobile. If something went wrong, like a rock blocking the robotic arm of the lander from being able to extend itself and hammer the equipment into the ground, or a small hill forcing the lander to be off kilter, the lander would not be able to do its job.

Their research paid off. Lethcoe credited her background as a U.S. Army Geospatial Engineer as being incredibly helpful to her work at NASA.

“My experience working with geographical information systems in the Army — which capture, analyze, manage and present spatial or geographic data — was crucial to me getting the internship at NASA. My advice to any student interested in getting an internship with NASA would be to get as much [work] experience as possible.”

Lethcoe was quick to add that no student should feel like an internship or job at NASA is out of reach.

“I was so nervous to start,” she said. “I didn’t think I would fit in, or be an adequate asset to the team. I didn’t come from a family of engineers or scientists — I am the first person in my family to even get an associate degree. After some time has gone on, I have realized that I really am someone who fits in there. I can be at NASA, and so can other students if they change their perspective.”

As a busy intern and full-time student, Lethcoe noted that her professors at CSUN have been incredibly understanding and flexible with her schedule.

“I really appreciate my professors here at CSUN,” she said. “They have been super accommodating with this internship, and I feel like I have no trouble getting quality time with my professors when I need it.”

Lethcoe plans to continue her education with the goal of obtaining her Ph.D. in geology or planetary science and becoming a full-time employee at JPL.

At JPL, Lethcoe is currently working on Mars 2020 related projects.

“For the 2020 mission, we will be going to Jezero Crater,” said Lethcoe. “It is a really large crater that has two deltas. The fact that the crater has not one, but two deltas, is especially exciting because deltas signify that the crater itself may have been a large lake once upon a time. This means that there is likely fluid from long ago that has been deposited into the sediments of the crater, which could prove that it was once a large body of water. The 2020 mission could teach us a lot about Mars’ composition — I am really looking forward to seeing what we discover.”

Jonathan Kelber in his lab.

A recent study by a team at California State University, Northridge, led by biologist Jonathan Kelber, offers insight into the role certain proteins play in stem cell-mediated tissue regeneration, which could have implications for how clinicians treat health problems associated with wound healing such as diabetes and other degenerative diseases.

The team — including seven CSUN students and colleagues at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., — has found that a certain motor protein inside stem cells, known as non-muscle myosin II, determines where and how the cell-surface protein Cripto functions to promote stem cell proliferation and tissue regeneration.

Kelber noted that there are a number of diseases, such as diabetes and forms of fibrosis (abnormal scarring in tissue) that cause injuries which are hard for the human body to naturally heal.

“In these contexts, you want to be able to precisely fine tune and control how the tissue or the cells within that tissue are able to respond to injury, or limit that response once the tissue is fully healed,” he said. “Our findings give us a better understanding of the molecular wiring that goes into wound healing. Going forward, we hope to leverage this new information to improve wound healing, or to limit it when this process is uncontrolled.”

“We were also excited to gain new insights into the regulation of Cripto,” Kelber said. “Having studied Cripto function and mechanism for the past 15 years in various contexts, I have an appreciation for the need to uncover new mechanisms of Cripto regulation. We commonly find that when Cripto is expressed in cells, it regulates many critical cellular behaviors. So, these findings now provide a new and novel point of Cripto regulation within cells.”

The study, “Identification of myosin II as a Cripto binding protein and regulator of Cripto function in stem cells and tissue regeneration,” was published last month in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

In addition to Kelber, the research team included CSUN graduate and undergraduate students Farhana Runa; Erika Duell, an NIH BUILD PODER scholar; Blake Williams; Caroline Arellano-Garcia, a NIH MARC scholar; Toni Uhlendorf; and Sa La Kim, a NIH MARC scholar; and Malachia Hoover, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) RISE scholar who is now a doctoral student at Stanford University. Also part of the project are Evan Booker, Wolfgang Fischer and Peter Gray with the Clayton Foundation for Peptide Biology at The Salk Institute and Jolene K. Diedriech and James Moresco with the Mass Spectrometry Core at The Salk Institute.

First author Hoover, now in her second year at the Stanford Graduate Program in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine, gained interest in this project during her first year as a master’s graduate student in Kelber’s Developmental Oncogene Laboratory, when she learned that Kelber’s collaborators at The Salk Institute had discovered a novel interaction between Cripto and the non-muscle myosin II motor proteins. She was keen to know whether this interaction could regulate some of Cripto’s well-known functions and if so, how.

