Other News and Upcoming Events

(Note: For recent events, check our Facebook fan site athttp://www.facebook.com/UCLACommStudies  or our “In the Spotlight” news page)A big thank you to all who were able to make it out to the 2011 UCLA Alumni Day!  It was great to see so many Communication Studies alums at the Comm. Studies Alumni Day booth, and we hope that even more of you will be able to make it to next year’s event.  To find out more information on Alumni Day, please see http://www.alumniday.ucla.edu/2011/schedule/overview.aspx.Greg Bryant recorded the music soundtrack for the short film “La Fuente de la Vida” produced by Aili Schmeltz. The film has been shown in various art galleries during the last year including El Bauhaus Gallery in Monterrey Mexico and MOCA Tucson this summer.Tim Groeling’s book, When Politicians Attack: Party Cohesion in the Media, just received a Goldsmith Prize, which is given to the “academic book published in the United States in the last 24 months that best fulfills the objective of improving democratic governance through an examination of the intersection between the media, politics, and public policy.”  Seehttp://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/prizes_lectures/goldsmith_awards/book_prize.html for more information, or to view actual footage from the awards ceremony, please watch this video.  In other exciting news, Groeling has just been named the 2011-12 Kenneth L. Sokoloff Fellow by the Center for American Politics and Policy for his project, “The Longest War Story: Elite Rhetoric, Public Opinion, and the War in Afghanistan.”  Seehttp://www.cappp.ucla.edu/main_facultyfellowships.asp for more info.Martie Haselton was recently interviewed on the nationally-syndicated show “On Point” and discussed her research on examining how the behavior of women and their long-term romantic partners changes as women near ovulation within the menstrual cycle.  You can listen to the show that features Martie Haselton and also read the article here.  Martie was also interviewed on ABC’s “The View” about her science-based research on communication, love, dating, mating, and sexual attraction.  She also had a large write-up of her research in the New York Post.  Click here to see the full interview.Kerri Johnson was recently quoted in 2 leading news sources discussing her latest research on body language.  Her featured research focuses on how people’s perceptions differ when they judge the gender of emotional body motions.  You can read the articleshere and here.  This past March, Kerri was also quoted in Times of India discussing her latest research on how people’s perceptions differ when they judge the reason for crying in both genders.  You can read the article here. Jim Newton, a UCLA Senior Fellow and one of our lecturers in Communication Studies, was interviewed several times about the 2010 election (the interview was also featured at the LA Times website:http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/10/analyzing-the-midterm-elections-with-editorial-board-member-jim-newton.html).  In addition, Newton was interviewed about Proposition 23.  Please watch Newton’s video interview here.Barry Sanders has written the Feature Article (“Sport as Public Diplomacy”) for the Center for Public Diplomacy’s PDiN (Public Diplomacy in the News) Monitor.  Read the full article here: http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/pdin_monitor/article/ international_sport_as_public_diplomacy/Francis Steen is the Principal Investigator on the “Neuroscience of Role-Mediated Learning”, with with Marco Iacoboni (Brain Mapping Center) and Noel Enyedy (Department of Education), which has just received a $25K Transdisciplinary Seed Grant.  Steen is also an Investigator on a second funded project (Developing a Web 3.0 Social Media Research Laboratory”) headed by Todd Presner, with University Librarian Gary Strong and Song-Chun Zhu of the Department of Statistics.  This past September, Francis Steen and co-author Tim Groeling (with Song-Chun Zhu of UCLA’s Statistics Department and Chengxiang Zhai of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) were awarded a major four-year research grant from the National Science Foundation for their collaborative project, “Joint Image-Text Parsing and Reasoning for Analyzing Social and Political News Events.” Michael Suman participated in the annual World Internet Project conference, which was held in Mexico City in July. The World Internet Project is a collaborative intellectual endeavor among a number of academic institutions. Based at universities and research institutes around the world, the WIP conducts detailed research, generates a wealth of publications, and holds annual conferences looking at the impact of new digital communication technologies. The WIP is committed to sharing the results of its work with leaders in the policy, government, and business communities, as well as with journalists, parents, teachers, and interested citizens. Suman has been the research director of the US team since the inception of WIP in 1999.