Mark A. Peterson

A specialist on American national institutions, much of Professor Peterson’s scholarship focuses on the Presidency, Congress, interest groups, and public opinion, evaluating interactions among them, and their implications for policy making, both within the general domain of domestic policy and with special attention to national health care policy, Medicare reform, and HIV/AIDS politics and policy.  He also studies the role of evidence in policy making, including the contextual factors that promote or inhibit its influence.

He has written extensively on how Congress responds to presidential legislative initiatives, exploring how different political, economic, and institutional settings affect coalition building, promote inter-institutional conflict or cooperation, influence the president’s legislative performance, and establish the baseline for assessing the performance of individual leaders (including Legislating Together: The White House and Capital Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan, Harvard University Press). He has also investigated the ways in which presidents use relationships with organized interests to promote their administration’s political or programmatic agendas, based on the presidential objectives and strategic calculations.

As a participant in the Annenberg Institutions of American Democracy Project, with Public Policy Department colleague Joel Aberbach he co-chaired the Commission on the Executive Branch and co-edited the volume it produced on the politics and performance of the presidency and bureaucracy (Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch, Oxford University Press), which won the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the Presidential Research section of the American Political Science Association.  He also contributed to its study of public and elite opinion on the performance of American institutions (Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided, Oxford University Press).

In addition, specific to the domain of health and health care policy, he edited Healthy Markets?  The New Competition in Medical Care, Duke University Press; and co-edited both Uncertain Times:  Kenneth Arrow and the Changing Economics of Health Care, Duke University Press) and the four-volume edited series Health Politics and Policy (Sage), as well as edited the special health policy journal issues, The Managed Care Backlash and Who Shall Lead?

Much of his most recent scholarship has linked these themes and extensive original research to produce a book manuscript entitled “American Sisyphus: Health Care and the Challenge of Transformative Policymaking.” Encompassing the last 100 years, it examines how recognized problems in the health care system, the influence of public opinion, transformation of the interest group community, institutional dynamics in Congress, changes in the context and demands of political leadership, various dimensions of social learning by policy makers, and strategic and tactical choices by presidents both thwarted health care reform in the past and ultimately made possible the enactment of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, but in a context that also primed the challenge of the law before the U.S. Supreme Court and prompted enduring partisan attacks on its implementation and continuation.

Professor Peterson was a founding team member of the UCLA-based multidisciplinary Blue Sky Health Initiative to transform the U.S. health and health care system, which helped advise Congress on the inclusion of disease prevention and health promotion strategies in the Affordable Care Act.  Previously, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, he served as a Legislative Assistant for Health Policy in the Office of U.S. Senator Tom Daschle.  During 2000-2003 he was on the Study Panel on Medicare and Markets organized by the National Academy of Social Insurance.

From 1993 to 2002, Professor Peterson was the editor of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, a leading bimonthly scholarly journal in the field. He later chaired the journal’s Executive Committee, on which he remains a member, and also served on the Board of Editors of PS: Political Science & Politics and the Board of Editors of the Journal of Politics.  He has often been interviewed for television, radio, and print media stories, including for CBS News, National Public Radio and state public radio networks, CNN Money.Com, local television in Boston and Los Angeles, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, San Diego Union Tribune, Arizona Republic, Milwaukee Journal SentinelAtlanta Constitution, U.S. News & World Report, CQ Weekly, The Hill, American Medical News, Internal Medicine News, The Lancet Oncology, and newspapers and broadcast news in Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

Professor Peterson has been an elected member of the Council of the American Political Science Association (2008-2010) and a member of its Administrative Committee, a founding member of the Association’s Organized Section on Health Politics and Policy, and was elected President of its Organized Section on Public Policy.  He has served on various committees for the American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and AcademyHealth.  He chaired the National Advisory Committees for both the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Scholars in Health Policy Research program and its Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program, and was a member of the National Advisory Committees for the Foundation’s  Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Program and Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico.  He is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.  Other honors include the Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the Midwest Political Science Association, the E. E. Schattschneider Award from the American Political Science Association, the Richard E. Neustadt Award from the President and Executive Politics Section of the APSA, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research.

