Social sciences recognizes outstanding faculty researchers
Social sciences recognizes outstanding faculty researchers
- June 15, 2015
- Awards carry $5,000 prize to support continued research
A cognitive scientist, economist and sociologist have been named 2015 recipients of
research awards from the School of Social Sciences. Each honor carries a $5,000 prize.
Jose Antonio Rodriguez-Lopez, economics assistant professor, is this year’s recipient
of the Social Sciences Assistant Professor Research Award. Established in 2005, the
honor recognizes research excellence accompanied by a strong project proposal from
a junior faculty member in social sciences. Rodriguez-Lopez joined the UCI faculty
in 2007. His research interests include international trade theory and econometrics.
He received a B.A. in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores
in Monterrey, an M.A. in economics from El Colegio de Mexico, an M.A. in statistics
from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University
of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Rodriguez-Lopez was both a Fulbright Fellow
and a UC MEXUS Graduate Fellow. His winning proposal is focused on trade, jobs, and
productivity in China.
Catherine Bolzendahl, sociology associate professor, and Lisa Pearl, cognitive sciences
associate professor, are recipients of the Social Sciences Associate Professor Research
Award. The award was established in 2011-12 to recognize research excellence and project
proposals by newly tenured faculty in social sciences.
A member of the faculty since 2006, Bolzendahl studies gender, welfare states, political
sociology, comparative sociology and family using quantitative methodology. She is
the co-author of Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family which received the 2011 William J. Goode Best Book Length Contribution to Family
Sociology Award. Awarded annually by the American Sociological Association’s Section
on Family, the honor recognized Bolzendahl's book as the best published on the family
in 2009 or 2010. In her award winning title, Bolzendahl counts her most significant
discovery as the change in Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex couples. Between 2003
and 2010, three surveys conducted by her research team showed an increase from 54
percent to 68 percent in the number of people who consider such committed pairs families.
The trend is similar, she says, to that of interracial marriage; mixed-race unions
were considered taboo and even prohibited for much of U.S. history, until a 1967 Supreme
Court ruling that such bans were unconstitutional. Her research prize will fund work
on gender and welfare state development.
Pearl specializes in language acquisition, computational learning theory, language
change, and natural language processing. Specifically, she is interested in understanding
long-term language change in terms of language acquisition by individuals. Pearl received
a B.S. in computer science, a B.A. in linguistics, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from
the University of Maryland at College Park. She’s a recent recipient of a $141,500
grant from the National Science Foundation to study strategies children use to learn
the intricate structure of their native language, called syntax. Her associate professor
research prize will fund work on deeper linguistic features for automatic detection
of opinion spam.
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