Lauren Nguyen

Assistant Director, Contracts & Grants
Program in Public Health

As the Assistant Director of Contracts & Grants, Lauren is the administrative contact in the Program in Public Health’s Office of Research. She works closely with the Dean and Associate Dean of Research to create processes and an infrastructure for their Office of Research as they prepare to become the School of Population and Public Health in 2023. In collaboration with the department administrators, she provides grant support to help ensure investigators succeed in obtaining and maintaining extramural funding. Lauren received her BS in Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and for the past 5 years served in various roles at UCI, including the roles of Senior Research Development Analyst in the School of Medicine, and Contracts & Grant Officer in Sponsored Projects.

Kartik Yadav

Director of Research Development & Administration
Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing

As Director of Research Development and Administration at Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, Mr. Yadav coordinates and provides individualized support for research projects and proposals. Specific responsibilities include research program strategy development, coordination of large projects involving faculty and administrative staff across campus, and proposal preparation and submission. Mr. Yadav received his Master of Science degree in Clinical Research (2009) from Cranfield University in the United Kingdom, a postgraduate diploma in Pharmaceutical Management (2007) from the Institute of Clinical Research-India, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry (2005) from the University of Delhi-India. In addition, he is a Certified Research Administrator (CRA) by the Research Administrators Certification Council (RACC). Before joining UCI, Kartik held the position of Principle Public Administration Analyst at UCLA. Mr. Yadav has a strong background in Clinical Research and has led several Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) research projects, fostered collaborations, and trained academicians and administrators domestically and internationally.

Darine Zaatari, Ph.D.

Director of Research Development
School of Information and Computer Sciences

Dr. Zaatari is the Director of Research Development in the School of Information and Computer Sciences, where she supports faculty developing competitive proposals for funding programs, with focus on major collaborative proposals. Prior to joining UCI, she worked at NORC, at the University of Chicago, as Field Operations Intelligence and Analytics Manager. Since joining UCI, she has assisted faculty securing funds from NSF, DHHS, among other funding organizations. Dr. Zaatari received her Ph.D. in Evolutionary Anthropology from Rutgers University – New Brunswick. Her dissertation focused on impacts of certain individual biological traits on cooperative and punitive behaviors among humans in two populations Lebanon and Jamaica. She received funding from NSF and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Mary Frances Ypma-Wong

Manager, Research Development
School of Medicine

Dr. Ypma-Wong manages the Research Development Unit (RDU) in the School of Medicine. The RDU provides funding opportunity support, helping faculty to develop a strategic approach and find funding opportunities. The unit also provides grant proposal support, including grant editing services and resources to increase the efficiency of proposal development; they support a range of programs designed to enhance the quality and competitiveness of UCISOM research grant proposals.

Dr. Ypma-Wong received her B.S. in Biochemistry from UCLA, and Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics with an emphasis on virology from UCI. After completing a postdoctoral research program in fungal genetics, she focused on teaching and course development for undergraduate and medical students, both in the laboratory and lecture hall at UCI and other institutions. Her transition to administration and research development was a natural next step; she has supported both faculty and postdoctoral scholars in career and research development for the last decade at UCI.

Justin Sarkis, M.S.

Research Development Coordinator
School of Biological Sciences

Justin Sarkis helps faculty members in the School of Biological Sciences acquire funding for their research through grant proposal development. He has worked in proposal development since 2017 in academia at U.C. Riverside and in industry at Clean Energy in Newport Beach. Justin holds an M.S. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Michigan. His research interests are in human language production, second language learning, and language variation. Justin is an active member of the California Chapter of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals through which he earned Foundation Certification in proposal writing in 2019. Outside of work, Justin is an avid listener of classical music and likes to read books about human behavior.

Helen Lee, Ph.D.

Director of Research Development
School of Physical Sciences

Dr. Helen Lee is the Director of Research Development in the School of Physical Sciences, where she develops strategies to expand research programs, and works with faculty to prepare competitive proposals. Prior to joining UCI, she worked at UCR where she provided proposal assistance to the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, and the College of Engineering. She has been in the research development field since 2015, and has successfully assisted investigators in securing funding from NSF, DOE, NIH, and USDA, among other agencies.

