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Alejandra Lopez and Sydney Kong: A Look Into DiSH Lab @ UCLA
Interviewer and Editor: Selena Perez In this article, Selena Perez interviews Alejandra Lopez (Lab Manager) and Sydney Kong (Research Assistant) from Dr. Tomiyama’s DiSH Lab. The DiSH Lab conducts research aimed toward understanding the relationship between food and psychology. In this interview, she examines the experience of working at a UCLA research laboratory, including how valuable and at times, challenging the opportunity can be. Selena: Alejandra, could you explain what some of your duties are as a lab manager, as well as how holding this position has been a valuable experience for you as a scholar? Alejandra: Yeah, so some of my duties include grant budgeting (making sure we have…
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Vivian Byeon: How Persistence Opened the Door for Grad School
Interviewers and Editors: Jennifer Chanto, Connie Chen, Selena Yu, Klaus Gomez Stimeder What is your area of research? In this article, we interview Vivian Byeon. As a second-year Ph.D. student in Clinical Psychology at UCLA, Byeon talks about her experiences in research and gives words of wisdom to students pursuing graduate school. I’m interested in organizational factors that impact the adoption and sustainment of evidence-based therapeutic strategies in community mental health settings. How did you become interested in this topic? As an undergrad, I became involved in research during my senior year of college. I worked at a substance use lab here at UCLA, and that made me really interested…
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Writing a Research Proposal: a How-To Guide for You and for Me
Author: Leika Keys Editor: Eva Li My Research Proposal Abstract My name is Leika Keys and I am a fourth-year political science major at UCLA and the outreach coordinator here at Aleph. As the sun sets on my senior year, my long-waited and planned existential crisis can finally emerge out of its nest. In response, I have frantically been searching for a grad program to throw myself in. Somewhere along the way, I found myself writing research proposals to universities in the U.K. and Japan, hoping to continue my educational career. Maybe, you find yourself in the same position as me—desperately trying to figure out your next step before you…
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Sara Wilf: A Journey from Nonprofit Work to Graduate School
In this article, Ishani Desai interviews Sara Wilf. Wilf is in her second year of the Social Welfare PhD program at UCLA’s Luskin School of Social Welfare. In this interview, they cover Wilf’s path to her current research and tips for undergraduate researchers on campus. Ishani: On your CV, I saw you worked in India! What inspired you to travel there and what kind of work were you involved in? Sara: I traveled to India right after I received a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Brown University. I knew I wanted to do nonprofit work internationally— India was a good option because it had a lot of nonprofits that inspired…
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Ari Fahimi: Aleph’s Editor-in-Chief’s Path to Research
Our first interview is with our very own Ari Fahimi, Aleph’s Editor-in-Chief. Ari is a third-year double majoring in Chinese and Middle Eastern Studies. We will be talking about Ari’s path to conducting research, finding a research topic, and his love for Aleph. Can you walk us through your research journey? Ari: So when I first came to UCLA, I actually did not know what I wanted to do, and didn’t know how to get started in research. To get started, I first took the class University Studies 10A, which was not directly related to research but did teach me about how to connect with professors. For example, this class taught…
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Welcome to Research Ruminations!
Welcome to Research Ruminations! The staff at Aleph are very excited to bring this project to life and we hope you will find this blog useful. Research Ruminations was founded upon one principle: to demystify the research process. As undergraduates at UCLA, one common purpose drew us to Aleph: we all love research! Uniting us was a burning curiosity about the world and its many unanswered questions. Academia allows one to consider the unknown and to stumble across answers waiting to be found. As researchers, we write pieces that could potentially change the way society perceives the world. Like a kaleidoscope, the academic dialogue constantly alters and shifts as new…