Aviation Week Network announced today its 2020 Workforce Study, ranking UCLA No. 2 among universities where aerospace and defense companies invest the most in research and development.

Warren Bicknell Mori, a UCLA distinguished professor in the departments of physics and astronomy, and of electrical and computer engineering, has been honored as the 2020 recipient of the James Clerk Maxwell Prize from the American Physical Society.

Jason Alvarez-Cohen is the co-founder and CEO of Popl, a new company behind a smartphone accessory and app, which allows users to share their information with other phones wirelessly while maintaining social distancing.

Researchers at UCLA have developed a web-app to help hospitals better predict needed resources for patients infected with the coronavirus.

“I should have started my own business years ago,” said Mike Raymond (’07), a mechanical engineering alum who spent more than a decade in management consulting and corporate development before starting Color Clean Soap earlier this year.

UCLA’s high-tech clean room facilities are getting some state-of-the-art upgrades. The cleanrooms, specialized laboratories where the air is free from dust and other particles, will be getting new fabrication equipment.

Growing up in a small city near Shanghai, bioengineering alum Wei Yu (MS ’12, PhD ’14) was always concerned about the mounting environmental crisis he saw around him. As a child, he would walk the riverbanks next to his home, where chemical factories and paper mills had polluted the water.

Two UCLA computer scientists have shown that existing compilers, which tell quantum computers how to use their circuits to execute quantum programs, inhibit the computers’ ability to achieve optimal performance.