“The potential for stem cells in regenerative therapies is being realized more and more,” Hoover said. “Scientists are now tackling aging as a disease, and we can use stem cells to combat many age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer. I am excited to be a part of this field.”

Runa, a postdoctoral researcher on Kelber’s team, emphasized that the findings of the study are “innovative and significant because dual biochemical interaction of myosin II and Cripto can help identify a new mechanistic basis for the identification or use of adult stem cells and their products in combatting diseases, especially diabetes.”

“This will help researchers develop new strategies for diagnosis and treatment of diseases,” Runa said.

Prior studies have demonstrated the important roles that myosin II proteins — MYH9 and MYH10 — play in cytoskeleton regulation and intracelluar transport of cargo, regulating cell secretion and a cell’s ability to move. Earlier work by Kelber and others has also demonstrated the important role Cripto, which is tethered to the outside of the cell membrane, plays in stem and cancer cell biology.

Kelber said the first part of the study details how the team identified novel Cripto-interacting proteins (termed the “Cripto interactome”), and how they discovered that MYH9/10 were part of this network.

“We were very interested in knowing, ‘How do these proteins interact?’” Kelber said. “Cripto normally resides on the outer surface of the cell membrane and myosin II proteins reside inside the cell. While there is a natural barrier between the two, we were struck by the novelty of this interaction and felt it may offer important insight into Cripto regulation. We were very pleased that our regional partner Medtronic/Minimed offered pilot funding to support our initial work on this project.”

The researchers set out to see if myosin II could regulate Cripto expression and where Cripto localizes within the cell.

“Using an inhibitor, we discovered the motor ATP-hydolyzing activity of myosin II proteins were essential for getting Cripto to the cell surface,” Kelber said. “Once it’s at the cell surface, it can either remain tethered to the cell membrane, or its anchoring mechanism can be cleaved to enable Cripto to act on neighboring cells or tissues. That was probably the most important finding — that myosin II are important for regulating where Cripto is [on the outside of] the cell.”

The researchers then tested the function of this biochemical interaction in stem cells in vitro and in the zebrafish caudal fin wound healing in vivo model. Some of the earliest phenotypes of Cripto function were characterized during zebrafish embryogenesis — the ortholog of Cripto in zebrafish is known as one-eyed pinhead (oep) due to the striking cyclops phenotypes observed when Cripto function is disrupted during normal development.

“We discovered that blocking oep (or Cripto) in fish could inhibit normal tissue generation,” Kelber said. “When Cripto is blocked, the stem cells important for caudal fin wound healing cannot do their job properly.”

The researchers also treated the fish with a myosin II inhibitor and found myosin II proteins were important for regeneration in the same way as Cripto. When they inhibited Cripto and myosin II at the same time, no additional inhibition of tissue regeneration was observed. In biological research, this usually indicates that the genes/proteins/pathways being inhibited function in a cooperative or overlapping manner. Kelber said their discoveries are important as researchers move forward in understanding how certain diseases inhibit natural wound healing in the body.

“We hope that our current and future studies will pave the way to help find new solutions to currently unsolved biomedical issues,” Kelber said.

Gregory Murphy Joins the CSUN community as its new police chief. Photo by Lee Choo.

“I shared with the staff that the most important thing is how we treat each other, that we treat each other with respect,” Murphy said. “I believe that if we are constantly and routinely practicing that internally, it will naturally carry over to how we interact with the community. We can’t get away from the fact that if we treat people with respect, with compassion and empathy, we are going to be more successful overall in achieving our goals.”

Murphy, 56, took the mantle of CSUN’s top law enforcement official Jan. 7. He comes to the campus from the University of California, San Diego, where he served as the assistant chief of police.

Murphy has extensive law enforcement experience that includes campus and municipal policing, as well as police training and standards oversight at the statewide level. In addition to his time at UC San Diego, he served as a lieutenant, chief, and sergeant at the University of California at Davis, Sierra Community College and with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) respectively, and as a training professional with the California Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training (POST).

Murphy said one of his goals as CSUN’s new police chief is to increase the use of technology by the department to achieve community policing efforts.

“I want to leverage the use of technology as a means to communicate with the community, as well as a tool to prevent, intervene and investigate crimes,” he said.

When Murphy graduated from high school and started college, he did so with the intention of becoming an engineer. About midway through, Murphy said he realized engineering was not for him, and joined the US Air Force in an effort to find himself and serve the nation. He spent six years in the Air Force, specializing in missile systems and computer operations/programming. He also completed a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Park University in Maryland while serving.

