University of California, Los Angeles
Spring, 2001

From October 1999 through June 2001, I attended graduate school at UCLA while on a fellowship from my company. I have pictures of the campus, the lab, my friend Ali (short for Alirezza), and some pictures my Dad took when Mike and I gave my parents a tour of the campus.

The Campus

The UCLA Medical Center

The Bruin (school mascot)

The Sculpture Garden. The trees with the purple flowers are called Jacaranda (from Brazil).
Information about the sculpture garden from http://www.hammer.ucla.edu/collections/sculpture_garden_history.htm:

"One of the most distinguished outdoor sculpture collections in the country, the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden spans more than five acres in UCLA's North Campus. It was dedicated in 1967, after the first acquisitions were installed, including eleven works from the estate of David E. Bright. The Sculpture Garden features over seventy sculptures by artists such as Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Claire Falkenstein, Barbara Hepworth, Gaston Lachaise, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi, Auguste Rodin, David Smith and Francisco Zuņiga, bringing together figural and abstract works and illustrating many approaches to sculpture.

Franklin D. Murphy When Dr. Franklin D. Murphy arrived in Los Angeles in 1960 to become UCLA's third chancellor, the university had just begun to develop the northeast sector of its rising four-hundred-acre site; by the time Murphy left eight years later, some 4.5 precious acres of the new and densely build north campus had been transformed into a parklike setting for some of the finest sculpture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recalling his travels through the plazas and gardens of Europe, Murphy firmly believed that works of art are most thoroughly enjoyed when they are a part of daily life. The chancellor's love of art and abiding belief that a gracious physical environment could have a positive influence on the learning process guided all aspects of the garden's development and design.

Ralph D. Cornell Ralph Cornell, who served as supervising landscape architect at UCLA from 1937 until his death in 1972, translated Murphy's ideas into a space that combines the distinctive flora of Southern California with the pleasant informality of a modern American campus. Tripartite in plan, the garden includes a formal plaza paved in brick, a walkway or allee formed by a triple row of South African coral trees, and an informal sloping lawn transected with curving textured pathways and dotted with Brazilian jacarandas, California sycamores, and eucalyptus. Informal seating areas and open lawns were designed to invite passersby to pause and enjoy the interplay of art and nature.

The Plaza: This plaza has the library on the south side, a building used in some UCLA logos on the north side, and a great view from the steps to the west.

The Library

This building is used in some UCLA logos.

The View from the stairs

Ali and Me
I met my friend Ali in a semiconductor physics class. He is currently working to get his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. The picture below was taken by one of the engineering buildings.

and this picture was taken in the graduate student cubicle area.

My Dad's Pictures
When my parents came to visit, we took them for a tour of the campus. Here's a picture of me by a different engineering building:

Here I am by my desk in the Laser Plasma Lab:

I explained the optical setup for my thesis project:

and here I am with Mike and my Mom, looking at the giant yellow casing for the 1 TW CO₂ laser in the main portion of the Laser Plasma Lab.