I’m here because everything that California does is typically forward-looking. The rest of the U.S. and the world follow California 5 to 15 years later. Having the opportunity to be at the forefront of the solutions – that’s a slam-dunk. Why wouldn’t you do it?

I collaborate with people in the dental school, people in bioengineering, people in mechanical engineering, people in chemistry, economics and policy – the whole expanse.
It makes UCLA a nice ecosystem. If you have a question, you can find someone to help you – someone with the very best competencies you can find. These are community-sourced solutions.

As one of the leading universities in the world, we see ourselves as having a blue-sky approach. We see ourselves wanting to develop technologies that might be considered fanciful at one point but become reality very quickly. So we see ourselves looking at a blue sky and saying, ‘Well then, let’s come up with ideas which will change the world.’