This year I made a big move, giving up my primary appointment at UCLA to move to UC Irvine. As a UCLA undergraduate, I had always wanted to return to UCLA. I was so happy when I got a postdoc and then faculty position there in the School of Medicine, where I worked for more than 10 years. I’m so grateful for the friends I made and the mentorship I received over the years. That’s why, although I’ve never made a public post or announcement about my past year (I do keep a more personal private journal), I decided to do it this year to reflect on the big change in my life. Here are some of the past year’s events!

-Became Associate Professor in the UCI Departments of Emergency Medicine (School of Medicine) and Informatics (School of Information and Computer Science). In addition to research, I now get to teach/advise informatics and computer science students on emergency health and behavior change topics. I’ll be bringing students into the emergency department to study how to help solve ED problems. UCI has been extremely supportive, providing resources, staff, and involving me in high-level administrative planning to advance the campus.

-Appointed to a study committee for the National Academy of Medicine/Institute of Medicine. Our work is to advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on upcoming trends, prevention and treatment options to address sexually transmitted infections. My role is specifically focused on how technologies, data, new methods, and behavior change approaches can be incorporated.

-Grants: I am so fortunate to have been awarded multiple NIH grants this year from the National Institute on Drug Abuse/Helping End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Initiative to attempt to address the opioid crisis. These are focused on how technologies, data science, and hackathons can be used to help prevent and treat opioid dependence and overdose.

-Hey, it’s good to be back home again: Being close to my parents and my brother’s family, parks, beach, living in faculty housing, and being a 3 minute walk from the pool/hot-tub and office are some of the perks of returning to OC/living in Irvine. I can return to being myself both at work and outside, being able to nerd out talking about artificial intelligence models for public health and safety, while dressed in board shorts, flip flops and sunglasses.

-Book updates: Stick with It came out in Chinese, Korean, and we signed a deal for Russian. The Chinese version became a bestseller. Last month, the Fashion Island Barnes in Noble, where I used to hang out growing up, hosted me for a book reading and signing. Thank you, Renee!

-Hackathon: UCIPT hosted the 2nd Opioid Hackathon this Fall. The event was oversubscribed within a week with more than 150 participants. This year focused on Orange County’s needs, and included judges from the health department, clinics, and superior court judges. We have ongoing mentorship for winning teams to help them implement their solutions, like our retreat in Big Bear this week.

-UCI Beal Center for Innovation gave me the Fellowship Award for Entrepreneurship. This award is for faculty entrepreneurs who have conducted research with high impact to society. Promoting entrepreneurship among researchers/students has been a passion going back to graduate school at Stanford, so I’m excited to see where this leads.

-Teaching: I taught Health Informatics this Fall, with 160 public health, informatics, and computer science students! Many of them participated in the hackathon. I felt like a proud parent of my students.

Plans for 2020: This year I’m looking to build a new Center at UCI designed to predict events (more about that later if I put it together). I also want to reconnect with old friends and colleagues I’m also looking to spend more time volunteering and giving back and forward to the places and people that have made me happy and feel so lucky.

Get in touch: Please send me an update on you, and if I can help improve your life or work in some way.

Happy New Year!

Sean