^{Terence Keel and Nicholas Shapiro}

August 13, 2024

Two Life Sciences professors in the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, Terence Keel and Nicholas Shapiro, are among this year’s recipients of UCLA Public Impact Research Award.

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Here is an excerpt, from today’s UCLA Newsroom article by Madeline Adamo, about the award and this year’s winners, that describes the impactful research of professors Keel and Shapiro.

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Terence Keel, one of six recipients of UCLA’s 2024 Public Impact Research Awards, said his commitment to social justice and positive change remains unshakable even when progress might not come as quickly as he’d hope. That firm dedication to improving people’s lives and society through research characterizes of all this year’s honorees, whose projects range from protecting the incarcerated and those in police custody to free eviction defense tools for tenants and support for people with HIV and substance use issues.   

The annual awards, given by the UCLA Office of Research and Creative Activities, provide a platform to celebrate the efforts of faculty translating research into positive public action that benefits local, national and global communities. An awards ceremony will be scheduled for later in the year.

“One of UCLA’s highest priorities is to demonstrate to the community that our research and creative activities have a positive public impact,” said Roger Wakimoto, UCLA’s vice chancellor for research and creative activities. “Indeed, the Public Impact Awards are strongly aligned with both goals one and three in the UCLA strategic plan.”

This year’s honorees are:

Terence Keel 
Professor, department of African American studies and UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics
Founder, BioCritical Studies Lab at UCLA

Shocked by the murder of George Floyd and propelled by protests against police violence in 2020, Terence Keel shifted the focus of his research from religion, history, science and culture to investigating deaths of people in police custody and during police encounters. Working with academic colleagues and community partners, Keel zeroed in on how medical examiners and coroners process deaths in custody and why their findings tend to “naturalize” state violence by describing such deaths as a result of “preexisting conditions.”

Keel’s research group, the BioCritical Studies Lab, which has enlisted 40 UCLA undergraduate students, analyzes laws, policies and institutions around the country, as well as autopsies of those who have died in custody to understand this process of naturalization. The group also works closely with the families of people who have died as a result of police violence.

“Those impacted are moved by the fact that my lab takes them seriously and that we are helping them see the connections between their tragedy and that of others who have been failed by our criminal justice system,” Keel said.

Keel has been involved in drafting laws in California and Maryland, and is pursuing a lawsuit in Pennsylvania calling for increased public transparency and the release of records and independent investigations of deaths in custody in that state. He has also co-authored scholarly articles about deaths in Los Angeles County jails and the use of pepper spray by police. 

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Nicholas Shapiro
Assistant professor, UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics
Director, Carceral Ecologies Lab

Members of the Carceral Ecologies Lab

For more than a decade, UCLA medical anthropologist Nicholas Shapiro and his Carceral Ecologies Lab have had a unique public impact health justice and equity. Rooted in universal struggles for racial and environmental justice, the group has developed tools to provide people with the highest stakes in these issues, including those in carceral facilities, with vital research findings. These tools have run the gamut from timely white papers and documentaries to lawsuits aimed at greater government transparency.

“Many of today’s problems are a combination of insidious and overt,” Shapiro said. “Addressing them requires technical knowledge, understanding social context, being in conversation with those most impacted, as well as a little imagination.”

Shapiro’s recent research has revealed potentially high levels of contamination in drinking water in U.S. prisons, and he has pushed for new standards to protect incarcerated people in California from extreme heat. In addition, he has collaborated with leading artists to reconceptualize relationships between humans and their environments and with local groups in Los Angeles focused on environmental and racial justice — tying grassroots work in the community to high-impact stewardship of public discourse, including recently federal legislation.

“It’s an honor to marshal the resources of a public research university with an incredible and diverse student body towards tackling these wicked problems,” said Shapiro, who is committed to recruiting formerly incarcerated and system-impacted students for the lab. “All too often, what is celebrated in academia is only the articles, books, awards and grants, but we think that the process of research is equally impactful.”

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