51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ

IN THIS COLUMN

• Letitia Saucedo, School of Law
• Michele Barbarto, College of Engineering

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF, has appointed 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Davis law professor Leticia Saucedo as national senior counsel. She will be on partial leave from the law school as she assumes her new post with MALDEF.

A Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, Saucedo is an expert in immigration, employment and labor law, with specific knowledge at the intersection of immigration and employment law.

Saucedo worked in the San Antonio office of MALDEF from 1999 to 2003, during which time she litigated class-action and impact lawsuits and advocated for policy positions related to employment discrimination, immigration, education and voting rights.

As national senior counsel, Saucedo will work with MALDEF President and General Counsel Thomas A. Saenz, Vice President of Litigation Nina Perales and National Senior Counsel Belinda Escobosa in leading MALDEF’s litigation efforts nationwide.

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Michele Barbato, professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been named faculty director of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute’s Climate Initiative.

, which stands for the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, comprises four 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ campuses: Davis, Berkeley, Merced and Santa Cruz. The center works to bridge laboratory research, policy, companies and startups.

As faculty lead of the CITRIS Climate Initiative, Barbato will foster multidisciplinary collaboration across the four campuses to develop a robust search agenda on applications of information technology to mitigate harms from climate change and foster resilience.

Dateline 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Davis welcomes news of appointments of various kinds for faculty and staff, for publication in Org Chart (formerly titled Transitions). Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.