At UCLA, he is Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law, and has twice been the Chair of the Department of Public Policy.  He is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Health Policy Research, the Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, and the Institute for Society & Genetics; member of the Policy Impact Core for the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services; and is on the Internal Advisory Board for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UCLA.  He previously served on the faculty boards of the Center for Policy Research on Aging, the Institute for Social Research, and the Center for American Politics and Public Policy.  He is also currently a member of the University of California’s Academic Senate Health Care Task Force and the Academic Advisory Committee for the University of California Washington Center (UC in DC), and was on the University of California Office of the President’s Health Benefits Working Group.

Prior to coming to UCLA, he was Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, and Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, and Henry La Barre Jayne Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

American Sisyphus: Health Care and the Challenge of Transformative Policymaking.
Mark A. Peterson.  Book manuscript in progress.

Reversing Course on Obamacare:  Why Not Another Medicare Catastrophic? 
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43(4) (August 2018): 605-650.

In the Shadow of Politics: The Pathways of Research Evidence to Health Policy Making. 
Special Issue on Policy Analysis and the Politics of Health Policy.   Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 43(3) (June 2018): 341-376.

The Third Rail of Politics The Rise and Fall of Medicare’s Untouchability
Mark A. Peterson.  In Alan Cohen, David Colby, Keith Wailoo, and Julian Zelizer, Medicare and Medicaid at Fifty.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Interest Groups and the Executive Branch
Mark A. Peterson.  In Burdett A. Loomis, ed., Guide to Interest Groups and Lobbying in the United States.  Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2011.

Who Wants Presidential Supremacy? Findings from the Institutions of American Democracy Project
Joel D. Aberbach, Mark A. Peterson, and Paul J. Quirk.  Presidential Studies Quarterly 37 (September 2007): 515-53.

It Was a Different Time: Obama and the Unique Opportunity for Health Care Reform
Mark A. Peterson.  Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 36(3) (June 2011): 429-436.

The Ideological and Partisan Polarization of Health Care Reform and Tax Policy
Mark A. Peterson.  Tax Law Review 65(4), 2012: 627-667.

Institutions of American Democracy: A Republic Divided
Annenberg Democracy Project.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Health Politics and Policy, Four-Volume Set
Sue Tolleson-Rinehart and Mark A. Peterson, Editors.
Volume 1.  Defining Health Systems: Path Dependence and Policy Emergence
Volume 2. Tensions in Health Policy: Ethics, Interests, and the Public
Volume 3. Health Systems in Comparative Perspective
Volume 4. The Contemporary Politics of Health System Reform
London: Sage Publications, 2010.

Legislating Together: The White House and Capitol Hill from Eisenhower to Reagan
Mark A. Peterson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

 

Lené Levy-Storms

Professor Lené Levy-Storms studies how social relationships affect health and health behaviors among older adults in both community and institutional settings. She employs both quantitative and qualitative methodology and uses both primary and secondary data sets for intervention and observational inquiries. Previously, Dr. Levy-Storms has studied social support networks among minority older adults using social network analysis. Her core research concerns communication issues between health care providers and older adults, specifically paid and unpaid caregivers. She is particularly interested in how social support occurs through interpersonal communication during care. In 2003, Dr. Levy-Storms received career development award from the National Institute on Aging titled, “Therapeutic Communication during Nursing Home Care,” which laid the foundation for her ongoing research agenda. In 2010, Dr. Levy-Storms became a Health and Aging Policy Fellow and began to examine policy issues related to paid caregivers in long-term care settings, and she recently published a policy brief.

With her NIA Career Development Award and subsequent funding from the Hartford Foundation, the Archstone Foundation, the American Medical Directors’ Association, and the National Alzheimer’s Association, Dr. Levy-Storms collected video- and audio-recordings of paid and unpaid caregivers interacting with older adults in various long-term care settings, which in collaboration with Susan Kohler created “Get Connected,” a communication training program for providing care to older adults living with dementia. Because of “Get Connected,” she received funding from the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute in 2021 to train long-term care facilities how to train their staffs with it as well as a UCLA Innovators Fellowship in 2022 to explore bringing it to market. The goal of using the communication strategies in “Get Connected” is to obtain an emotional connection, which can be difficult as the older adults progress to later stages of dementia. She is currently writing a proposal to use emotion recognition software to measure emotional connections during caregiving after training with “Get Connected.”

