Class Notes

Breaking news of those breaking new ground. This is where we celebrate noteworthy achievements and life changes of fellow Bruins. Here you can stay in touch, keep up and announce your own Class Note by submitting your story.

Ardem Patapoutian '90

Ardem Patapoutian '90 is one of two winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, honored with UC San Francisco professor David Julius for their discoveries of receptors in the body that respond to temperature and touch. Specifically, their research explains how temperature and pressure are converted into electrical impulses in the nervous […]

Juri Watanabe '18

Juri Watanabe '18 has been selected as one of the semi-finalists for Miss Universe Japan 2021. "I'm incredibly excited," wrote Watanabe on her Instagram post. "As a semi-finalist, I will be training and competing alongside 40 beautiful, intelligent and talented women for the title of Miss Universe Japan and for a seat at the international […]

Haile Gerima '72, M.F.A. '76

Sankofa, a 1993 film by Haile Gerima '72, M.F.A. '76, has been re-released by Netflix in a digitally restored edition, an effort initiated by another illustrious Bruin filmmaker, Ava DuVernay. In addition, on Sept. 25, at the opening gala of the $250 million Academy Museum in Los Angeles, Gerima received the museum’s first Vantage Award, […]

Wendy Herbert, MBA '86

"Dear Specimen," the debut poetry collection from Wendy Herbert, MBA '86, offers a climate conscious critique of the human species: our search for meaning and intimacy, our capacity for greed and destruction. Published Oct. 5 by Beacon Press, the collection, a 2020 National Poetry Series winner, is an extended love letter and dire warning, not […]

Todd M. Malynn '88

Todd M. Malynn '88 has joined Blank Rome LLP's Los Angeles office as a partner in the Intellectual Property & Technology practice group. With more than 25 years of experience, Malynn's practice spans nearly every aspect of intellectual property law. He joins Blank Rome from Polsinelli LLP. “We are pleased to welcome Todd to our […]

Andrew L. Yarrow '79

Andrew L. Yarrow '79, in his new book, "LOOK: How a Highly Influential Magazine Helped Define Mid-20th Century America," tells the story of Look magazine, one of the greatest mass-circulation publications in American history, and the very different United States in which it existed. The all-but-forgotten magazine had an extraordinary influence on mid-twentieth-century America, not […]

Ardem Patapoutian '90

Jeffrey Lowenstein '95, J.D. '98

Jeffrey Lowenstein '95, J.D. '98, of law firm Bell Nunnally is one of nine partners selected for inclusion in 2021 Texas Super Lawyers by Thomson Reuters, to be published in the November print issue of Texas Monthly. Super Lawyers recognizes lawyers from more than 70 diverse practice areas across Texas who have “attained a high […]

Haile Gerima '72, M.F.A. '76

Juri Watanabe '18

Juri Watanabe '18 won the Miss Universe Japan 2021 title on Sept. 22, beating 31 other contestants at the event in Tokyo. She will represent her home country at Miss Universe 2021 in Eilat, Japan. See Watanabe's previous UCLA Alumni Class Note for more background on her life and accomplishments.

Bonnie Lee Gray ’93

A soul-baring memoir by Bonnie Lee Gray ’93, "Sweet Like Jasmine: Finding Identity in a Culture of Loneliness," will be released on Oct. 5. Gray grew up in a broken family in San Francisco's Chinatown, earned a computer science and engineering degree at UCLA, worked on pioneering e-banking teams and then, as a stay-at-home mom, […]