Brian Jordan Ph.D. ’03

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Brian Jordan has already made significant advances in our understanding of the mechanisms for sex determination.

Brian entered the initial graduate school class in the department of human genetics and, during his first quarter in the laboratory, he identified a new gene involved in sex reversal in humans. He has made presentations at major international meetings, including the American Society of Human Genetics and the International Congress of Human Genetics in Vienna. Brian received an award for the best paper written by a graduate student in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

He was the first graduate student to act as a teaching assistant in the medical genetics class for second year medical students at UCLA and was named the 2001 Graduate Student of the Year for the UCLA School of Medicine, Department of Human Genetics.

Brian volunteers in the Starlight Room of the Mattel Children’s Hospital. This room is for the pediatric patients only and is off-limits to doctors. Brian notes, “Although I am supposed to be the mentor for the children, I often learn more from them than they do from me. They have taught me how to stay young at heart and how to put a positive spin on daily tragedy.”

Brian also serves as a mentor in the Bridge Program at UCLA which places local community college students from culturally underrepresented backgrounds in summer research internships at UCLA laboratories.