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CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL CASE ‐ Walker, Soni, Lee v. Annabi Charges Table of Contents Section # ITEM(S) Pg# I. Materials from Complainants Formal Charge Form 1 Violations of Faculty Code of Conduct 5 Complainant Statements 6 Timeline 19 II EVIDENCE Forcing her students to do her work 25 A. Email: IBC 2018 27 B. Email: Personnel Certification Notice 2018 31 C. Email: Aspetic Training 2018 33 D. Email: DLAM waitlist class notification 2018 34 E. Email: NIH Review 36 F. Email: 05162019 Termis review_Shima 37 G. Email: 05242019 CV 40 H. Email: Final Exam 41 I. Email: 06122019 Termis ID and PW 42 J. Email: 06182019 MHQ 47 K. Email: 06302019 Tenure document work 48 L. Email: 06302019 Termis review 49 M. Email: ABET assessment for spring 2019 52 N. Email: Grants 56 O. Email: 08072019 IBC 58 P. Email: 08262019 general 62 Q. Email: 09302019 segment for 3D printing news 64 R. Email: NSF Grant Review 67 S. Email: Grant Review 68 T. Email: 10072019 Activity letter for Marianna 69 U. Email: 10072019 Practice problems for class 71 V. Email: 10092019 description for 3D printing news 72 W. Email: 10092019 description for 3D printing news‐2 74 X. Email: 10162019 practice problems for class 75 Y. Email: 10242019 example for class 77 Z. Email: 10312019 Find the class room 78 AA. Email: 12022019 ABET 80 BB. Email: 12052019 exam upload 82 CC. Email: 12052019 Important‐ Meetings for biomaterials_ Tomorrow 85 Harassment / Wrong Accusations A. Email: Biomaterials Paper 89 B. Email: Meetings and Progress 90 C. Email: Progress 93 D. Email: My Comments on your review 95 E. Email: Are you done with your two papers? 97 F. Email: Common Things to Pay Attention 98 G. Email: Issues in Lab 99 UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 001 CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL CASE ‐ Walker, Soni, Lee v. Annabi Charges Table of Contents Section # ITEM(S) Pg# H. Email: Lab Cleaning 101 I. Email: 08202019 first rat meeting 102 J. Email: Problem with your KCTSELP 103 K. Text Messages – Pressure to help with students she cannot help 114 L. Email: 10202019 bad grant review 118 M. Email: Liver Bleeding 120 N. Email: 11052019 slow progress 122 O. Email: 11052019 slow progress 1 124 P. Email: Rats 125 Q. Text Screenshot: Regarding Rats (BW wedding day) 126 R. Email: 12012019 threatening 127 S. Email: 12022019 response against sick leave 129 T. Email: 12022019 sick leave 130 U. Email: Electrospinning 132 Having students process her reimbursements A. Boston & Dropbox Reimbursements 136 B. Google Play Order Receipt 137 C. Involving student in her reimbursement reminders 138 D. Involving student in Drobox reimbursement 139 E. Involving student in her Travel Reimbursement 141 Taking credit for other people’s work A. Changed author order 154 B. Added friend’s name to paper after submission 161 C. Added boyfriend, Emad Mogadam, to paper (non‐contributing) 171 Inappropriately holding students back (and additional harassment evidence) Brian Walker A. Brian Walker cv 175 B. Fall 2019 Stress‐related healthcare documents (redacted for privacy 179 reasons) Ehsan Shirzaei Sani A. Ehsan Shirzaei Sani cv 181 Sohyung Lee A. Sohyung Lee cv 190 B. 20191128 S. Lee narrative about retaliation threats from N. Annabi 193 C. 20191201 Sohyung Lee – threatening email 194 D. 20191202 response against sick leave requires permission even for holidays 196 E. 20191202 sick leave 197 F. 2018‐2019 stress‐related healthcare visits (redacted for privacy reasons) 199 Additional Evidence A. Statement from former lab manager 203 B. Excerpts from additional statements 205 C. Additional harassment a. Refuse to reimburse previously authorized trip (20191002) 208 b. Email criticizing E. Sani (20191128) – Sent Thanksgiving Day 211 UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 002 PAGE 1 UCLA FORMAL CHARGE FORM Academic Senate Charges Committee FORMAL CHARGE: A formal charge is an allegation that a investigation reports by the relevant offices in addition Faculty Senate member has violated the Faculty Code of to any statement and evidence you provide. By filing this Conduct. If the Charges Committee finds “probable form, you give Charges the authority to review those cause” that the allegations are true and, if true, are a reports and/or investigate the incidents in question violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct, the formal (when they involve other allegations). charge becomes a recommendation of a formal Before filing a formal charge(s), faculty should consult complaint. Senate Bylaw 336 and the Academic Personnel Manual INSTRUCTIONS: Any member of the University 015 & 016 (Faculty Code of Conduct; Professional Rights community who wishes to file formal charge(s) with the of Faculty) as well as UCLA Senate Bylaw Appendix XII to Charges Committee should complete the following form review the relevant policies. You can also request to outlining the main points at issue and taking care to give review your formal charge(s) and the process with a specific and concise answers and to provide any member of the Grievance Advisory Committee. documentation and evidence. The Charges Committee Please forward the completed form and supporting will provide the person charged an opportunity to documentation to: Charges Chair Jody Kreiman c/o respond to the formal charge(s). In some cases, at the Committee Analyst. discretion of the Committee, the complainant or the person charged may be asked to appear before the The Committee Analyst can also refer you to a member Committee to provide additional information. of the Grievance Advisory Committee to help you review If your charge(s) involve(s) an investigation of research your charge(s) and the procedures. Committee Analyst: misconduct, sexual harassment or violence, or Marian Olivas: molivas@senate.ucla.edu discrimination, the Charges Committee will consider the (310) 206-2469 PLEASE COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION: Person Filing the Formal Charge(s) (Complainant): Name/ Title Brian Walker, Ehsan Shirzaei Sani, Sohyung Lee / PhD Candidates Department Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering School UCLA Campus Address and Telephone Number E-mail Address brianwalker@g.ucla.edu; ehsanshirzaei@g.ucla.edu; sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu Name of Respondent (Person Charged): Name/ Title Nasim Annabi / Assistant Professor Department Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering School UCLA Campus Address and Telephone Number E-mail Address annabi.nasim@gmail.com I hereby submit a formal charge(s) to the Charges Committee. I have attempted to resolve this matter, but there has been no satisfactory resolution. I certify the charge(s) stated here, and appended documentation, are true to the best of my knowledge and belief. Furthermore, I understand that the Form and appended materials will be sent to the person charged. Sign below and submit your formal grievance review request to the Charges Chair (as noted above). SIGNATURE UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 003 PAGE 2 Formal Charge(s) Form Charges Committee |Page 2 Complainant Date FORMAL CHARGE(S) Fill out OR attach a document addressing the questions.** 1 What section(s) of the Faculty Code of Conduct do you allege the respondent violated? Please specify. See also attached page for specific sections • Constant verbal abuse/harassment/aggressive yelling (shown in emails/text, but primarily done in her office) • Insulting, disrespectful, and offensive language • Humiliation (verbal abuse in front of the entire lab, and so loud that it can be heard from administrative faculty outside her office) • Hostile environment/bullying • Threats to stop supporting students/not graduate on time/leave with a Master’s degree • Threats to ruin the career of students if they don’t do what she asks (she repeatedly says that our life depends on her and no one else will support us if she decides to fire us) • Constantly called to her office to do non-research-related work (it is strongly implied that if we do not help her with these tasks, she will make our lives more difficult), specifically: o Forcing students to complete her administrative work including purchasing flights and booking hotels for her personal vacations o Reimbursement for her trips o Force her students to TA for her courses so that they must prepare everything including course materials, exams, homework, full grading, and be available during her office hours to answer student’s questions o Write letters of recommendation for all students and upload them o Asks to order/return her personal amazon orders o Trips to the Apple/Microsoft store for help with personal purchases, as well as software downloads, and technical issues o Submission of papers (this is something that the corresponding author is responsible for) o Forcing students to make all the slides with description for her upcoming Biomaterials course (approximately 150 slides per student). o Forcing students to prepare grants on the administrative side, including all the paperwork (this is an admin job). o Forcing students to review confidential journal or conference papers o Forced students to create, edit, and submit all animal protocol through her UCLA account (this is required of the PI of the lab). o Forced students to log onto her account to complete all of her animal training when we first arrived at UCLA. Students also scheduled all her classroom trainings and were required to remind her when she had a class the day before. o Blaming people for problems that they did not cause UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL ** May attach UNDER statement and/or BYLAW additional pages336 as needed. UCLA 004 PAGE 3 Formal Charge(s) Form Charges Committee |Page 3 o Complaining about work that we take a long time to complete and submit to her, that is technically her work to do, then says she could have done it better in an hour. o Repeatedly reminding people of past mistakes. o Retaliation and threats for someone speaking up in defense of a lab member for what is right against inaccurate accusations. o Updating her CV over the last 4 years. • Forcing students to review confidential grant proposals (NSF/NIH/UCLA) during the past two years • She put her boyfriend in Brian Walker’s review paper at the final stage after he did not contribute at all to the paper. • Taking credit for the work of others – for example, she put herself as a first author on a paper that two graduate students completed and were supposed to be first author on (She changed the author order at the submission step without informing the students). 