“After my experience in the Air Force, I realized that public service was a rewarding feeling, law enforcement was a way that I could get involved in the community to a greater degree and the order and structure was appealing and what I wanted to do,” Murphy said.

He joined the LAPD and worked in the city for more than 10 years before transitioning to higher education law enforcement at UC Davis as a lieutenant. From UC Davis, Murphy took a position with POST, where he served as the law enforcement regional manager for Los Angeles, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Orange, San Diego, and Imperial Counties over an eight-year period.

Murphy said the experience he gained at POST provided him a broad perspective of what law enforcement can and should be. That experience influenced his decision to return to higher education as the police chief at Sierra College, then later back with the UC System and now CSUN.

He noted that policing on a college campus is “truly community based.”

“The three tenets of community policing are organizational structure, partnership, and ultimately problem-solving,” Murphy said. “The challenge in a university environment is that every uniformed officer is expected to have the capacity of performing anything the local city’s police officer has to do, but he or she is also responsible for nurturing an environment where education can thrive, where students and faculty feel safe and they have the opportunity to explore ideas that may make some people uncomfortable.”

“We have to do all we can to safeguard individual constitutional rights,” he said. “We also cannot forget that our student population spans the spectrums of age and experiences, but they are primarily individuals who are at the phase of their lives where they are realizing and defining who they are.”

Murphy said that he understands that the relationship between the campus police department and the CSUN community is a good one and hopes to further strengthen that relationship by establishing more channels of communication and engagement from the department.

“I like to use personable and approachable methods of communication,” he said. “We need to maintain an environment where we respect and trust each other. That doesn’t mean that I expect everyone to agree with everything we do. But I hope we are willing to listen and consider varying perspectives from each other.”

Murphy said he hopes that open channels of communication and increased use of technology will help CSUN’s Department of Police Services get ahead of and prevent problems before they happen and, when issues do arise, resolve them in a positive manner.

“I don’t expect this to happen overnight, but when I leave CSUN, I want people from the community and within the department to think of us as a police department that performs it job professionally with respect and fairness.

CSUN is launching its 50th anniversary celebration of its Department of Africana Studies this month, which is also Black History Month. Each week in February, the department will host different discussions on issues prevent within the black community. Above, a student admires the artwork on the walls of CSUN’s Black House. Photo by David J. Hawkins.

Founded in 1969 during a time of great social change in the California State University system, the California State University, Northridge Department of Africana Studies is proud of its efforts over half a century to expand knowledge about black people in the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe and Africa from a culturally relevant perspective.

This month, the Department of Africana Studies, part of CSUN’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, will commence its 50th anniversary celebration. The events and festivities will take place throughout Black History Month, with four themed weeks of lectures and artistic performances.

“The Department of Africana Studies continues to have a deep commitment to the goals of an Africana student-centered education,” said Theresa White, chair of the department. “The faculty continually sets forth the standard of excellence for our students, including cultural awareness, appreciation, engaged scholarship, social responsibility, political astuteness and a commitment to uplift our communities. The department stands as a beacon and model of excellence. Our department adds breadth and depth to the rich cultural landscape of CSUN, and in order to advance our mission for 50 more years, the contributions that we make must be continually recognized and sustained.”

In 1968, students led protests voicing their need for diversity on campus. Ethnic studies departments formed the following spring. Among the programs created were what are now called the Department of Chicana/o Studies and Department of Africana Studies.

Each week in February, the Department of Africana Studies will host discussions on different issues prevalent within the black community. The week of Feb. 4-8 will cover the topic of “Health and Value of Black Studies Departments.” The week’s theme will aim to provoke interactive conversations to conclude with a program titled “Ancestors Drum: Black Folk Storytelling” held at CSUN’s Black House.

“The Black Aesthetics (Film, Art, Dance, Theater, TV, Multimedia),” from Feb 12-16, will tap into participants’ creative spirit with discussions on African-American history and life, including studies of prominent black writers who have influenced modern TV and films such as “Insecure,” “Atlanta,” “Black Monday” and “Nappily Ever After.”

The week of Feb. 18-22 will cover “Political, Environmental and Social Justice in Africana Communities.” The elements of political, environmental and social justice and activism will manifest through the rich story of Fannie Lou Hamer, with TED Talk speaker and activist Ronnie Finley.

“The final week will address ‘Black Excellence and Athleticism’ and will offer a glimpse into the lives of those who have successfully woven together intellect and physicality, as well as those who navigate the intersection of the black and LGBTQ communities,” White said.