Dr. Levy-Storms has B.S. degree in biopsychology from UC Davis, a MPH in biostatistics and PhD in public health. From 1998-2000, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Gerontology and a fellow of the Sealy Center on Aging at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX. In 2000, she joined the UCLA Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics as an assistant professor. At that time, she also became an associate director of the UCLA/Borun Center for Gerontological Research, an appointment which she continues to hold. The Borun Center is based at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda, CA and focuses on applied research to improve the quality of life of older adults in long-term care settings. She now holds a joint appointment with Medicine/Geriatrics and Social Welfare. She also co-directs the UCLA Gerontology Interdisciplinary Minor since 2012.

 

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Use of mammography screening among older Samoan women in Los Angeles county. Levy-Storms, Lené, Steven P. Wallace. (2003). Social Science and Medicine, 57(6): 987-1000

 

Predictors of Different Levels of Non-adherence to Mammography Screening.
Levy-Storms L, Bastani R, Reuben DB. (2004). “Predictors of Different Levels of Non-adherence to Mammography Screening: Implications for Interventions.” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 52: 768-773

 

A Comparison of Methods to Assess Nursing Home Residents’ Unmet Needs.
Levy-Storms, Lené, John Schnelle, Sandra F. Simmons. (2002). The Gerontologist, 42, 454-461

 

Patterns of Family Visiting with Institutionalized Elderly. Yamamoto-Mitani, Noriko, Carol Aneshensel, Lené Levy-Storms (2002). Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 57B, (4), S234-S246

 

The Transition from Home to Nursing Home: Mortality among People with Dementia. Aneshensel, Carol, Leonard Pearlin, Lené Levy-Storms, Roberleigh Schuler. (2000). Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 55B, (3), S152-S162

 

Family Caregiver Involvement and Satisfaction with Institutional Care during the First Year after Admission Levy-Storms L, Miller D. (2005). Journal of Applied Gerontology, 24(2), 160-174.

 

Simmons, S.F., Levy-Storms L .  (2006). The Effect of Staff Care Practices on Nursing Home Residents’ Preferences: Implications for Individualizing Care.” Journal of Nutrition, Health, and Aging, 10(3), 216-221.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Lubben, J.E. (2006). “Network Composition and Health Behaviors among Older Samoan Women,” Journal of Aging and Health, 18(6), 814-836.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Schnelle, J.F., Simmons, S.F. (2007). What Do Families Notice Following an Incontinence and Mobility Care Intervention in Nursing Homes? The Gerontologist, 47(1):14-20.

 

Carpiac-Claver, M., Levy-Storms, L. (2007). “In a Manner of Speaking: A Qualitative Analysis of Verbal Communication between Nursing Aides and Nursing Home Residents.” Health Communication, 22(1):59-67.

 

Levy-Storms, L. (2008). “Therapeutic Communication Training in Long-term Care Institutions: Recommendations for Future Research.” Patient Education and Counseling, 73: 8-21.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Claver, M., Matthias, R., Gutierrez, V., Curry, L. (2011). “Individualized Care in Practice: Communication Strategies between Nursing Aides and Residents in Nursing Homes.” Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39: 271-289.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Harris, L. M., & Chen, X. (2016). “A Video-Based Intervention on and Evaluation of Nursing Aides’ Therapeutic Communication and Residents’ Agitation During Mealtime in a Dementia Care Unit.” Journal of Nutrition in Gerontology and Geriatrics35(4), 267-281.

 

Levy-Storms, L., Cherry, D.L., Lee, L., Wolf, S.M. (2017) “Reducing Safety Risk among Diverse Caregivers with the Alzheimer’s Home Safety Program,” Aging and Mental Health, 21(9):902-909.

 

Levy-Storms, L., & Chen, L. (2020). Communicating Emotional Support: Family Caregivers’ Visits with Residents Living with Dementia in Nursing Homes. Journal of Women & Aging32(4), 389-401.

 

Levy-Storms L. and Mueller-Williams A. (2022). Certified Nursing Aides’ Training Hours and COVID Case and Mortality Rates Across States in the U.S.: Implications for Infection Prevention and Control and Relationships with Nursing Home Residents. Front. Public Health,10:798779. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2022.798779

Ailee Moon

Dr. Moon’s areas of research interest include social welfare policy, program evaluation, and gerontology.

