Holly Ober

Bruin at the Olympics: How did Alysa Liu do in Milan? Part of Team USA's self-dubbed “Blade Angels,” Alysa Liu returned to the ice this week, competing in the women's figure skating competition at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

Bruin brings home GOLD! 🥇💙💛

ICYMI, Alysa Liu, the charismatic Team USA figure skater who today earned a gold medal in women's free skate at the 2026 Winter Olympics, is a UCLA student and Bay Area native!

UC PROUD!!!

https://bit.ly/4cB67Xo

UCLA and UCSD astronomers have detected hydrogen sulfide gas in the atmospheres of four distant gas giants. The sulfur came from evaporated solid matter from the star's disk, proving that they are planets, not brown dwarfs. The method could help identify Earthlike exoplanets. ucla.in/4arfq9A 🔭 🧪

I literally howled with excitement when I read this!

Marmotology (GROUNDHOGS) with Dr. Daniel Blumstein — alie ward Tongue twisters. Frosty holidays. Scandals. Big ol’ rodent butts. Let’s talk groundhogs with UCLA conservationist, field biologist, professor and Marmotologist, Dr. Daniel Blumstein. We cover what bro...

Find out how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if it could chuck wood, why you shouldn't take parenting advice from a marmot, and what it's like to touch a hibernating marmot in this delightful episode of @ologies.bsky.social with UCLA marmotologist Daniel Blumstein. 🧪

Scientists are inventing treatments for devastating diseases. There’s just one problem. Gene therapy treatments for rare diseases are being developed, but getting them out of the lab has proved challenging.

Rarity Public Benefit Corporation is trying to turn a UCLA cure for a rare disease into a medicine. The bottleneck now is not showing that it works, but another key part of the drug approval process — developing the commercial manufacturing. Great story by @carolynyjohnson.bsky.social 🧪

Marmotology (GROUNDHOGS) with Dr. Daniel Blumstein — alie ward Tongue twisters. Frosty holidays. Scandals. Big ol’ rodent butts. Let’s talk groundhogs with UCLA conservationist, field biologist, professor and Marmotologist, Dr. Daniel Blumstein. We cover what bro...

WHAT IS A GROUNDHOG?
What's their deal?
Why do they have their own holiday?

Beloved UCLA marmot expert Dr. Dan Blumstein chats large rodents, dens, scandals, butts, parenthood, romantic advice you should *not* take, why their blood boggles science, and aliases.

www.alieward.com/ologies/marm...

Two pine siskin birds at a bird feeder. Credit: Cephas/Wikimedia Commons

UCLA researchers are developing a tool that can predict when winter salmonella outbreaks are likely to happen in wild songbirds like pine siskins so people can take down their feeders to prevent the epidemic from starting. #addBirder ucla.in/4sVM6ki 🧪

Are Raccoons On The Road To Domestication? Recent studies on raccoons and dark-eyed juncos investigate how urban wildlife is evolving.

UCLA biologist Pamela Yeh joins Raffaela Lesch on Science Friday discuss how living alongside humans is changing wild animals' bodies, from raccoons to urban juncos. 🧪

Artist rendering of the four planets in the V1298 Tau system. Four blue planets with fuzzy atmospheres swirl around a blazing sun. Credit: Astrobiology Center, NINS

UCLA astrophysicist Erik Petigura studied four baby planets in the V1298 Tau system that are becoming super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. Despite being 5 to 10 times Earth’s radius, the planets have masses only 5 to 15 times Earth’s, meaning they are about as dense as Styrofoam. ucla.in/4aPC8Kz 🧪🔭

Yellow mysterious swirl pattern etched on a metal surface. Credit: Yilin Wong

Weird and wonderful science: How elephant poop leads to guitars and 12 other unusual UCLA research findings from 2025: ucla.in/4p8tXfY 🧪

The image shows a laser (purple arrow) illuminating the electrodeposited thorium (orange) and the electrons (yellow arrows) hitting a detector (the detector front face is made to look like a clock as an artistic liberty). Credit: Richard Elwell and Christian Schneider

UCLA-led research has found that by electroplating thorium onto stainless steel, they can excite its nucleus with a laser and measure the electric current it produces. The achievement can be used to miniaturize the nuclear clock. ucla.in/48L8iFL 🧪

A wineglass of water on an empty plate with a fork and knife on either side. Credit: Dr Jean Fortunet/Wikimedia Commons

You might know that if you're reading this on the internet, you can thank UCLA. But did you know that UCLA also brought you the nicotine patch and cleaner drinking water through reverse osmosis? 10 Bruin discoveries that are changing the world: ucla.in/4aSQbPl 🧪

A pile of orange cheese puffs. Credit: AbbieImages/iStock

Gut bacteria have evolved rapidly to digest starches in ultra-processed foods. UCLA study finds gut microbes are evolving differently in industrialized and non-industrialized parts of the world. ucla.in/4aWigp5 🧪

I had a joke about Ariadne but you probably couldn't follow the thread.

Gene therapy helps Virginia 12-year-old battle rare ‘bubble boy' disease A rare disease that has cut off children from the outside world now potentially has a cure. News4’s Erika Gonzalez spoke to a Virginia family about how gene therapy changed their daughter’s life.

