▶ UCSD Will Gain New Laboratory
A patient of the UCSD Shiley Eye Center granted $6.5 million to start a new laboratory that will explore new methods to reverse vision loss and blindness. The laboratory will be named after former president of the University of California system and UCSD chancellor Richard C. Atkinson.
Director of the Shiley Eye Center Dr. Robert N. Weinreb, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and UC San Francisco, will oversee the research activities of the Richard C. Atkinson Laboratory for Regenerative Ophthalmology.
The goals of the laboratory include restoring vision and regenerating tissue afflicted with glaucoma, muscular degeneration and other eye diseases, storing and archiving other specimens and integrating biomedical engineering approaches into vision therapies. The lab will utilize novel stem cell approaches consistent with those of UCSD’s Sanford Clinical Stem Cell Center.
▶ Preuss Ranked Best in S.D. County
U.S. News & World Report recently ranked the Preuss School UCSD in its list of “Best High Schools” — the best high school in San Diego County, as well as fifth best in California, 10th best charter school in the country and 42nd best overall in the nation.
The Preuss School is a middle and high school operated by UCSD and is located on the college’s campus. The charter school requires that all of its prospective students be from a low-income family in which neither parent graduated from a four-year college. At 97 percent, Preuss has the second highest minority population of the top five California high schools.
As part of the single-track college preparatory program, every Preuss student takes at least 6 Advanced Placement courses in high school. All 96 of its most recent graduates were accepted to four-year colleges while previous classes consistently had acceptance rates over 90 percent, according to the UCSD News Room.
U.S. News & World Report evaluated high schools based off their students’ overall performance on state-mandated assessments, as well as on how effectively they educated African-American, Latino and economically disadvantaged students. The organization also used performances on advanced placement AP and International Baccalaureate exams to determine how prepared students are for college-level work.
▶ Skaggs School Appoints New Dean
UCSD announced that Dr. James H. McKerrow will be appointed as the second Dean of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences on April 29. He will replace Dr. Palmer Taylor on July 1.
McKerrow holds a doctorate in biology from UCSD. He currently works at UC San Francisco serving as a professor of pathology and director of its Center for Discovery and Innovation in Parasitic Diseases. He also served as the university’s vice chair for research and education in the department of pathology from 2003 to 2012.
McKerrow is an expert in neglected tropical diseases and has had extensive experience in natural product research and drug discovery and development. He has co-authored more than a dozen book chapters and has published more than 250 articles.