As a principal investigator on a five-year inter-university consortium research project funded by the California Department of Social Services, she recently completed an evaluation study of the implementation of family preservation and support programs in California.

Her recent research activities also include “Evaluation of the API Dementia Care Network,” funded by the Alzheimer’s Association of Los Angeles, “Evaluation of General Relief Time Limit Policy in Los Angeles County” and “Evaluation of the ‘Community Empowerment Project: Domestic Violence Prevention in the Korean American Community,'” funded by the California Department of Health. Dr. Moon, with Dr. Young In Song at California State University, Hayward, is a co-editor of two books, entitled Korean American Women Living in Two Cultures and Korean American Women: From Tradition to Modern Feminism.

Dr. Moon is also active in gerontological research, particularly, in the areas of elder abuse, mental health, and service utilization. Currently, she is a Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar, funded to study “Cultural and Non-Cultural Factors in Elder Abuse Assessment and Intervention.” Dr. Moon and her colleagues completed a study, titled “A Multicultural Study of Attitudes toward Elder Mistreatment and Reporting,” funded by the National Center on Elder Abuse.

She was a co-principal investigator with Dr. James Lubben on a four-year study funded by the National Institute on Aging that examines social supports and long-term care use among elderly Korean and non-Hispanic white Americans. Dr. Moon has published 55 articles, book chapters, research reports and monographs.

Dr. Moon is serving as the director of the Department’s Ph.D. program.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Tolerance of Elder Abuse and Attitudes toward Third- Party Intervention Among African American, Korean American, and White Elderly
Moon, A. & Benton, D. (2000). Journal of Multicultural Social Work, 8 (3/4), 283-303.

Impact Study Report 1 and 2: System Changes and Client Impacts
Moon, A., Furman, W., Hawes, R., Potts, M., & Ortiz, E. (2001). The California Family Preservation/Family Support Program Statewide Evaluation Study. Report submitted to California Department of Social Services, Child Welfare Service Policy Bureau.

Awareness of Formal and Informal Sources of Help for Victims of Elder Abuse Among Korean American and Non-Hispanic White Elders in Los Angeles
Moon, A., & Evans-Campbell, T. (1999). Journal of Elder Abuse and Neglect, 11(3), 1-23.

Awareness and Utilization of Community Long-Term Care Services by Elderly Koreans and Non-Hispanic White Americans
Moon, A., Lubben, J. & Villa, V. (1998). The Gerontologist, 38(3), 309-316.

Fernando Torres-Gil

Fernando M. Torres-Gil’s multifaceted career spans the academic, professional, and policy arenas.  He is a Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy at UCLA, an Adjunct Professor of Gerontology at USC, and Director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging.  He has served as Associate Dean and Acting Dean at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, and most recently Chair of the Social Welfare Department.  He has written six books and over l00 publications, including The New Aging: Politics and Change in America (1992) and Lessons from Three Nations, Volumes I and II (2007).  His academic contributions have earned him membership in the prestigious Academies of Public Administration, Gerontology and Social Insurance.  His research spans important topics of health and long-term care, disability, entitlement reform, and the politics of aging.

Professor Torres-Gil is more than an academic.  He has an impressive portfolio of public service and national and international recognition as a leading spokesperson on demographics, aging, and public policy.  He earned his first presidential appointment in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the Federal Council on Aging.  He was selected as a White House Fellow and served under Joseph Califano, then Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), and continued as a Special Assistant to the subsequent Secretary of HEW, Patricia Harris.  He was appointed (with Senate Confirmation) by President Bill Clinton as the first-ever U.S. Assistant Secretary on Aging in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). As the Clinton Administration’s chief advocate on aging, Torres-Gil played a key role in promoting the importance of the issues of aging, long-term care and disability, community services for the elderly, and baby boomer preparation for retirement.  He served under HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, managing the Administration on Aging and organizing the 1995 White House Conference on Aging, in addition to serving as a member of the President’s Welfare Reform Working Group.

In 2010 he received his third presidential appointment (with Senate Confirmation) when President Barack Obama appointed him as Vice Chair of the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency that reports to the Congress and White House on federal matters related to disability policy.  During his public service in Washington, D.C., he also served as Staff Director of the U.S. House Select Committee on Aging under his mentor, Congressman Edward R. Roybal.