2 What evidence supports this/these charge(s)? We have many witnesses to this behavior, many emails/text messages. We also have all our medical records, which demonstrates the highly stressful environment that we were subjected to. 3 Please explain any steps you may have taken to resolve or correct the situation before filing this charge. We have tried to talk with Dr. Annabi on several occasions, however, every these instances were met with more threats and aggressive behavior. Please list supporting documents/exhibits. Be sure to provide these when the charge(s) is filed. 4 Emails, Text Messages, Medical Records List of witnesses (Include: Relevance to the case and what they will testify about). 5 Current Lab Members: Sevana Baghdasarian, Gokberk Unal, Mahsa Ghovvati, Lab manager: Saleem Omary, Visiting Graduate Student: Senne Seneca, Department Staff: Joann Jue, Lesly Navas, Alain DeVera, Alumni: Andrew Spencer, Jon Soucy, Devyesh Rana, Roberto Portillo Lara, Bahram Saleh, Ebrahim Mostafavi, Asel Primbetova, Jamal Ashrafi Please note that charges of sexual harassment or violence, discrimination, and/or research and scientific misconduct will typically be investigated by the relevant UCLA offices. Investigation reports from those offices will be considered by Charges for University discipline purposes. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL ** May attach UNDER statement and/or BYLAW additional pages336 as needed. UCLA 005 PAGE 4 Formal Charge(s) Form Charges Committee |Page 4 Polices and procedures can be found at the following sites: Senate Bylaw 336: http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/manual/blpart3.html#bl336 Academic Personnel Manual (APM) 015 & 016: http://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/apm/apm-015.pdf http://www.ucop.edu/academic-personnel-programs/_files/apm/apm-016.pdf UCLA Procedures for Implementation of University Policy on Faculty Code of Conduct (Appendix XII) http://www.senate.ucla.edu/FormsDocs/Appendices/documents/UCLAACADEMICSENATEMANUALJune62013LgAMeeting.pdf UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL ** May attach UNDER statement and/or BYLAW additional pages336 as needed. UCLA 006 PAGE 5 We charge Professor Annabi with violating the following sections of the Faculty Code of Conduct: Part II – Professional Responsibilities, Ethical Principles, and Unacceptable Faculty Conduct Section A. Teaching and Students Ethical Principles. DR. ANNABI HAS FAILED TO: foster honest academic conduct and to assure that their evaluations of students reflect each student’s true merit; avoid any exploitation, harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students; acknowledge significant academic or scholarly assistance from them. Ethical Principles. “As teachers, the professors encourage the free pursuit of learning of their students. They hold before them the best scholarly standards of their discipline. Professors demonstrate respect for students as individuals and adhere to their proper roles as intellectual guides and counselors. Professors make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct and to assure that their evaluations of students reflect each student’s true merit. They respect the confidential nature of the relationship between professor and student. They avoid any exploitation, harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students. They acknowledge significant academic or scholarly assistance from them. They protect their academic freedom.” (AAUP Statement, 1966; Revised, 1987) She has violated: II.A-1: (b) significant intrusion of material unrelated to the course; (c) significant failure to adhere, without legitimate reason, to the rules of the faculty in the conduct of courses, to meet class, to keep office hours, or to hold examinations as scheduled; II.A-2: Discrimination, including harassment, against a student . . . because of . . . citizenship or for other arbitrary or personal reasons. II.A-5: Use of the position or powers of a faculty member to coerce the judgment or conscience of a student or to cause harm to a student for arbitrary or personal reasons. Section B. Scholarship Types of unacceptable conduct: Violation of canons of intellectual honesty, such as research misconduct and/or intentional misappropriation of the writings, research, and findings of others. Section C. The University II.C.3. Unauthorized use of University resources or facilities on a significant scale for personal, commercial, political, or religious purposes. II.C.4. Forcible detention, threats of physical harm to, or harassment of another member of the University community, that interferes with that person’s performance of University activities. II.C.8. Serious violation of University policies governing the professional conduct of faculty, including but not limited to policies applying to research, outside professional activities, conflicts of commitment, clinical practices, violence in the workplace, and whistleblower protections. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 007 PAGE 6 1/15/2020 To whom it may concern, I started working for Professor Nasim Annabi in the Fall of 2015 as a Master’s student in Chemical Engineering. I was first introduced to Professor Annabi when she emailed me two weeks before the first semester of my graduate program started. She encouraged me to visit her so she could discuss her research and how I may fit in her new lab. Professor Annabi was initially very friendly and warm when we met as she introduced me to the focus of the research conducted in her lab. I saw that on her resume she was a lecturer at Harvard University as well as Northeastern while heading her lab research. I agreed to work in her lab shortly after when my graduate program began. From the very beginning of working in Professor Annabi’s lab, I was assigned a project to work on that would be my first publication. I was trained by a post doc working in the Annabi lab, however initially I was only instructed on how to collect the data and not how to analyze it. I was one of the first students in the lab to present my research during our biweekly group meeting. When I presented what I had been working on, Professor Annabi proceeded to chastise and humiliate me before the entire lab for over an hour for not having analyzed the data. I was very new to the research environment and this was my first introduction as to how Professor Annabi would manage her lab members. After that meeting, I did not want to continue working in her lab. However, my good friends convinced me to continue and so I went on the next day working on this project. During my time as a Master’s student, I worked exceptionally hard under constant stress of being reprimanded by Professor Annabi. Each time I was scheduled to meet individually with Professor Annabi was an overly stressful situation. All the students working for her were constantly worried that they would be removed from her employ as she made this possibility clear as often as she could. I understood after my first years working with Professor Annabi that if she happened to be in a good mood, then things would go relatively smoothly, however, if Professor Annabi was in a bad mood, then she would unload all over her stress onto us. Unfortunately for us, she was more often in a bad mood. There were many occasions were we would be sent to her office and made to work for hours on whatever was on her docket for the week, many of these tasks were unrelated to our research and for her benefit only. She would always claim that she would be doing things to benefit us, for example, whenever Professor Annabi had a grant proposal to review, she would ask her entire lab to ‘help’ her so that we could learn. We ended up interpreting this as doing the entire work for her, then instructing her what each grant was about, what the drawbacks were, and what to say in front of the committee. When we came to her office, Professor Annabi would not even have opened the file, and asked us what the proposal was about. Each of these grant proposals had been carefully prepared from a leading research lab around the country and submitted to a national research organization, such as the NSF, NIH, etc. and Professor Annabi was given specific instructions not to share these ideas with anyone else, including graduate students. This request was flippantly disregarded by Professor Annabi. If anyone working in Annabi Lab ever told Professor Annabi that we were too busy with something else, or that this work was not exactly our responsibilty, she would instantly threaten with the maximum penalty possible and tell us that she could get rid of us at any time she wanted and no other professor or the department would support us. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 008 PAGE 7 She also made constant threats about not reading our paper anytime soon if we ever told her that we couldn’t do what she requested. One example of this is when I was writing a review paper based on electroconductive hydrogels. When I was in the process of writing this work, Professor Annabi harassed me continually to finish it on time and send it to her. I got email after email asking why the paper was not done yet and to send it to her immediately. Then, after working on this paper nonstop so that I could graduate, I sent it to her. From that day forward I asked Professor Annabi to read this paper every week for approximately 11 months. Each time I asked, she would tell me to email it to her again, because she didn’t want to go digging through her inbox. Each time I would resend the same email then she would not even open the file. Finally, after almost a year, Professor Annabi read the paper and gave comments, after which time she sent it back to me and needed the paper revised and sent to her as soon as possible and threatened my graduation if it was not sent to her in the next few days and submitted to the journal. Finally, we got to the point where this paper was going to be published – at the last possible stage before publication, Professor Annabi told me to add one additional person to the paper who I had never heard of and had not contributed to the paper at all. I later understood this person to be her boyfriend and she wanted to put him on future papers that I am currently involved in also. This person has not contributed to any work that has come out of Annabi lab, but Professor Annabi has given and continues to give authorship to him based on her personal relationship. When I was getting ready to graduate with a Master’s degree, Professor Annabi surveyed the body of work that I had completed and offered me to stay on as a PhD student saying that I had completed so much work that I could graduate with a PhD in a year to year and a half. I then agreed to continue on and transfer into the PhD program in the fall of 2017. From there things got much worse. Professor Annabi put as much stress as possible on everyone in the lab to get as much papers out as possible and as soon as possible. She even threatened to stop paying for basic lab consumables until we had generated enough data to publish. Each lab meeting was excruciatingly stressful, and we would be reprimanded for usually 30-60 minutes at a time on a weekly basis. When Professor Annabi was displeased with something, she would say over and over how bad we were as researchers, that she could keep us in the program or kick us out for as long as she wanted, that she didn’t care about our research, etc. I could see that this environment was really taking a toll on every person working for her. As far as I could tell, we all had stress-related conditions as a result of the constant hostility and aggression. Later, in the spring of 2018, Professor Annabi accepted a position at UCLA and asked that I transfer and finish my degree in her lab in California. She again stated that a colleague of mine, and I could graduate in a year if we moved with her. Eventually, it was decided that and I would transfer with her. We were never financially compensated for making the move across the country. From the very start, the three of us worked diligently to get the Annabi lab up and running. We were constantly working to do online and classroom trainings necessary for working in a lab at UCLA, ordering chemicals, consumables, and instruments, setting them up, and completing trainings related to all lab instruments at UCLA. On top of that, we were instructed to log in under Professor Annabi’s UCLA account and complete all her online trainings and email her the certificates. We were required to enroll her into the classroom trainings that she was responsible to complete, let her know a day before they were scheduled, then walk her to the classroom the day of. We were also required to write and submit all the animal protocols UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 009 PAGE 8 necessary for our lab work, a task that requires the attention of the PI of the lab. We had to log in under Professor Annabi’s account to submit these, even though she had not read them. This entire set up process was completed in record time, however, we consistently received emails from Professor Annabi accusing us of not caring about research. Shortly after setting up the lab, the three of us were asked to come to Professor Annabi’s office and work on a grant submission. We were all there for hours and ended up finishing around 8 pm. It was when we were leaving that she told us we all had to do four first author publications to graduate, and that we had to TA in her classes. We all told Professor Annabi that we were not told about this prior to coming to UCLA with her. She had never once stated these terms before and now that we are forced to continue with her she has made these requirements because she doesn’t want us to leave her lab. Professor Annabi went into an extremely over the top rant in response to our concerns. The basic theme was that if we don’t like her new terms we can leave – no other PI will support us here at UCLA. The next day Professor Annabi asked us all to come to her office again. I have never known her to apologize for anything since I have known her, but for some reason I just thought she was going to apologize for the way she handled the situation the day before. In fact, Professor Annabi called us again to tell us that we had all come to her office the day before to gang up on her and threaten her. This was all a complete fabrication of the truth and we all knew it. She told us that she could go to HR whenever she wanted to tell them we were bullying her, and she could make trouble for us. She even stated that she could have us sent to jail. I found it quite bold of her to accuse us of bullying, when that was exactly what she has done to us since we started in her lab. How could we even begin to bully her? From the very beginning Professor Annabi has told us that she has all the power and that she can release us anytime she sees fit. Professor Annabi has continued to manage her lab by increasing the stress to unhealthy levels. Her main method of student motivation has been through threats. It is an extremely unhealthy work environment. Further, the bullying and coercion tactics used by Professor Annabi is 100% for the benefit to her and her career and not at all related to building students into professionals. Recently, Professor Annabi has been instructed to teach a new course based on the use of biomaterials for biomedical applications. She immediately held a meeting with the entire lab and told each person to start making slides for this course. Each student was told to suspend all lab activity and make this a priority (students were given an average of 2 presentations each). Each presentation would need to be 60 slides minimum, then we would be required to present it to Professor Annabi and teach her what the material was about. I personally was told to make presentations for classes on conductive biomaterials, microfabrication strategies, and organ-on-a-chip strategies. It is now completely normal for me to spend hours a week working on Professor Annabi’s academic tasks, show her, and expect criticism and comments such as that she could have done a much better job with not so much as a ‘thank you’ for the hard work. There are countless more examples of situations such as these. I am now a fifth year PhD candidate. During my time as a graduate student, I have been to several major conferences, including AIChE, BMES, and MRS to present my research in both oral and poster presentations. I have been the recipient of awards that recognize the dedication I bring to the lab, such as the 2017 Outstanding Leadership Award from the College of Engineering at Northeastern University, and a first-place poster presentation at the 2019 Bioscience Innovation Day at UCLA. I have published three first author research articles based on conductive UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 010 PAGE 9 biomaterials for cardiac tissue repair and have contributed to many other published research and review articles. In addition, I should have a fourth first author publication once I have completed the final steps of my current research project. I have defended my thesis proposal twice – both at Northeastern University, and when I transferred to UCLA to receive PhD candidacy. While working on my research, I have also been asked to do many of the tasks required of a Principal Investigator. Professor Annabi has put a lot of additional work on our plate, such as reviewing grant proposals from major scientific organizations, such as NIH and NSF, create slides for her class (typically requesting 60+ slides per lecture), completing her online trainings under her UCLA account, repeatedly asking that I fill out reimbursement forms for expenses she has incurred personally during trips, creating exams, homework, and grading while as a TA for the course that she teaches, submission of animal protocols that I wrote, submission of papers to journals, and more. Until now, I have attempted to continue on and do the best job that I could hoping that graduation would come soon, however, the overwhelmingly stressful environment that I work in has been very detrimental to my health. I have experienced heart palpitations on several occasions, as well as other symptoms as a result of extreme stress. I am currently seeing a cardiologist to treat this condition. My other lab coworkers, have also experienced a decline in their physical and mental health due to this hostile working environment. We are all currently seeing specialists and counselors now. Professor Annabi has continued to string us along, telling us that we are close to graduation, then extending that timeframe by adding additional requirements as she sees fit. I believe that as a fifth year PhD student, I am well qualified to graduate at this point. I would like to finish the project that I’m currently working on and defend my dissertation. However, Professor Annabi wishes that I continue on with another project before I graduate. That would delay my graduation by over a year. I don’t believe that Professor Annabi has my best interest in mind when she makes these decisions. I have always been a hard worker, enlisting in the Marine Corps immediately after my high school graduation to fund my undergraduate degree. I served two tours overseas in Iraq and came back to go to school. I’m request the assistance of UCLA to prevent further anguish and allow me to graduate as soon as possible. We have asked prior students who have worked directly under Professor Annabi to write statements that describe their experiences. We also strongly encourage the committee to interview any other member working under Professor Annabi. We very much appreciate anything that can be done to assist us with this matter. Best, University of California Los Angeles UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 011 PAGE 10 Jan 19th 2020 To whom it may concern, I am writing this short narrative regarding our allegation against Dr. Nasim Annabi, at the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at UCLA. I have joined Dr. Annabi’s group in September 2015 at Northeastern University, and advanced to candidacy in Sep 2017. I have moved to UCLA with Dr. Annabi in July 2018, and advanced to candidacy again in April 2019 with new committee members. As a senior PhD student in Dr. Annabi’s lab, I have published more than 20 journal articles (first author/co-author) and one book chapter, and I am the inventor/co-inventor of 4 US Patent applications. I have worked closely with Dr. Annabi and witnessed or have been facing a tremendous amount of unprofessional behaviors including constant verbal abuse, harassment, yelling, blaming, disrespectful/offensive language, humiliation, and threatening by Dr. Annabi. The reason that I am reporting this issue is because that the hostile environment created by Dr. Nasim Annabi reached to an unbearable point which could not be endured anymore. I have been under an intense amount of stress that caused me mental and physical damage. Particularly, I have experienced serious due to extreme stress, for which I have seen multiple specialists in the past 9 months. Similarly, many of my colleagues at the Annabi lab have been under immense stress which caused to seek medical attention. As the first PhD student in Dr. Annabi’s group, I have been asked to do numerous amounts of non-research related works including her administrative work (i.e. purchasing flights and booking hotels for her personal vacations, reimbursement for her trips, order or return her personal amazon orders, updating her CV, reviewing confidential papers (>25) or grants (>8), drafting emails, writing letters of recommendation for students and submitting them, etc.). I have also asked to write numerous grants/reports (some of them were unrelated to my research), course materials (slides for her courses, for example >120 slides for the current Biomaterials course that she is teaching), complete her safety/biosafety training, CITI training, WorkSafe training, etc. I have also asked by Professor Annabi to login to her UCLA account to do many administrative or personal work for her. In fact, several students in her lab has her UCLA login information, and she repeatedly ask us to do non-research related work for her. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 012 PAGE 11 Jan 19th 2020 Moreover, she put me as her TA in Sep 2018 without informing me in advance. During my TA time, I was forced by Dr. Annabi to do significantly more than is typically required from a TA. I was asked to make exams, homework, practice problems, and even to be around during her office hours to answer students’ questions. I have done all the grading and even submitted the ABET problem. Dr. Annabi was constantly yelling at me and stating that if she does not get good reviews, it is because of me. It had happened many times that she did not know the answer of some questions and she directly referred students to me (text message, phone call, email). Moreover, she asked me to go to her office 1-2 hours before each class, to review the example problems with her, mainly because she was not familiar with the course material/subject. She also stated that she does not need any new papers to get tenure and she only needs good teaching reviews. To get good reviews, she asked us to buy refreshment/prizes for students during the quarter. During the past 5 years in Dr. Annabi’s group, she repeatedly threatened and yelled at students or blamed them for not having publishable or perfect data (according to her). I have talked to her multiple times that requiring students to have significant amount of data every week is not logical and may push the students to generate unreal/fake data. She has also constantly threatened students in different occasions that she will stop supporting students or not graduating them on time or she will make them to leave with a MSc degree instead of a PhD. Moreover, she repeatedly threatened some students that she has the power to ruin their career, and their lives is dependent on her, and no one else will support us if she decides to fire us. Sometimes she even mentioned that if we do not follow her orders, she knows many people in our research field and she will tell them that we are bad, irresponsible, and lazy students. In addition, Dr. Annabi used to send emails to students, accusing them for things that they have not done, or claiming their research performance is not good. She has told me in several occasions that even she knows that those emails may not be fair, but she sends the emails to keep them for record, so in future if the students complain about her to authorities she can use the letters and claim that that particular student was not performing well all the time. It has happened several times that I spoke up for students when they were getting yelled or blamed by Dr. Annabi for small things, but every time UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 013 PAGE 12 Jan 19th 2020 she not only did not tolerate any criticizing, but also threatened me that she will kick me out of the lab. In every occasion, after the meeting she sent me an email with a threatening language and accusing me with wrong things including creating toxic environment in the lab, being rude to her, etc. She repeatedly mentioned this to us every time that she yelled at us that she has friends at UCLA, and they will support her against us, and she can fire us and we cannot do anything about that. In one occasion, she called us to her office to prepare course materials for her (Aug 2018). We were in her office from 3-7 pm, and at the end when we were leaving her office, she said we have to be her TA for minimum two quarters before she let us graduate. When we told her that she never told us before moving to UCLA, she aggressively reacted and yelled at all of us that whatever we have is because of her. Next day, she called us to her office at 1 pm, and we thought she is going to apologize for overreacting the day before. However, she told us that: “yesterday you (students) came to my office, attacked me, harassed me, and I can take you to the court for this and put you all in prison.”