The month-long celebration will be capped by a 50th Year Anniversary: Arc of Celebration black-tie reception at The Soraya Grand Lobby from 6 to 8:45 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28.

“Each week, the themes are designed to heighten the awareness of our constituencies to the rich tapestry of the Africana experience,” said White. “The themes were chosen as a mechanism for sharing and illustrating the multifaceted experience of the black community, and to reflect upon the ways in which people of black descent have, and continue to, contribute to this country.”

Themes of the sessions and programs will include “Health, Wellness and Value of Black Studies,” where faculty and students explore the department’s historical legacy on the CSUN campus and beyond; and an “Awakening Consciousness Lecture” on nurturing souls through reflective conversation.

For more information on the Department of Africana Studies or the 50th anniversary events, email: Africanastudies@csun.edu.

On Jan. 24, in the intimate setting of California State University, Northridge’s Cypress Recital Hall, Liviu Marinescu’s piece “Moto Perpetuo” began with just the strings. With faculty member Lorenz Gamma on the violin and Los Angeles local Dustin Seo on the cello, the two melodies began to overlap. Moments later, CSUN graduate student Larry Kaplan ’14 (Music Performance – Woodwinds) made his entrance on the flute. The three instruments seemed to converse with each other, followed by the sparing notes of Ming Tsu’s piano.

As the musicians listened and responded to one another, the music’s melody evoked the sensation of slipping into a dream — a dream which might even become a nightmare. Like sailors navigating a ship across a stormy sea, the intensity of the strings whipped the listener into a windy, wild world of the unknown.

“The title of the piece, ‘Moto Perpetuo,’ gives you an idea as to what the piece is about — perpetual motion,” said Liviu Marinescu, the work’s composer and head of the Composition Program in CSUN’s Department of Music. “While it moves very fast and has very complex rhythmic patterns — it is not repetitive — there is always something changing and shifting.”

The evening was the first of many events in the “ChamberFest @ CSUN” festival — four days of chamber music performances, lectures and master classes hosted by CSUN’s Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication, highlighting the talents of visiting musicians, faculty, alumni and students in the music department.

“It is not very often that a school puts together a short but comprehensive festival of this type featuring musicians such as the LA Philharmonic, CSUN faculty and international musicians working together, as well as student performances, master classes and lectures,” said Dmitry Rachmanov, co-director of the festival and chair of keyboard in the Department of Music. “All of these put together create a unique event that spotlights our department, and it really helps to recognize us as a leading institution.”

ChamberFest was designed to explore the art of chamber music and to provide world-class entertainment by distinguished chamber musicians, as well as an opportunity for students to learn more about the process of composing, creating and performing chamber music.

The art of chamber music is inherently intimate, given that it is performed by a small ensemble. Chamber music is played one musician to a part, with no two instruments playing the same musical line.

“Because chamber music is designed for one player per part, versus the orchestra, it offers an opportunity for a musician to be both an individual and a collaborator on a team,” said Gamma, co-director of the festival and head of string studies in the Department of Music. “The wonderful thing about chamber music is that it has this social component. The audience gets to be closer up than in an orchestral performance, and gets to be inside the experience of the immediacy of making music in real time. They get to see something in front of their very eyes that is truly personal, collaborative and spontaneous.”

Participating in active listening is crucial to any successful performance.

“When performing chamber music, you have to always be alert,” Rachmanov said. “You have to react to what the other performer is doing, which teaches you how to listen intently and respond in the right way to create a convincing performance. For students, it’s one of the few ways of expressing themselves where they have to be at once both independent and collaborative.”

Exploring a range of rich musical literature, from Beethoven to Schubert, Dvořák to Prokofiev, the master classes, performances and lectures offered a close look at musical greats and the art of chamber music as a whole.

The classes included instruction from a range of musicians, including Bin Huang, a master violinist and director of orchestral studies from the China Conservatory in Beijing; Alan Chapman, a KUSC radio host, educator and lecturer and who is a regular speaker on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Upbeat Live” series; and Yuan Sheng, a pianist from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

The Department of Music hopes to continue this celebratory and comprehensive festival in years to come, with the intention of inspiring the CSUN community and greater LA community alike to engage in and support chamber music.

Prior to the performance of Marinescu’s piece, a panel discussion titled, “The Creation of Chamber Music – a Composer’s Perspective” — moderated by the directors of the event, Gamma and Rachmanov — discussed the importance of chamber music and the composition process as a whole. The panel featured Frank Campo, Marinescu and Arthur McCaffrey, all of whom are world-class composers and musicians, as well as professors at CSUN.

