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This issue of Challenge addresses some key requirements of academic research, such as connecting the search for new knowledge with more well-established scholarship and pairing the results of basic research with solutions to problems that vex our society. These links crisscross the lines of academic disciplines and affect all aspects of our lives, whether in the short term or the long term. Research advances provide better health and quality of life, inventions that promote economic growth through technology transfer and evaluations of public policy programs in areas such as education and welfare. The four themes presented in this Challenge represent areas where UCLA researchers are breaking new ground. These include plant biology, science and policy of aging, more effective collaborations with Department of Energy national laboratories and mapping the human brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The first issue of Challenge reported on MRI as an essential tool for biological imaging. This issue describes important applications for analyzing normal and abnormal brains and the use of MRI as an essential tool in neurosurgery. Taken as a whole, the UCLA faculty continue to attract more federal funds, despite a more or less flat funding profile nationally. Specific dollar amounts may be found elsewhere in this volume. Our researchers are to be celebrated: in the past four years, UCLA has risen from being number eight in the country for attracting total research award dollars to being number four. Growth has occurred in public, as well as private, research funding. Simultaneously, the number of patents awarded to UCLA faculty has risen substantially.
UCLA faculty research continues to flourish, and the UCLA family continues to contribute to the improvement of the lives of all of us. C. Kumar Patel Vice Chancellor, Research Programs
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he past year has been very good to the UCLA family. Most notably, Professor Paul Boyer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his path-breaking research on the process of energy-conversion biological systems. This event is a matter of special pride for UCLA, because Professor Boyer has influenced the lives and careers of many UCLA colleagues and students since 1963. 