Class Notes

Classes of 1980 - 1989

Eva Ritvo, M.D. '87

It is hard to believe it has been over 20 years since I graduated from UCLA medical school. After finishing my psychiatry residency at Payne Whitney Psychiatric Hospital, Cornell Medical Center , I joined the faculty of the University of Miami , Miller School of Medicine. I am currently the vice chair of and associate professor in the department of psychiatry and I have a secondary appointment in the department of dermatology. Ties to UCLA continue as the new psychiatry chair at UM came to us from UCLA. I am also the chairperson of the department of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Miami Beach.

I am excited to share the news about my new book - The Beauty Prescription: the Complete Formula for Looking and Feeling Beautiful - released this month by McGraw Hill. My co-author is a UCLA trained dermatologist and clinical faculty, Dr. Debra Luftman. Our message it that all women are beautiful and each woman must cultivate her inner beauty, good health and outer beauty to reach their maximum potential. We wanted to reach a larger audience then we could reach in our respective offices with this message, and between the book and our website www.thebeautyprescription.com we are able to do so. We are pleased that a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a medical student scholarship at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

John Chuck, M.D.'86

Hello to all. I've been thinking about UCLA a lot recently as my son is a high school senior looking at colleges. UCLA is on his top 3 list along with Cal (Go Bears) and Pomona College (Go Sagehens??).

I've been with The Permanente Medical Group in Northern California for 18 years. Half time clinical; the rest is administrative work related to health promotion, IT innovation, and physician health & wellness. Founded a 501(c)(3) non-profit called Serotonin Surge Charities that raises money for safety net clinics, scholarships, and breast cancer research. Find out more at www.serotoninsurge.org I would love to hear from you by email at john.chuck@kp.org

Nancy L. McQueen, Ph.D. '86

The California State University Program for Education and Research in Biotechnology (CSUPERB) recently presented me its 2008 Biotechnology Faculty Research Award. Each year, the award honors one professor from throughout the 23-campus CSU system for outstanding scientific achievement in molecular life science and biotechnology research. The award is based on my work, collaborating over nearly two decades with a string of roughly 60 (mostly graduate) students, in identifying the mutations in genes that alter the pathogenicity or disease-causing strength of Sendai virus, a rodent-infecting organism similar to the human influenza virus.

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