2022-2023 jane b semel Award Recipients

Derica Su

Derica is an undergraduate psychology major with a minor in environmental systems and society at UCLA. In addition, she works as a garden coordinator at Semel HCI and is a volunteer at the Lord Lab in the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Her passion is autism research, particularly in regard to autistic people’s mental health outcomes. Her research has been accepted into multiple conferences worldwide and she is the recipient of the 2023 Spring Quarter Dean’s Award for Life Science Research. Derica hopes to obtain a Ph.D. in Clinical or Developmental Psychology to become a full-time autism researcher in the near future. In her free time, she enjoys rock climbing, coloring, and spending time with her two cats, Bella and Kora.

 

Elizabeth Schiffler

Elizabeth Schiffler is a PhD candidate at UCLA in Theater and Performance Studies, with a graduate certificate in Food Studies. She teaches in food and sustainability at UCLA, and is a part-time faculty at The New School. Her research focuses on contemporary performance that uses food in and as performance, and the ecological effects of thinking about food as an art. Working with food historically, artistically, and ecologically, she works with policymakers, nonprofits, and foodtech companies to contextualize and critically engage with food. She has given talks at UCLA and ASU, and has contributed to Theatre Journal, Food, Culture & Society, and the Graduate Journal for Food Studies. She is the 2022 recipient of the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge Fellowship at UCLA, and a Global Food Initiative Fellow for the University of California Office of the President.

Tiffani Garnett

Tiffani Garnett, MPH, MCHES career spans over 18 years in higher education. Currently, she serves as the Associate Director for UCLA Student Health Education and Promotion (SHEP). In prior years, she also served as the Assistant Director for UCLA Bruin Resource Center (BRC), inaugural Program Director for BRC Intergroup Relations (IGR) Program and adjunct lecturer with UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. Throughout her UCLA career, Tiffani has facilitated many firsts for the institution including: launching IGR to address emergent diversity, equity concerns impacting the campus climate; spearheading campus community health & well-being efforts like, Bruin Love Station – UCLA’s first-ever mobile sexual health and wellness resource cart; and the Bruin Public Health Ambassadors Program – an on-the-ground response to COVID mitigation across the campus. Furthermore, it was under her leadership and partnership with the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center that led UCLA to become the third UC campus to officially adopt the Okanagan Charter: An International Charter for Health Promoting Universities & Colleges. Among Tiffani’s many other notable achievements at UCLA and within the UC-system, her commitment to helping UCLA Bruins optimize their growth, health and resilience has forever remained front and center.

Chris Dunkel Schetter

Professor Dunkel Schetter is a distinguished professor of psychology with a joint appointment in psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences. Her program of research on maternal and child health has contributed to a better understanding of how stress and anxiety in pregnancy are risks for preterm birth, postpartum depression, and suboptimal offspring development. Professor Dunkel Schetter has been the director of an NIMH training grant for over 25 years that funds pre and postdoctoral fellowships to study biopsychosocial processes in mental and physical health. Prof. Dunkel Schetter has served as Associate Vice Chancellor of Faculty Development since 2015 where she oversees programs on mentoring, leadership, dual career hiring, departmental climate for URM faculty, book workshops, and the Regents Professor and Lecturer appointments. Chris has been at UCLA for 40 years and is devoted to UCLA research, teaching, and service and to our mission of being a diverse campus of inclusive excellence.