At the local level, Torres-Gil has served as the Vice President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and a member of the Harbor and Taxi Commissions for the city of Los Angeles.  He currently serves Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as an appointed member of the Board of Airport Commissioners.  At the state level, he was appointed by former Governor Gray Davis to the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Veterans’ Homes and by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging.

He continues to provide important leadership in philanthropy and non-profit organizations as a board member of the AARP Foundation, and he is a former board member of The California Endowment, National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California and the Los Angeles Chinatown Service Center.

Dr. Torres-Gil was born and raised in Salinas, California, the son of migrant farm workers.  He earned his A.A. in Political Science at Hartnell Community College (1968), a B.A. with honors in Political Science from San Jose State University (1970), and an M.S.W. (1972) and Ph.D. (1976) in Social Policy, Planning and Research from the Heller Graduate School in Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

California, Where Brown and Gray America Collide
TIME magazine, June 24, 2015

Policy, Politics and Aging: Crossroads in the 1990s
Torres-Gil, F. (1998) in J.S. Steckenrider and T.M. Parrott (Eds.), New Directions in Old-Age Politics, Albany: State University of New York Press, 75-87

The New Aging: Politics and Change in America
Torres-Gil, F. The New Aging: Politics and Change in America. Westport, CT: Auburn House, 1992

The Emerging Nexus of Aging and Diversity: Implications for Public Policy and Entitlement Reform
Torres-Gil, F. and Bickson-Moga, K., Elder’s Advisor: The Journal of Elder Law and Post-Retirement Planning, Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2002

Social Policy and Aging
Torres-Gil, F. and Villa, V., in J. Midgley, M. Tracy and M. Livermore (Eds.), The Handbook of Social Policy, 2000, Sage Publications

The Art of Aging Well: Lessons From Three Nations
Carmel, S., C. Morse, and F. Torres-Gil (Eds.). Volume I. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., In Press

The Art of Caring for Older Adults
Carmel, S., C. Morse, and F. Torres-Gil (Eds.). Volume II. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., In Press

Eric Avila

Eric Avila’s research interests include (1) History: 20th century, United States, urban, cultural, History of Los Angeles and the U.S. West, historiography; (2) Ethnic Studies: Chicano Studies, race and racialization, spatial segregation, identity formation, Ethnic Communities – Latino American; and (3) Architecture and urban planning: built environment studies, Los Angeles/Southern California.

His research has won various awards and prizes, including the recent inclusion of his article, “Popular Culture in the Age of the White Flight: Film Noir Disneyland, and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary” published in the Journal of Urban History, within a new publication by the Organization of American Historians featuring the ten best articles in American history written between the summers of 2005 and 2005. He has begun research for a book entitled, The Folklore of the Freeway: A Cultural History of Highway Construction.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán
Noriega, Chon, Avila, Eric, Sandoval, Chela, Pérez Torres, and Dávalos, Mary Karen, 2001, The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, 1970-2000 (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center).

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles
Avila, Eric, 2004, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (University of California Press).

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir, Disneyland and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary
Avila, Eric, 2004, “Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Film Noir, Disneyland and the Cold War (Sub)Urban Imaginary,” Journal of Urban History (Sage Publications).

Joel Aberbach

Joel D. Aberbach is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Public Policy, and Director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy, at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Keeping a Watchful Eye: The Politics of Congressional Oversight (Brookings, 1990), co-author, with Bert A. Rockman, of In the Web of Politics: Three Decades of the U.S. Federal Executive (Brookings 2000), co-author, with Robert D. Putnam and Bert A. Rockman, of Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (Harvard, 1981) and, with the late Jack L. Walker, co-author of Race in the City (Little, Brown, 1973). He is also the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters.

His research ranges widely over topics in American and comparative politics, with emphasis on legislative-executive relations and broader issues of executive politics and policy-making. Over the years, he has trained scores of administrators as an instructor in public policy programs at Michigan and UCLA, and he has also served as a consultant to organizations such as the Government Accountability Office, the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government, and the Commission on the Operation of the Senate.

