When the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards are held on Feb. 18, the UCLA community may see one of its own on the red carpet. Computer science Professor Demetri Terzopoulos and his former colleague John Platt of Microsoft won a Technical Achievement Academy Award for a 1987 paper titled “Elastically Deformable Models.” Scientific and Technical Academy Awards are given to “those accomplishments that contribute to the progress of the industry,” according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Web site. Read more...

Asserting that they have a right to access government information and data, the interest group Students for Sensible Drug Policy sued the U.S. Department of Education last week for failing to disclose a state-level breakdown of students who were denied federal financial aid due to prior drug convictions. Read more...

Results of the annual freshmen survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA found that interest and involvement in community service have reached their highest levels in 40 years among students across the nation. Read more...

The UCLA Center for Society and Genetics is a product of both the past and the future. It is at once an acknowledgement of lessons learned from the world’s nuclear history and a mechanism to help society keep up with science in the fast-developing field of genetics. Read more...

With the aim of promoting cultural diversity and changing social perceptions about Islam, the UCLA Muslim Students Association is putting on Islamic Awareness Week. Leyla Ozgur, an Islamic studies graduate student, gave a lecture Monday night titled “Diversity of Tongues and Cultures,” which highlighted diversity within the Islamic faith. Read more...

Angelenos tuning into tonight’s State of the Union address may notice a bit more local flavor than in years past. After President Bush’s speech, Los Angeles Mayor and UCLA alumnus Antonio Villaraigosa will deliver the Democratic Party’s Spanish language response. Read more...