Dr. Lee received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCI, and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Washington. Her dissertation focused on interactions between nanoparticles and immune cell receptors. During her postdoctoral studies at UCI, she studied the role of cell death signaling pathways in the activation of the immune system. Her career has included research in biomaterials and biological sciences, along with extensive experience in scientific writing and proposal development.

Holly Hapke

Director of Research Development
School of Social Sciences

Holly Hapke, Ph.D. is a geographer and interdisciplinary social scientist with research interests in political economy, rural development, gender, fisheries and food production systems, migration, ecological conflict, and South Asia. Specific research projects have examined the impact of technological transformation and globalization on artisanal fishing communities, fish markets, and fisherfolk livelihoods in India; technological transformation in the flue-cured tobacco industry of eastern North Carolina; transnational Latinx migration in the US South; cultural impacts of Gulf migration in India; and the role of fish in food security for the urban poor in India and Ghana. Funding for her research has been secured from NSF, Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, the GoldenLEAF Foundation, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Dr. Hapke earned her MA and PhD at Syracuse University. Prior to arriving at UCI, she spent 22 years as a professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment at East Carolina University where she also served as Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Distance Education in the Harriot College of Arts and Sciences from 2010 to 2014. From 2014 to 2017 Dr. Hapke served as a program director in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation with responsibilities for the Geography and Spatial Sciences, Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems, and Transformations to Sustainability Programs and the Working Groups on the Science of Broadening Participation and Navigating the New Arctic.

Marianne Smith

Director of Corporate & Foundation Relations
University Advancement

Dr. Marianne Smith is the Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations in University Advancement, where she is responsible for developing strategies to build the University’s relationships with corporations, foundations, and nonprofit organizations. Her focus is on the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, as well as related centers and units.  The Corporate and Foundation Relations team can help review letters of intent and proposals, interpret funding guidelines, conduct searches for funding opportunities and help prepare faculty and administrators for site visits with foundation representatives.

Dr. Smith received her Ph.D. (1998) in Physiology and Biophysics from the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) where she identified a specific region of the rat brain sodium channel that is critical for fast inactivation. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, as a content scientist in private industry, and most recently as Director of Research Development in the Office of Research at UC Irvine. Her career has included research in multiple biological sciences disciplines as well as extensive experience in scientific writing and editing.

Marge Brannon

Executive Director of Corporate & Foundation Relations
University Advancement

Marge Brannon is Executive Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, where she is responsible for developing strategies to build the University’s relationships with corporations, foundations, and nonprofit organizations. Her focus is on Arts, Business, Humanities, Law, Social Ecology and Social Sciences, as well as related centers and units.  The Corporate and Foundation Relations team can help review letters of intent and proposals, interpret funding guidelines, conduct searches for funding opportunities and help prepare faculty and administrators for site visits with foundation representatives.

Prior to this role, she served as the Director of Development for the UC Irvine Libraries. She came to UC Irvine after 15 years in corporate philanthropy at Chicago Tribune Foundation, starting as an intern and rising to become President of the Foundation. She was very active in Chicago’s philanthropic community and served as President of Chicago Women in Philanthropy. Marge earned her BA from Mary Washington University and did graduate work in South Asia Regional Studies at University of Pennsylvania.  In 1986, she completed an MBA in a nonprofit management program from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.

Roxanne Ford

Executive Director of Foundation & Corporate Relations
University Advancement

Roxanne Ford is Executive Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, where she is responsible for developing strategies to build the University’s relationships with corporations, foundations, and nonprofit organizations. Her focus is on the schools of Biological Sciences, Engineering, Information & Computer Sciences, and Physical Sciences, as well as related centers and units.  The Corporate and Foundation Relations team can help review letters of intent and proposals, interpret funding guidelines, conduct searches for funding opportunities and help prepare faculty and administrators for site visits with foundation representatives.

Previously, Roxanne was Program Director of the Medical Research Grant Program at the W. M. Keck Foundation, which she joined in 1985. Roxanne received a BA from Pomona College and an MS in informal science education from Oregon State University. She has been a presenter at many national conferences, and was chair of the CASE CFR national conference in 2017.