Aberbach is currently Co-Chair of the Research Committee on Structure and Organization of Government of the International Political Science Association and Co-Chair of the Commission on the Executive Branch convened by the Annenberg Foundation Trust’s Institutions of Democracy Project. A volume from this project, titled Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch, and co-edited by Aberbach and UCLA Professor of Public Policy Mark A. Peterson, was published in October 2005 by Oxford University Press. Aberbach has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Bologna’s Institute of Advanced Studies, and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. In 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

The Executive Branch
(part of the Institutions of American Democracy Series). New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Editors: Joel D. Aberbach and Mark A. Peterson
The Executive Branch

Paul Ong

Professor Ong has done research on the labor market status of minorities and immigrants, displaced high-tech workers, work and spatial/transportation mismatch, and environmental justice. He is currently engaged in several projects, including an analysis of the relationship between sustainability and equity, the racial wealth gap, and the role of urban structures on the reproduction of inequality.

Previous research projects have included studies of the impact of defense cuts on California’s once-dominant aerospace industry, the impact of immigration on the employment status of young African Americans, and the influence of car ownership and subsidized housing on welfare usage.

Dr. Ong is the Director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and editor of AAPI Nexus, and has served as an advisor to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and to the California Department of Social Services and the state Department of Employment Development, as well as the Wellness Foundation and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

He received a master’s in urban planning from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in Economics, University of California, Berkeley. Along with his quantitative research, his professional practice includes teaching and applying visual forms of communication.

SELECTED BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS

Set-Aside Contracting in S.B.A.’s 8(A) Program
Paul Ong, Review of Black Political Economy Vol 28, No. 3, Winter 2001, pp. 59-71.

Car Ownership and Welfare-to-Work
Paul M. Ong, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 21, No. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 255-268.

Impacts of Affirmative Action: Policies and Consequences in California
Paul Ong, editor,  Alta Mira Press, 1999.

The State of Asian Pacific America: Transforming Race Relations
Paul M. Ong, editor, Asian Pacific American Public Policy Institute, LEAP and UCLA AASC, Los Angeles, CA, 2000.

The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring
Paul Ong, Edna Bonacich, and Lucie Cheng, editors, Temple University Press, 1994.

Albert Carnesale

Albert Carnesale is Chancellor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus at the University of California,  Los Angeles (UCLA).  He joined UCLA in 1997, and was Chancellor of the University through 2006 and Professor of Public Policy and of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering through 2015.  His research and teaching continue to focus on public policy issues having substantial scientific and technological dimensions, and he is the author or co-author of six books and more than 100 articles on a wide range of subjects, including national security strategy, arms control, nuclear proliferation, domestic and international energy issues, and higher education.

Carnesale chaired the National Academies Committees on NASA’s Strategic Direction, on America’s Climate Choices, on Nuclear Forensics, and on U.S. Conventional Prompt Global Strike; and was a member of the Obama Administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future and of the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board.  He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Pacific Council on International Policy; and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  In addition, he serves on the Boards of Directors of the California Council for Science and Technology, Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Amicrobe, Inc.

Prior to joining UCLA, Carnesale was at Harvard for 23 years, serving as Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Provost of the University.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (Cooper Union), a master’s degree in mechanical engineering (Drexel University), and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering (North Carolina State University).

Michael Darby

A recognized authority in macroeconomics and international finance, Michael Darby has achieved great success in both the academic and public sectors. From 1986 to 1992, Darby served in a number of senior positions in the Reagan and Bush administrations including Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, Member of the National Commission on Superconductivity, Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs, and Administrator of the Economics and Statistics Administration. During his appointment, he received the Treasury’s highest honor, the Alexander Hamilton Award.

Dr. Darby is the widely-cited author of eleven books and monographs and numerous other professional publications. His most recent research has examined the growth of the biotechnology and nanotechnologies industry in the United States and in California, all science and engineering fields and high-technology industries in the world, and the role that universities and their faculties play in encouraging local economic development. Concurrently he holds appointments as chairman of The Dumbarton Group, research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, and adjunct scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. He is also director of UCLA’s John M. Olin Center for Public Policy, a position he has held since 1993. Previous to his Anderson School appointment in 1987, Darby held faculty positions or fellowships with UCLA’s department of economics, Stanford University, and Ohio State University. From his schooling to 1982, he also was vice president and director of Paragon Industries, Inc., a Dallas manufacturer of high-temperature kilns, furnaces, and refractories.