School Work
Kari Nadeau Named Dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
Dr. Kari Nadeau, an internationally recognized leader in public health, medicine, and disease prevention, has been named dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, effective July 1, 2026.
Since 2022, Nadeau has served as chair of the Department of Environmental Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she also directs the Allergy, Extreme Weather, and Exposomics Laboratory. In addition, she holds a professorship in medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Across her leadership roles at Harvard, Nadeau has helped to drive significant growth in research funding, expand educational programs, and advance innovative curricula in public health, policy, and translational science. Before joining Harvard, she spent more than two decades as a faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she remains an adjunct clinical professor in the pediatrics department.
"I am delighted to accept the position of dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health," Nadeau said. "My career has prepared me to build on the Fielding School’s excellence in research, education, and community impact. I am deeply grateful and honored to join UCLA and to contribute to furthering the school’s growth and success."
Nadeau succeeds Dr. Ron Brookmeyer, who served as the school’s interim dean from 2018 to 2020 and as dean from 2020 to 2026.
Chancellor Julio Frenk to Deliver 2026 UCLA Fielding Commencement Address
Dr. Julio Frenk will deliver the keynote address for the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Commencement ceremony June 12 at Royce Hall. Frenk, chancellor of UCLA and a distinguished professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at UCLA Fielding, is also a fourth-generation physician.
After arriving at UCLA, Frenk participated in a campuswide Listening Exercise, and those discussions culminated in One UCLA, a collective vision for the university’s future. Before joining UCLA as chancellor in January 2025, Frenk served as president of the University of Miami from 2015 to 2024, and was the dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health from 2009 to 2015.
In addition to Frenk’s leadership in higher education, he served as the federal secretary of health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, and was the founding director-general of the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, one of the leading institutions of its kind in low- and middle-income countries. His other leadership roles have included service as executive director in charge of evidence and information for policy at the World Health Organization and as senior fellow in the global health program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Michele Guindani Named Interim Chair of the Department of Biostatistics
Dr. Michele Guindani (pictured in the left photo), professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Department of Biostatistics, was named interim chair of the department, effective July 1, 2026.
Renowned for his work in Bayesian statistics, biostatistics, and data science, Guindani focuses his research on the analysis of complex, high-dimensional biomedical data, with a particular emphasis on neuroimaging, radiomics, integrative genomics, microbiome data, clustering, and Bayesian non-parametric modeling. Guindani succeeds Dr. Damla Senturk (right photo), who decided to step down as chair and transition full time to her role as professor of biostatistics.
Yifang Zhu Presents 51st Lester Breslow Distinguished Lecture
A quarter-century ago, when environmental engineer Dr. Yifang Zhu flew in to Los Angeles to begin her doctoral studies at UCLA, she saw something new.
“Something I had never seen before — a thick, brownish layer suspended in the air,” said Zhu, who began at the Westwood campus in 1999. “Because I majored in environmental engineering, I had heard about L.A.’s smog, and knew it was bad, but in that moment, I did not understand why it was harmful — or what it meant for people’s lives.”
Zhu, who earned her PhD from UCLA Fielding in 2003, today serves as a professor in the school’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, and is an internationally known expert on the public health impacts of smoke, smog, and air pollution.
Her research and leadership, which currently includes involvement in the most significant study of the impact of the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires, led to her selection to deliver the 51st Lester Breslow Distinguished Lecture in February 2026.
“I certainly did not know that layer in the sky would become the foundation of my career; back then, I did not even know what public health was about,” Zhu said. “Time flies. Now, I am proud to call myself a public health scholar, and I have learned something simple but powerful from leaders in our field — especially Dr. Lester Breslow — that public health begins with prevention, and prevention begins by identifying risk factors.”
Onyebuchi Arah Named Interim Chair of the Department of Epidemiology
Dr. Onyebuchi “Onyi” Arah (above left), professor in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology for more than 15 years, will serve as interim chair of the department, effective July 1, 2026.
Arah, also a professor in UCLA’s Department of Statistics and Data Science and co-director of the university’s Practical Causal Inference Lab, succeeds Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang (above right), who decided to step down after five years of service to transition full time to his role as distinguished professor of epidemiology.