For Rita Kampalath M.S. ’05, Ph.D. ’10, every day is Earth Day as the Los Angeles County’s chief sustainability officer. But when she first came to UCLA as a graduate student

Every year, the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering selects and recognizes outstanding achievements by a number of its alumni, faculty members and students who have excelled in various fields.

Jamie Leonard ’20, M.S. ’21 started working to mitigate plastic pollution in high school, taking part in an initiative to replace her school’s plastic water bottles with metal ones. Now a UCLA Ph.D. student, she has her eye on microplastics