University Communications

Such opportunities have paid off handsomely for Lueck; she was selected as one of three undergrads to be honored May 12 at the annual College of Letters and Science College Award Dinner, and her professors believe she has an excellent shot at either of the two paths she is considering: medical school or an M.D./Ph.D. program.

Not bad for a would-be actress who once thought that she would be more likely to play the role of a doctor than actually be one.

“Acting was always very meaningful to me,” she says. “But at UCLA, I’ve found a love for these children and a mission in trying to help them. I feel like I have a broader purpose.”

— Meg Sullivan

ANDREA GHEZ
PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY

WHEN ANDREA GHEZ decided in 1994 to join the astronomy faculty at UCLA, her reasoning was pretty straightforward.

“If you do infrared astronomy, UCLA is the best place to be,” she says.

It was that reputation and the access UCLA could provide to the W.M. Keck Observatory’s 10-meter Keck I telescope atop the dormant Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii that drew Ghez to Westwood. In the time she has been here, Ghez has made a significant mark: Discover magazine named her one of the top-20 scientists in the country under 40 who “will likely change our fundamental understanding of the world and our place in it,” and she has won the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy for outstanding achievement by an astronomer early in his/her career.

<previous> <next>