. We were particularly shocked by her false claims and aggressive behavior, especially when she said that she has talked to other faculty members about this and they encouraged her to report us to Human Resources. At the end she claimed that she will report us to HR if we criticize her decision again. In addition, in several occasions she took credit for the work of others or put her friends (even her boyfriend in one paper) without contributing in those papers. For example, she put herself as a first author on a paper that two graduate students ( ) completed and were supposed to be first author on. She changed the author order at the submission step without informing the students. In another paper, she added her friend ( ) to a paper after a minor revision from the journal. The editor of the journal emailed her that the revision was minor and what was the justification of adding the new author. She wrote a letter to the editor and asked all the authors to sign it, claiming the new author has contributed. Obviously, everybody had to sign the letter, because they were worried about retaliation of Dr. Annabi. In many cases, Dr. Annabi asked her students to send some particular emails to the group, instead of sending them by herself. These emails were mainly related to illegal works (e.g. reviewing confidential grants) or things that may cause issue for her in future (preparing slides for her course). She has asked me or other students multiple times to UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 014 PAGE 13 Jan 19th 2020 report to her who is in the lab on the weekends or holidays. Generally, I have tried to protect my lab members due to the fear that she may yell at the absent students. Regarding my research work, she has promised to graduate me within a year, if I move with her to UCLA. After 9 months at UCLA, she completely denied her original promise and forced me and my lab colleague, , that we have to start and finish a completely new project from scratch, then she let us graduate. Last but not least, I am seriously worried about my mental and physical health and cannot continue working at the toxic and hostile environment created by Dr. Annabi any longer. I urgently seek UCLA’s help to protect myself and my colleagues and also the prospective students who will join Dr. Annabi’s group in future with the hope to solely devote themselves to science and become useful individuals for the society. I appreciate your time and consideration. I am ready at any time to discuss the details of this matter with the investigators, because there are still so many words left unsaid. Please feel free to contact me via email or by phone . UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 015 PAGE 14 January 17th, 2020 To whom it may concern, With a heavy heart, I’m writing this letter to explain why I have to raise the attention for us and seek help from outside. I joined Dr. Annabi’s lab in 2017 fall in Northeastern where I had her as a co-advisor. Later I moved to UCLA in 2018 summer and she has been a sole advisor for me since then. I have faced many difficulties in her lab, and I could find myself getting mentally ill which made me meet with therapists on regular basis. Before I elaborate those difficulties, I want to emphasize that I feel really uncomfortable and sad to raise an issue against a person for any reason but I had no option since I could clearly feel I’m losing myself in the given environment and needed intervention to make things right. And I also want to emphasize that I understand there can be certain level of assistance of students for their PIs but it crossed way over the line in Dr. Annabi’s lab. There can be many ways to judge what the problems are, I think the main problem comes from Dr. Annabi’s attitude toward students. I sensed she has a wrong sense of understanding on the relationship between students and PI so that she can ask anything to her students since she has a power to control her students’ lives by giving a good or bad reputation as she wants. As a result, she could ask her personal work, she could retract her payment for student’s conference trip, or she could change the order of authorship. And once the way her students responded to her doesn’t comply with her expectation or if she was just in a bad mood, she could reprimand them in whatever way she wants. I know it is very common that PIs give a rebuke when their students don’t do well but for Dr. Annabi, it wasn’t really about the performance and it was more about venting of her stress that she got from elsewhere. After she gave us aggressive reprimands, I often found out that she got an issue with something else like that she had an argument with her collaborator. In many cases, students felt she doesn’t value students’ time or she doesn’t understand students are given with limited time because it was taken for granted that our time to be spent inefficiently for not so much important things like copying books for a couple of hours. She called her students to come to her office frequently and randomly on her need and we were supposed to come to UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 016 PAGE 15 her office whatever we were doing at that moment. Sometimes we were in the middle of an experiment or other things, depending on her mood, we could be blamed for not showing up in her office promptly. Because of that whenever I know Dr. Annabi was on campus I felt like I was chased by something and I felt afraid to check my cellphone. Sometimes her students barely spent even an hour for our research during a week because we were given so many other works which weren’t our responsibilities, or which don’t add up to our career. Also, there was an inequity in the way she assigned the chores. Some students were assigned more compared to other students not based on rational reasons. For example, in a week, I was making homework problems as a TA for her class, I was asked to make a draft for her TV interview, I was asked to write recommendation letter for a visiting student instead of her, I was in charge of some training for the other students but Dr. Annabi gave me 3 grants to be reviewed. But some students who didn’t have this much of workload got fewer grants than me. It was depressing that those chores were continuously given, our research work are delayed, and we were blamed in a humiliating manner for not accomplishing things in a short time and the perfect manner expected by our PI (or sometimes for some random reasons depending on her mood.) and it keeps repeating nonstop. Additionally, very often we witnessed how other students were reprimanded by Dr. Annabi. Watching somebody getting blamed itself is unpleasant but sometimes we were compared to each other for how we respond to her scolding and blamed for not accepting her opinion as much as someone else did. Since it was very often mentioned by Dr. Annabi that she has a power to make our lives happy or miserable, I couldn’t think of doing anything that would make her slightly unhappy including saying no to her ask, disagreeing with her opinion or changing PI. Also, as time goes by, I’ve watched that a student in her lab has done a lot of work for different projects and for her personal stuffs, but he couldn’t get any credit or respect for that. Whenever the other students in her lab can’t troubleshoot, which was very often, the student, who were the most senior with good knowledge, were forced to help others when there was no credit nor even any kind of respect was given to the student. Since whenever students couldn’t do his/her job, most probably because Dr. Annabi couldn’t wait till they learn things, the one who knows how to do were exploited and forced to solve the issue or do extra work. It was serious problem especially UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 017 PAGE 16 considering that Dr. Annabi is very open to free labor such as visiting students or undergraduate students, who stays only few months but requires a lot of training and guidance from regular members and accepted a lot of them. Since everyone in our lab is already very busy and stressed, being forced to do others’ work with no credit sometimes made conflictions between the students and made the environment uncomfortable. Another thing I can recall is that I felt shocked when I found some part of her CV was fake 1.5 year after I joined Dr. Annabi’s lab. As I checked her CV to decide which lab to join, I saw that “she is a lecturer in Harvard” but while I was doing her TA, honestly, I was very disappointed at her knowledge in basic math and science and I could see she couldn’t answer her students and always referred students with questions to us. So, I asked a senior member how she could teach students in Harvard to hear that she never taught any lectures. In addition to all the hostile environment she has made, knowing that she is actually not knowledgeable and prone to lie made me to lose the respect that is needed to serve her as her student. These thoughts made me grow anxiety and depression. I felt that I was in an infinite loop, the situation was getting worse and I can’t change anything. Here I can talk about my anxiety experience to give you an example how a student can react to this situation if there is no intervention. Especially the latest events in her lab where I got threatening emails from Dr. Annabi made me have several panic attacks and serious depression and anxiety. I got blamed for working with a visiting student because the visiting student couldn’t make progress with others. FYI, I was never told not to work with the visitor especially the visiting student were assigned to my project by Dr. Annabi. And it was one of the most aggressive reprimand. As much as I perceived the reason for a rebuke was not rational, I had to feel so much anxious that I will be continuously attacked randomly for no reason in future no matter how I tried to be a good student. I felt helpless since she said she will ask for a help from other professors about the situation in her email which implies she will spread bad reputation about me. The level of anxiety was very high and I couldn’t think straight nor control myself. That was the time I couldn’t even read a sentence, often lose my temper