A gene therapy co-developed by UCLA's Donald Kohn has restored immune function in 59 children born without the ability to make immune cells, a disease that typically gives them only a few short years of life. With the therapy, they qre now living normal lives. 🧪

YouTube video by Chemistry Shorts® Organic chemistry is as simple as piano keys | Changing Key and Chemistry

This video featuring UCLA organic chemist Neil Garg helps explain why a dreaded college class is a wildly popular crowd favorite at UCLA. 🧪

UC professors censor their own classes waiting for Trump’s crackdown, court filings show New court filings reveal University of California professors are altering lessons, canceling talks and avoiding sensitive topics as the Trump administration’s crackdown intensifies.

"More than 60 professors and others up and down the state say they are suppressing their work and feel anxious about causing political problems for their campus, or that their own teaching will lead to hostility against themselves. Some say it’s already happened." www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

A deep fissure in a Myanmar road that was caused by a 2025 supershear earthquake. Photo credit: Kofoehtet/Wikimedia Commons

UCLA-led research found what caused Myanmar’s 2025 supershear earthquake: A straight, smooth fault, stress accumulation since the last major quake, and contrasting rock properties all created an ideal setting for the rupture to accelerate over hundreds of kilometers. ucla.in/4hyws8Z 🧪

No One Actually Knows What a Moon Is The universe has quasi-moons, mini-moons, and moonlets, but no official definition of what counts as a moon.

UCLA astronomer Jean-Luc Margot told the Atlantic that the International Astronomical Union has been in charge of planetary nomenclature for more than 100 years, but “surprisingly, they have not defined what a moon is." 🧪

Two teens watch television, with popcorn in a jar ready to be eaten.

Latest Teens & Screens report shows that yes, they still watch TV and movies and want more content centered on mix-gendered friendships not romance newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/tee...

LA scientist working to debunk myths surrounding bats with educational tours Joy Benedict speaks with the local scientist working to debunk the myths surrounding bats by giving educational tours in Los Angeles.

UCLA biologist Joey Curti is UCLA's very own batman. Join him on a recent evening where he shared the secrets of LA's bats with an eager crowd, and cleared up some myths about these important but misunderstood mammals. www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/v... 🧪

Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: 'The science world is ending' A poll from the journal Nature found that 75% of researchers in the U.S. are considering leaving the country. That includes a man who’s been dubbed the "Mozart of Math." Stephanie Sy examines what’s b...

Math professor Terence Tao and neuroscientist Vidya Saravanapandian told PBS Newshour's Stephanie Sy that US's global leadership in science hangs in the balance. 🧪

Reconstructed image of the compact, fast-rotating asymmetric disc around β CMi. The white scale bar at the bottom right marks 1 milliarcsecond — equivalent to a 6 feet scale at the distance of the moon. credit: Yoo Jung Kim/UCLA

A photonic lantern used for the first time on a telescope has helped UCLA-led astronomers achieve the sharpest-ever measurement of a star’s surrounding disk, revealing that is is-- surprisingly-- lopsided. ucla.in/43wGO3k 🧪

Biocatalytic, asymmetric radical hydrogenation of unactivated alkenes Alkene hydrogenation is a cornerstone of chemical synthesis, yet enzymatic strategies remain limited to electron deficient substrates via hydride transfer. Using heme enzymes, we unlock a hydrogenatio...

A UCLA-led effort has taught enzymes an entirely new reaction mechanism—a radical hydrogenation process that nature itself never discovered. Enzymes can now rival or surpass precious-metal catalysts, paving the way for greener pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, and biocatalytic materials. 🧪

A grid collage of 6 children who have healthy immune systems now thanks to a gene therapy developed at UCLA and UCL,

A blood stem cell gene therapy co-developed by UCLA’s Dr. Donald Kohn restored immune function in 59 of 62 children with ADA-SCID, a rare and fatal immune disorder, with no serious complications reported. Long-term follow-up shows 95% success rate in largest study to date. ucla.in/4ojUZke 🧪

Nobel Tote Board: University of California 5, Trump 0 UC Berkeley and other campuses win Nobel honors, despite a president who seems to loathe them.

2025's 5 Nobel Laureates who work and/or were educated in the University of California system reflect the power of a healthy, well-funded research ecosystem and of academic freedom. www.latimes.com/california/n...

Congratulations to our friend & former @uclacb.bsky.social colleague Prof. Omar Yaghi on winning the @nobelprize.bsky.social in chemistry for his groundbreaking #nano work on MOFs

Image of Omar Yaghi, smiling and wearing a black tie, sitting in an office with books behind him. The text on a blue gradient background reads, 'Winner: 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Congratulations to Omar Yaghi, UC Berkeley professor and former professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA.'

Congratulations to former UCLA professor Omar Yaghi on winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his pioneering work in the development of metal-organic frameworks. Read more: ucla.in/48Vy1vt #NobelPrize #AcademicSky 🧪

Discoveries that changed the world: Meet UC’s women Nobel laureates Nearly a quarter of the women who have received Nobel Prizes in science have ties to UC.

Discoveries that changed the world: Meet UC’s women @NobelPrize laureates https://bit.ly/42wZj6x

Two arrow signs above one another. The top arrow points left and says One Way. The bottom arrow points right and says Or Another. Credit: Sophia Kunkel / Unsplash

#UCLA neuroscientists discovered brain cells in rats that are wired for #uncertainty. The neurons, most active when a #decision outcome is unknown, appear to help with decision making and flexibility. ucla.in/3Wumo7g 🧪