University of California, Los Angeles
Partner Since 2018
Toffler Scholar Program
UCLA was one of the first universities to partner with The Karen Toffler Charitable Trust to implement the Toffler Scholar Program. Scholars at UCLA are chosen for their innovative thinking, research excellence, and demonstrated passion for their work. Together, researchers at UCLA and KTCT are doing their part to help solve some of the world’s most intractable problems.
Toffler Scholars
2023
Dr. Valerie Arboleda
Dr. Andrew Holbrook
2022
Dr. Roch Nianogo
2021
Cindy Beard
Catherine Psaras
Daniel Tward PhD
Lara Yoon
2020
Kosuke Inoue, MD (PhD ‘21)
Keren Zhang, MD (PhD ‘22)
Ira Hofer, MD
Eran Halperin, PhD
2019
Elizabeth Rose Mayeda, PhD, MPH
Toffler Scholar Spotlights
Get an in-depth look at some of our previous and current Toffler Scholars.
Valerie Arboleda
Valerie Arboleda earned the Toffler Scholar Award in 2023 at UCLA. She is an Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles. She is working to understand how various genetic modifications impact the functionality of human genes and influence the molecular phenotype at the cellular level.
Andrew Holbrook
Andrew Holbrook earned the Toffler Scholar Award in 2023 at UCLA. He is a computational statistician and an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at the Fielding School of Public Health, where he is working to create algorithms that can detect meaningful phenotypes from brain images in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
Roch Nianogo
Roch Nianogo earned the Toffler Scholar Award in 2022 at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, where he researches the impact of modifiable lifestyle factors on both the prevention and progression of chronic health conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
![[UCLA]Evaluating the maternal pertussis vaccine recommendations on infant mortality](https://tofflertrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/catherine-psaras@3x.jpg "Catherine Psaras")
CATHERINE PSARAS
Catherine Psaras earned the Toffler Scholar award in 2021 at UCLA. Her current research focuses on perinatal epidemiology, substance use disorders, and pharmacoepidemiology. Her work explores the use of electronic health records and large healthcare databases to analyze the effectiveness of different pharmaceutical treatment and prevention modalities.
Lara Yoon
Lara Yoon earned the Toffler Scholar Award in 2021 at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, where she is studying the influence of exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals on putative markers for breast cancer in adolescents.
Cindy Beard
Cindy Beard earned the Toffler Scholar Award in 2021 at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. she is researching how the mental health of first responders has changed throughout the course of the pandemic correlating with key milestones, such as the early days of COVID-19, shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), and the fall-winter surge.
Daniel Tward
Dr. Daniel Tward earned the Toffler Scholar Award in 2020 at the University of California Los Angeles. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in Neurology and Computational Medicine at UCLA. By combining computational technologies, machine learning techniques, differential geometry, and high dimensional statistics, Dr. Tward is working to represent the brain more accurately in an effort to determine which differences signal disease which are normal variability.
Ira Hofer
Dr. Hofer is the inaugural Toffler Scholar in 2020 at UCLA. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at UCLA as well as the Director of the department’s Division of Bioinformatics. His research focus is dedicated to understanding, quantifying, and ultimately mitigating risk before surgery (the perioperative period).
See How Our Partnership is Producing Vital Research
Impact
12 Toffler Scholar Awards
5 Year Partnership
$387,500 In Funding To-Date
Shape the Future by Funding a Toffler Scholar
If you’d like to support the efforts of early-stage researchers and scientists, please reach out to us. Your involvement can change humanity for the better.