UCSF Chancellor Sue Desmond-Hellmann today released a video message to the campus community explaining the need to focus on the University’s advancing health worldwide mission™ to adjust to new fiscal realities.

UCSF’s Lily Jan and Yuh-Nung Jan, have been named the joint winners of the 2010 Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience for their major contributions in brain research.

UCSF is sponsoring a one-day symposium for the Bay Area research community to bring awareness to the problem of how certain foods can cause an addictive-like state in the brain and are a hidden cause behind the nation's obesity epidemic.

UCSF has received a $1.15 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to determine if integrating family planning into HIV treatment and care will increase contraceptive use and decrease unintended pregnancy among HIV-positive women. UCSF will partner with the Kenya Medical Research Institute and Ibis Reproductive Health to conduct the research.

A month after the devastating earthquake struck Haiti, UCSF anesthesiologists report that more volunteers are needed to help earthquake survivors.

Faculty, staff and retirees are being surveyed while the University determines how pension and retiree medical benefits for current and future retirees can become financially sustainable.

Researchers, who are interested in taking their research from the bench to the bedside, are encouraged to apply for a catalyst award by March 1.

Working to combat a steep slide in state support for higher education, advocates for the University of California are planning large rallies in Sacramento this spring to persuade lawmakers that public higher education should be a funding priority. Read the story on the UC website.

Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) will join UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond- Hellmann for a town hall meeting with UCSF faculty, staff, and students on February 16, 2010.