OC’s A+ Team

Neuroscientist Leslie Thompson is one of the world's top minds exploring stem cell-based treatments for the DNA mutation that results in Huntington's disease.

Emiliana Borrelli studies the connection between the dopamine system and circadian rhythms (Paolo Sassone-Corsi is her husband), with potential to produce treatments for addiction, sleep disorders and brain diseases, including Parkinson's which is caused by the depletion of dopamine-producing cells.

Like Ayala, Avise and others, Vernon Smith's research involves evolution, natural selection and the scientific method; only Smith applies it to the study of economics. He received the Nobel Prize for founding the field of economic science, which uses experiments in a laboratory (including games that mimic economic exchange) to test economic theories and how markets function. Chapman's first Nobel Prize winner on the faculty (so far), Smith jet-sets around the globe sporting to conferences and meetings, and reportedly grows great avocados in the yard of his Old Towne Orange home.

Avise's prolific publishing includes books and articles on pregnancy, gender and sexuality in nature. He's an expert in the biology and evolutionary origins of dual sexuality (hermaphroditism) and clonality, including the study of genetically identical siblings. Cal State Fullerton psychology professor Nancy Segal has spent her career studying twins, writing numerous books on the subject and is one of the leading experts in the area of what twins reveal about humanity.

Another OC scientist making important discoveries related to time is Paolo Sassone-Corsi, a UCI professor exploring the genetics and cellular mechanisms of circadian rhythms, generally known as the body clock. Out of 20,000 human genes, more than 3,000 are used exclusively to regulate the day-night circadian clocks in our bodies, and not just in the brain, but everywhere, with important links to energy metabolism. Sassone-Corsi is a leader in epigenetics, one of the most significant scientific fields of the day, showing that factors like diet and stress can disrupt the circadian genetic system. The upside is that Sassone-Corsi is also researching compounds to control circadian disturbances, with possible drug treatments that could address diabetes, cancer and aging.

Few scientists can make a legitimate claim that they helped save the world, but UCI's F. Sherwood Rowland, who died last year, is one of them. The 1995 Nobel Prize winner was, like McGaugh, one of the school's founding professors who with colleagues showed that chlorofluorocarbons from spray cans were damaging the Earth's ozone layer. He then took the crucial step of explaining his discovery to a doubting world and leading the fight against the threat while facing fierce political and corporate skepticism and opposition.

The science of memory has been a focus of research and teaching at UCI, including the school's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, in large part due to the influence of neurobiologist James McGaugh, one of the founding fathers of the university whose recent work includes studying people with perfect autobiographical memory.

22 UCI faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, including Ayala and Avise. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the OC minds Ayala admires, has been a member since 2004. A cognitive scientist, Loftus is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on memory, specifically on false memory, including legal issues such as the reliability of eyewitness testimony and “repressed memories” of abuse victims, many if not most of which are actually suggested, implanted or otherwise false.

Segal's colleague at Cal State Fullerton, psychologist Richard Lippa, has also published based on data derived from studying twins. His work focusing on the biological origins of sexual orientation and human gender differences and interests (masculinity and femininity) regularly draws interest from media world-wide.

Orange County is becoming the Silicon Valley of vision, with scientists, foundations and technology companies all concentrated here fighting to prevent blindness from diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. Henry Klassen and other researchers at UCI's Gavin Hebert Eye Institute have repaired damaged retinas using stem cells, with the help of millions of dollars in grants from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.

We asked some of the smartest people we know to name the most impressive minds in OC, and one person was on every list – and at the top of most: Francisco Ayala. The UCI professor and National Medal of Science winner is one of the most esteemed evolutionary and molecular biologists in the world. As a former priest, he's often called upon to explain how evolution is consistent with faith in a divine creation of the universe, and intelligent design is not. As a philosopher, he defends reason and enlightenment from attack. And his business interests in wine making and other endeavors have allowed him to be beneficent toward UCI, including a $10 million gift and donation of the $1.5 million Templeton Prize.

George Argyros (pictured) and Donald Bren are among the most generous and important benefactors of Chapman University and UCI respectively. Vernon Smith holds the George Argyros Endowed Chair, while Sassone-Corsi is a Donald Bren Professor, bringing additional connectivity between patron and professor that reflects honor back to each.

UCI hydrologist Jay Famiglietti has his feet on the ground as he studies drought and groundwater depletion from California's Central Valley to the Middle East, but his eyes are on the sky just as much as his cosmological colleagues. His research involves precise measurements between two satellites as they're affected by minute variations in the Earth's gravitational pull caused by (among other things) the presence or absence of groundwater. The experiments are elegant, but the problems they reveal are far from it: his most recent report involves water depletion affecting Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, and such global issues will only grow as the climate changes.

George Argyros and Donald Bren (pictured) are among the most generous and important benefactors of Chapman University and UCI respectively. Vernon Smith holds the George Argyros Endowed Chair, while Sassone-Corsi is a Donald Bren Professor, bringing additional connectivity between patron and professor that reflects honor back to each.

It's one thing to comprehend the infinite implications of space, time and the Big Bang theory (no, not the TV show). It's another to explain all of it engagingly to a smart audience of non-scientists. That's the expertise of UCI cosmologist James Bullock, who has hosted National Geographic Channel specials on the stars and space. Bullock is also the director of the five-campus Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution, the stated goal of which is to “unlock the mysteries of galaxy formation” and “boldly go where no one has gone before.” OK, not that last part.

Among the scientists Ayala admires is John Avise, a former student, current colleague and world-renowned UCI biologist. Avise was recruited to OC for his academic and scientific expertise, but says if he'd been shown the diversity of the ecosystems in the area the avid birder would have been convinced to move more quickly. He's studied the genetics of more than 500 species, and is a prolific author of brilliant and accessible books (the most recent is Evolutionary Perspectives on Pregnancy) that convey his deep command of the science, but also a touch of humor, wonder and joyful exuberance that makes them highly accessible.

Arnold Beckman was a pioneering scientist who helped establish the foundations of Orange County technology, philanthropy and academia, including the Beckman Laser Institute at UCI. A long-time friend and colleague of George Argyros, the two are now linked through the Beckman-Argyros medal to be awarded to a leading vision researcher each year.

A world-renowned quantum physicist who likely knows more than most ever will about those 300 sextillion stars, Chapman University professor Yakir Aharonov is regularly on the short list to join Fred Reines as a winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics. In 2010 he was awarded the National Medal of Science for work on the nature of space and time, including fundamental physics discoveries like the Aharonov-Bohm effect. His move to Chapman in 2008 (along with Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith) vaulted the school into the academic major leagues.

Hans Keirstead is the founder of the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UC Irvine, and his goal is profound: developing treatments for severe spinal cord injuries. Though UCI is well-known as being the home of the Christopher Reeve-Irvine Research Center, the school has many other research programs studying stem cell therapy for more than spinal cord injuries, including cancer, heart disease, MS, Alzheimer's, macular degeneration and other eye diseases.

Ayala's research includes studying parasitic protozoa, which cause malaria. UCI biologist Anthony James is also dedicated to the control, elimination and eradication of malaria, dengue fever and other diseases that can kill as many as one million humans a year. James' expertise is insects, particularly mosquitoes. He and his colleagues have been successful in engineering changes in the genetic makeup of mosquitoes to make them resistant to the disease-causing pathogens they carry and modifying populations (including female mosquitoes that can't fly, and thus can't feed or breed) to suppress the spread of the diseases.