“You have to think in a different mindset when you write for the orchestra,” said Marinescu.

Much like his piece, chamber music is always changing and shifting, dependent on individual players as they weave together a cohesive composition in a collaborative fashion.

“Our goal was to have a positive effect on our entire school — not just chamber music, but to bring our students and faculty together, as well as musicians from around the world,” Gamma said. “These activities were there to enrich our students’ studies, and for our faculty to exchange and collaborate with other musicians. That sort of exchange is part of the mission of any university.”

Giant Elkhorn corals (Acropora palmata), such as this colony from about three meters depth in St. John, are some of the most beautiful and important corals that have become lost as many reefs reefs in the Caribbean have degraded. This colony was photographed in 2015 and it was killed by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017. However, CSUN marine biologist’s latest study finds some resilience among the coral reefs of St. John. Photo by Peter Edmunds.

Peter Edmunds was prepared for the worst. Back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes had torn through the Caribbean in September 2017, and the California State University, Northridge marine biologist was not sure what he would find when he visited the fragile coral reefs near the island of St. John after the storms.

What he found is that decades of degradation of the reefs by the increasingly harmful effects of climate change had created a coral community that was resistant to the devastation usually associated with severe storms like Hurricanes Irma and Maria that hit the Caribbean and eastern United States in fall 2017.

CSUN marine biologist Peter Edmunds heading out to his field site in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, to begin the field sampling that provided the kind of data at the core of the paper. Photo by Chelsey Wegener.

“The coral communities have become resistant to adversity,” Edmunds said. “Basically, once you have lost everything, you’ve got nothing left to lose.

“The expectation was that the hurricanes were going to be devastating for the reefs of St. John,” he said. “After a year of monitoring and analyzing the data, we found that the impacts on the stony coral communities were minor. This isn’t necessarily good news for the reef. What is means is that the reef and its corals have become so degraded that the hurricanes did not affect them as much we anticipated.”

Edmunds findings, “Three decades of degradation lead to diminished impacts of severe hurricanes on Caribbean reefs,” were published this weekend in Ecology.

“This study highlights the value of long-term research to understanding the complexities of ecological change,” said Dan Thornhill, a program director for the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research program, which funded Edmunds’ research. “Surprisingly, two back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes had small effects on coral reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands. But this resilience resulted from decades of environmental decline and a shift from coral to seaweed. Corals are now so uncommon in this region that even major disturbances only have small impacts on their abundance.”

Edmunds has spent 31 years mapping and documenting the state of the coral community off the island of St. John in the waters of the Virgin Islands National Park, part of the U.S. National Park Service. Decades-worth of research in the area gave Edmunds the knowledge to effectively assess just how badly the 2017 hurricanes impacted the coral community.

“This study underscores the importance of committing to decades of ecological monitoring and natural history,” he said. “Without that legacy, that knowledge, it is not possible to do justice in measuring the effects the hurricanes had on the reef. If we had just turned up in St. John in 2017 and measured the reef in the summer and then again in November, we would not have been able to put the effects of the most recent hurricanes in context. One year of research is not enough to lead to conclusion the that the reefs are becoming resistant to the impact of the storms.”

Edmunds is quick to point out the reef of the 1980s or 1990s “probably is never coming back.” But, he said, information he has gathered can contribute to the management of the resiliency of the marine ecosystem.

“We have a reef in St. John that seems to have become resilient to these disturbances,” he said. “Much of modern coral reef management focuses on promoting resilience to disturbances so that reefs might persist in the future. The point is that just saying you want to increase resilience is not sufficient. Paving something over with cement makes it resilient, but it doesn’t preserve the living community that has ecological value. We need to do more than just manage for resilience, we need to promote the success of specific corals that have great value to reef condition, such as the massive boulder and branching species. To achieve this outcome, you need high-resolution ecological information on the state of the reef and how it is changing.”

“The important message is that these record-breaking hurricanes have not caused catastrophic damage to the degraded reefs of 2017, and therefore it is all the more urgent and important to protect what is left,” he said. “There should be absolutely no sentiment whatsoever that after these hurricanes, there is nothing left to protect in a park. That is massively incorrect.

“(The study) allows us a far more objective appraisal of the real risks to these ecosystems and their current state,” he said. “Massive hurricanes may not be the biggest threats present-day Caribbean reefs are facing. The most serious threats are the insidious and dangerous effects of gradual warming sea water, ocean acidification, and coral diseases.”