irrationally and suffered from the fear of being a person non capable of anything and self-reproach about myself being fragile. Since I couldn’t focus on anything, I was so worried it will soon make Dr. Annabi to scold at me for not UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 018 PAGE 17 working well and whole day I was worried about it and my future. I had to visit MDs to get medicine for mental diseases since I have a very strong thought, the death will be my ultimate shelter from all those feelings. Luckily, I had my therapist who could guide me to seek help from outside when I couldn’t even come up with any idea to solve this situation. From this experience, now I can think the patience is not a virtue in this circumstance and something should change. No matter how hard I try to convey the pressure the insiders experience in the lab, probably it won’t be as clear as you present in the pool. And even in the same lab, before Dr. Annabi started feeling comfortable enough with me to show her emotions which took about an year, still I couldn’t understand how I would feel if it happens to me. I could see and hear some students suffering but I used to think that is just very common that a PI is unsatisfied with the performance of her/his students and blames them. But the level of hostility in this lab is really not normal which is proved by my mental health issue and some other medical conditions of other students. So, I hope people who will look into the case to contact and hear me or other students as careful as possible. Please feel free to contact me by phone or by email at for any further inquiries. Thank you, UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 019 PAGE 18 UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 020 PAGE 19 Timeline Note: the following timeline include only some of the main events, not all of them. We tried to cover most of the major events. Our interaction with Dr. Annabi was on a daily basis and we did not mention many of the things that have happened. September 2015 – Brian and Ehsan joined the lab September 2017 – Sohyung joined the lab August 2017 – Dr. Annabi offers Brian to join her lab as a PhD student. She tells Brian that after all the work he did as a Master’s student, he can graduate in 1-1.5 years. Brian accepts position as PhD student. January 2018 – Dr. Annabi has the lab review her NIH grant proposals from other labs. February 2018 – Dr. Annabi yelled at Ehsan and Brian, said that she didn’t support our work. Stated that we are failures. Stated that she will have Ehsan stay in the lab working forever and Brian is on probation. May 2018 – Dr. Annabi asks Ehsan, Brian and Sohyung to come to UCLA with her. She states that Ehsan and Brian can graduate in 1 year. June 2018 – A couple weeks before Brian is ready to leave for UCLA and after Dr. Annabi already agreed to accept Brian to UCLA, Dr. Annabi emails Brian and states that she will not accept him into her lab until he finishes and submits 2 papers that he is working on. June 2018 – Ehsan and Dr. Annabi fly to UCLA to get the lab setup started and plan with the UCLA faculty and staff. Upon getting back to Massachusetts, Dr. Annabi tells Ehsan that she cannot pay for his expenses for the trip. July 2018 – Dr. Annabi, Ehsan, Brian, and Sohyung came to UCLA July-October 2018 – Ehsan, Brian, and Sohyung work to set up Dr. Annabi’s lab. While we are ordering and setting up the lab, Dr. Annabi sends emails and text messages to Ehsan, Brian, and Sohyung to go to her office and claiming they are being ‘too slow’ and ‘not following up’. August 2018 – Ehsan, Brian, and Sohyung are asked to complete all of Dr. Annabi’s online trainings for working in the animal facility, as well as many other online modules. Dr. Annabi gives Ehsan, Brian, and Sohyung her online username and password to complete these trainings. August 2018 – Dr. Annabi called Ehsan, Brian, and Sohyung to her office and had them work on her coursework for 4 hours. When they were leaving at 7pm, Dr. Annabi stated that they all have UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 021 PAGE 20 to TA 2-3 times for her before she agrees they can graduate. They then stated that we were not told about this before leaving for UCLA and they didn’t think that it was fair to tell them now. Dr. Annabi said that she is their PI and whatever she says they must do. Dr. Annabi also said she can make their lives miserable if they don’t listen to her. The next day, Dr. Annabi called them all into her office. While yelling at them she stated that they (Ehsan, Brian, and Sohyung) all came to her office together and attacked and harassed her the day before. She said she talked to another professor and that professor stated how patient she is. She said that based on what they did she can call HR, take them to court and have them thrown in prison. September 2018 – Ehsan finds out from department staff that he is Dr. Annabi’s TA. She had not told him this would happen. September 2018 – Dr. Annabi has Brian come to the Apple store with her to purchase a new computer for herself. She then has Brian download all the software that she needs onto that computer. September-December 2018 – Ehsan is asked to do significantly more than is typically required from a TA. Ehsan is asked to make exams, homework, practice problems, and to be around during her office hours to answer students’ questions. Ehsan does all grading and completes and submits ABET problem. Dr. Annabi was constantly yelling at Ehsan and stating that if she doesn’t get good reviews, it is because of Ehsan. She also stated that she doesn’t need any new papers to get tenure– she just needs good teaching reviews. Dr. Annabi asked Ehsan to go to her office 1-2 hours before each class, to review the example problem with her. December 2018 – Dr. Annabi stated to Ehsan and Sevana that she wants to gifts as well as cookies and refreshments for the students in her class to improve her evaluations. She asked Sevana to organize everything and bring them to the class. Sevana paid for everything and got reimbursed from the department. January – February 2019 – Dr. Annabi asks Ehsan and Brian to review the applications of incoming prospective graduate students and let her know which were the strongest. In addition, they were required to contact the best students, set up a meeting time and help interview them. At the end, when none of the three selected candidates did not join UCLA, Dr. Annabi accused Ehsan, Sohyung, and Brian of not following up quickly and claimed that they did not say good things about her. She claimed that’s the only reason they candidates did not chose her. January 2019 – Dr. Annabi brings everyone to her office and states that she has to review NIH grant proposals from other labs. We are each given 3 grant proposals to review and make a summary for her. January 2019 – Dr. Annabi offered Joanne Jue (Staff member) to analyze prospective administrative candidates. Dr. Annabi then asked Sohyung and Sevana to review the applicants instead of her. They reviewed 13 applicants and chose the best 3. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 022 PAGE 21 January 2019 – Sohyung had a major infection in one of her eyes (conjunctivitis) that caused the entire white portion to become blood red. Sohyung had asked Dr. Annabi if she can go to the hospital because it was very painful and she was worried about it, but Dr. Annabi had her continue to work for an additional 3 hours in her office on a grant before she could go. Once Sohyung got to the hospital, she had gotten there too late and the office was closed. February 2019 – Dr. Annabi stated for the first time that Ehsan and Brian have to complete a brand-new project before graduation. March 2019 – Saleem Omary joins the Annabi lab as a staff member whose tasks include completing Dr. Annabi’s personal work, paperwork, grant submission, lab orders, etc. March 2019 – Ehsan was diagnosed with alopecia areata. He is currently being seen by a specialist. This condition was brought on by stress. March -June 2019 – Brian becomes Dr. Annabi’s TA and is required to make all exams, homework, practice problems, and to be around during her office hours to answer students’ questions. Brian does all grading and completes and submits ABET problem. Dr. Annabi asked Brian to go to her office 1-2 hours before each class, to review the example problem with her. May - June 2019 – Dr. Annabi stated to Brian and Sevana that she wants gifts as well as cookies and refreshments for the students in her class to improve her evaluations. She asked Sevana to organize everything and bring them to the class. Sevana paid for everything and got reimbursed from the department. June 2019 – Dr. Annabi asked Sohyung and Ehsan to review more than 40 abstracts for the TERMIS conference. She particularly yelled at Sohyung, accusing her for not writing a long paragraph about each abstract as a reviewer response. July 2019 – Dr. Annabi gives internal UCLA grant proposals to Ehsan and Brian to review. August 2019 – Saleem Omary left the lab due to the overwhelmingly stressful conditions created by Dr. Annabi (See attached letter). Sep -Dec 2019 – Sohyung becomes Dr. Annabi’s TA and is required to make all exams, homework, practice problems, and to be around during her office hours to answer students’ questions. Sohung does all grading and completes and submits ABET problem. Dr. Annabi asked Sohyung to go to her office 1 hour before each class, to review the example problem with her. October 2019 – Dr. Annabi brings everyone to her office and states that she has to review NSF grant proposals from other labs. We are each given 3 grant proposals to review and make a summary for her. The email that is forwarded to us states not to share this information with anyone, including graduate students. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 023 PAGE 22 October 2019 – Brian begins to experience heart palpitations in his chest and goes to his physician who immediately refers him to a cardiology specialist. Brian is currently being seen by the cardiologist and has had several tests performed. This condition was brought on by stress. October 2019 – Dr. Annabi asked Sohyung to write recommendation letter for a visiting scholar and also asked her twice to write a research description for CBS news, where Dr. Annabi had an interview. November 2019 – Dr. Annabi asked Sohyung to prepare slides for her conference. She also asked Sohyung to write the slide description, so Dr. Annabi will know what to say on each slide. November 2019 – Dr. Annabi calls Ehsan, Brian and Sohyung into her office to yell at them for 3 extra rats that had been at the DLAM in her name. She blamed all three of them and told them that they have to pay for the expense of these rats. Dr. Annabi had texted Brian earlier about this while he was at his wedding ceremony and complained moments before he was getting married. November 2019 – Ehsan goes to Orlando for an AIChE conference. Upon coming back to UCLA, Dr. Annabi tells Ehsan that she will no longer reimburse him for the trip (while before conference she agreed). After two weeks, Ehsan talked to Dr. Annabi and she finally signed the reimbursement form, while complaining that she does not have money to pay for students’ conferences. After a few days, Dr. Annabi sent an email to Fund manager (Joanne Jue), asking her not to process it, claiming she has never approved it. Ehsan sent another email for follow up, and Dr. Annabi did not reply the email. Finally, after one month of threating not to pay for these expenses, Dr. Annabi finally decided to pay on the same day she leaves for vacation. November 2019 – During a grant meeting with the entire lab, Dr. Annabi accuses Sohyung and Ehsan of not following her explicit instructions in the lab. She accused them of working with a visiting graduate student for the sole reason that they were friends and hang out together. Dr. Annabi said that any progress that they had made will be abandoned because she will not support that project. Dr. Annabi sent threatening emails to Sohyung and Ehsan the following morning (Thanksgiving Day, around 5 a.m.) and stated that she will stop Ehsan’s project, and kick out Sohyung with a Master’s degree. Sohyung then suffered a panic attack, for which she had to go to the emergency room on Thanksgiving morning (around 7 a.m.). Sohyung has visited several specialists and also counselors following that attack, and is currently taking antidepressants and antianxiety medication as a result of the overwhelmingly stressful situations and threats by Dr. Annabi. Nov - Dec 2019 – Dr. Annabi told Sohyung and Sevana that she wants gifts as well as cookies and refreshments for the students in her class to improve her evaluations. She asked Sevana to organize everything and bring them to the class. Sevana paid for everything and got reimbursed from the department. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 024 PAGE 23 December 2019 – Dr. Annabi tells everyone in the lab that she is teaching a Biomaterials course next quarter. She has made a syllabus of all the lectures. Next to each lecture is a name of who is to make the slides for that lecture. Each lecture must have at least 60 slides and each member of the lab has 2-3 lectures. December 2019 – Dr. Annabi threatened Ehsan that she can/will stop funding him during the winter quarter, if he does not follow whatever she asks him. She particularly asked him to finish 3-4 projects till March, write and submit the papers, and then she will let him to graduate. In addition, she was going to make him to be her TA for the course in winter quarter. However, another student in her lab requested to be her TA, and finally she agreed on that. She also asked Ehsan to proceed all the lab orders, which is very time consuming. In addition to above tasks, Ehsan, Sohyung, Brian, and some other lab members have been asked by Dr. Annabi to do all her safety, biosafety, animal, and work ethic etc. trainings. She also forced them to constantly update her CV and prepare different conference abstracts, news/interview contents, write recommendation letters, sign them, and submit them in some cases. Ehsan and Brian have been consistently asked by Dr. Annabi to submit different papers, using her accounts. Dr. Annabi asked Ehsan and Sohyung to review more than 15 journal papers that are sent to Dr. Annabi as a reviewer. Dr. Annabi asked Ehsan to review the CVs/applications of more than 50 postdoc applicants during the past 2-3 years. He also was asked to schedule interview with the selected applicants, and also has to be present during the interview. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 025 PAGE 24 UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 026 PAGE 25 Forcing Students to do her work UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 027 PAGE 26 UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 028 PAGE 27 Forcing Students to do Her Work From: Nasim Annabi annabi.nasim@gmail.com Subject: Fwd: IBC Date: August 15, 2018 at 3:56 PM To: brianwalker@g.ucla.edu, sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu, ehsanshirzaei@g.ucla.edu Hi all Lets do them all I got emails for completing several tests Lets try to finish them today Best nasim Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: From: Animal Research Committee <arc@research.ucla.edu> Date: August 15, 2018 at 3:27:26 PM PDT To: SOHYUNG LEE <sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu> Cc: BRIAN WALKER <brianwalker@g.ucla.edu>, EHSAN SHIRZAEI SANI <ehsanshirzaei@g.ucla.edu>, Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com> Subject: RE: IBC Dear Sohyung, Yes, Dr. Annabi will also have to take the same training courses. However, she may not need to complete the Species Specific Training if she will not be handling any animals on the protocols. We do, however, still recommend this training be completed in case she may need to handle the animals in the event of emergency health cases. The MHQ and General Certification Test are requirements that must be completed by everyone. Please let me know if there are any other questions, Scott Wang, MS, LATG Animal Research Committee (ARC) Coordinator Research Safety & Animal Welfare Administration (RSAWA) University of California, Los Angeles scott.wang@research.ucla.edu (310) 206-7364 From: SOHYUNG LEE <sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2018 2:42 PM To: Animal Research Committee <arc@research.ucla.edu> Cc: BRIAN WALKER <brianwalker@g.ucla.edu>; EHSAN SHIRZAEI SANI <ehsanshirzaei@g.ucla.edu>; Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com> Subject: Re: IBC Hi Scott, Thank you very much for the information. We've done with most of the training courses. I have one more question. Should my PI take all the same training courses? Best, Sohyung UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 029 PAGE 28 Forcing Students to do Her Work Sohyung Best, Sohyung PhD Student Department of Chemical Engineering University of California Los Angeles On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 12:18 PM, Animal Research Committee <arc@research.ucla.edu> wrote: Dear Sohyung, Please see the attached New Member Checklist. This document details the required training courses needed for ARC protocols. Feel free to contact me if there are any questions. Thank you, Scott Wang, MS, LATG Animal Research Committee (ARC) Coordinator Research Safety & Animal Welfare Administration (RSAWA) University of California, Los Angeles scott.wang@research.ucla.edu (310) 206-7364 From: Sohyung Lee <lee.soh@husky.neu.edu> Sent: Tuesday, August 7, 2018 11:40 AM To: Perkins, Jennifer <JPerkins@research.ucla.edu> Cc: BRIAN WALKER <brianwalker@g.ucla.edu>; Stoner, Breena <bstoner@ehs.ucla.edu>; EHSAN SHIRZAEI SANI <ehsanshirzaei@g.ucla.edu>; Animal Research Committee <arc@research.ucla.edu>; Institutional Biosafety Committee <ibc@research.ucla.edu>; sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu; Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com> Subject: Re: IBC Hi Jennifer, We have one more question. What are the courses we should take to do animal study? Best, Sohyung On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 11:22 AM, BRIAN WALKER <brianwalker@g.ucla.edu> wrote: Hi Jennifer, Thanks very much. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 030 PAGE 29 Forcing Students to do Her Work Here is the information for each person: Brian Walker 205267149 brianwalker@g.ucla.edu Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Ehsan Shirzaei Sani 905267075 ehsanshirzaei@g.ucla.edu Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Sohyung Lee 405267073 sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Best, Brian Walker PhD Student Department of Chemical Engineering University of California Los Angeles brianwalker@g.ucla.edu On Aug 7, 2018, at 11:18 AM, Perkins, Jennifer <JPerkins@research.ucla.edu> wrote: Hi Brian, I’ve copied our ARC and IBC admin teams to assist you with creating personnel records in RATS and SafetyNet. Both groups will need UIDs, emails addresses, departments, and full names for each person to be added. Regards, Jennifer <image001.jpg> Jennifer Perkins, MA, CPIA Director – Research Safety & Animal Welfare Administration (RSAWA) Institutional Contact for Dual Use Research (ICDUR) 310-794-9645 From: BRIAN WALKER [mailto:brianwalker@g.ucla.edu] Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2018 11:16 AM To: Perkins, Jennifer <JPerkins@research.ucla.edu>; Stoner, Breena <bstoner@ehs.ucla.edu> UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 031 PAGE 30 Forcing Students to do Her Work <bstoner@ehs.ucla.edu> Cc: EHSAN SHIRZAEI SANI <ehsanshirzaei@g.ucla.edu>; Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com>; Sohyung Lee <lee.soh@husky.neu.edu> Subject: IBC Hi Jennifer and Breena, I have recently moved to UCLA as part of a research lab. I was wondering if you could add our names to animal protocols. Our PI, Nasim Annabi, is in the system, however we are not (Brian Walker, Ehsan Shirzaei Sani, Sohyung Lee). Best, Brian Walker PhD Student Department of Chemical Engineering University of California Los Angeles brianwalker@g.ucla.edu UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 032 PAGE 31 Forcing Students to do Her Work From: Nasim Annabi annabi.nasim@gmail.com Subject: Fwd: Personnel Certification Notice Date: September 4, 2018 at 12:45 PM To: Sohyung Lee lee.soh@husky.neu.edu, Brian Walker walker.bri@husky.neu.edu, Ehsan Shirzaei Sani shirzaeisani.e@husky.neu.edu Can you please complete this? Best Nasim ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: ARC <arc@research.ucla.edu> Date: Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 10:32 PM Subject: Personnel Certification Notice To: "Nasim Annabi, Ph.D" <nannabi@ucla.edu> MEMORANDUM RESEARCH SAFETY & ANIMAL WELFARE ADMINSITRATION Chancellor's Animal Research Committee (ARC) 10889 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 600 Mailcode: 140648 Phone: (310) 206-6308 Email: arc@research.ucla.edu Website: http://ora.research.ucla.edu/rsawa/arc September 4, 2018 Nasim Annabi, Ph.D Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Animal Use Certification Notice ARC #2018-072-01 Engineering scaffolds for heart tissue engineering Dear Nasim Annabi: ARC records indicate that the following personnel, listed on your protocol, have yet to complete all animal user certification requirements, or have a certification that has expired or will expire in the next 90 days: Sohyung Lee (Species Specific Training for Rat) Nasim Annabi (Species Specific Training for Rat) Brian Walker (Species Specific Training for Rat) Personnel who will work with animals at UCLA must satisfy all components of the certification program: 1. General Certification. All personnel who will work with animals must complete an online training module (available at www.citiprogram.org) that requires the participant to demonstrate knowledge on the general policies regarding animal use at UCLA. Individuals who have previously completed the General Certification Test must be re-certified every three years. 2. Species-Specific Training. Personnel who have already been certified to work with certain species, but now require certification for (an) additional species, need only complete the species-specific training component. Please visit the DLAM website (https://portal.dlam2.ucla.edu/EducationTraining/Lists/Site%20Map/SiteMap.aspx) for more information. 3. Aseptic Surgery Training (if applicable). Personnel conducting survival surgery (defined as a surgical procedure where the animal regains consciousness from anesthesia for any period of time) must complete the aseptic surgery lab. Please visit the DLAM website (https://portal.dlam2.ucla.edu/EducationTraining/Lists/Site%20Map/SiteMap.aspx) for more information. For additional information regarding the ARC's training requirements, please see http://ora.research.ucla.edu/ rsawa/arc/pages/certification-info.aspx or contact the ARC administrative office at (310) 206-6308. UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 033 PAGE 32 Forcing Students to do Her Work ARC policy requires that all personnel listed on a protocol complete all applicable animal user certification requirements prior to issuing approval; therefore, it is suggested that you give your immediate attention to this matter. -- Nasim Annabi, PhD Tannas Fellow Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Core Faculty of Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT) University of California, Los Angeles 420 Westwood Plaza, Boelter Hall 5531-H Los Angeles, CA 90095 Email: nannabi@ucla.edu Tel: 310-267-5927 Skype: nasim.annabi Lab Website: https://web.northeastern.edu/annabi/ UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 034 PAGE 33 Forcing Students to do Her Work From: Nasim Annabi annabi.nasim@gmail.com Subject: Re: Aseptic Training Date: September 19, 2018 at 2:20 PM To: BRIAN WALKER brianwalker@g.ucla.edu Many thanks! Nasim On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 2:04 PM, BRIAN WALKER <brianwalker@g.ucla.edu> wrote: Hi Nasim, You have been enrolled in Aseptic Training - Rodent. This class is scheduled on 9/27/18 at 9:00 am. It is located in 5V-128 in Center for Health Sciences (CHS) Building. I will enroll you in the second training Species Specific Training as more become available. Best, Brian Walker PhD Student Department of Chemical Engineering University of California Los Angeles brianwalker@g.ucla.edu -- Nasim Annabi, PhD Tannas Fellow Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Core Faculty of Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT) University of California, Los Angeles 420 Westwood Plaza, Boelter Hall 5531-H Los Angeles, CA 90095 Email: nannabi@ucla.edu Tel: 310-267-5927 Skype: nasim.annabi Lab Website: https://web.northeastern.edu/annabi/ UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 035 PAGE 34 Forcing Students to do Her Work From: Nasim Annabi annabi.nasim@gmail.com Subject: Re: DLAM Waitlist Class Notification Date: September 19, 2018 at 4:30 PM To: BRIAN WALKER brianwalker@g.ucla.edu Cc: Ehsan Shirzaei Sani shirzaeisani.e@husky.neu.edu thank you! Nasim On Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 4:04 PM, BRIAN WALKER <brianwalker@g.ucla.edu> wrote: Hi Nasim, Yes, I will print these out for you. Best, Brian Walker PhD Student Department of Chemical Engineering University of California Los Angeles brianwalker@g.ucla.edu On Sep 19, 2018, at 4:00 PM, Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com> wrote: -canyou please give me copies of these to take with me many thanks for your help Nasim --------- Forwarded message ---------- From: <dlamtraining@mednet.ucla.edu> Date: Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 1:59 PM Subject: DLAM Waitlist Class Notification To: annabi.nasim@gmail.com Dear NASIM ANNABI, Enrollment into Aseptic Techniques - Rodent to be held Thursday September 27, 2018 at 9:00AM is currently at capacity so you have been placed on a waitlist. Course Prerequisites - CITI Training Aseptic Surgery Certificate of Completion. A copy of the CITI completion certificate must be brought to the in-person training. You must have a valid MHQ. Competencies required - Trainees will display knowledge of UCLA Rodent surgery policy before completing course. Required: UCLA ID, Closed Toed Shoes and Long Pants (Clothing that covers skin is acceptable). You will be notified by email if a space becomes available. If you need to cancel your enrollment from this course, please cancel your enrollment from the Enrolled Tab in the registration system. Click here to Cancel this enrollment UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 036 PAGE 35 Forcing Students to do Her Work Click here to Cancel this enrollment Click here to Add Enrollment to Calendar Regards, DLAM Training Team Tel. 310.794.6940 | dlamtraining@mednet.ucla.edu | Education & Training: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) -- Nasim Annabi, PhD Tannas Fellow Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Core Faculty of Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT) University of California, Los Angeles 420 Westwood Plaza, Boelter Hall 5531-H Los Angeles, CA 90095 Email: nannabi@ucla.edu Tel: 310-267-5927 Skype: nasim.annabi Lab Website: https://web.northeastern.edu/annabi/ -- Nasim Annabi, PhD Tannas Fellow Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Core Faculty of Center for Minimally Invasive Therapeutics (C-MIT) University of California, Los Angeles 420 Westwood Plaza, Boelter Hall 5531-H Los Angeles, CA 90095 Email: nannabi@ucla.edu Tel: 310-267-5927 Skype: nasim.annabi Lab Website: https://web.northeastern.edu/annabi/ UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 037 PAGE 36 Forcing Students to do Her Work From: Nasim Annabi annabi.nasim@gmail.com Subject: NIH review Date: January 25, 2019 at 11:19 AM To: sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu, brianwalker@g.ucla.edu, sevanabagh@gmail.com, ehsanshirzaei@g.ucla.edu, gokberkunal@yahoo.com Hi all We need to go over the NIH review Lets do it based on the following 11.30-2 pm (Ehsan/Sevana/Gokberk) 2-4 pm (Sohyung/Brian) Plz send me your critiques and bring the grant with u when u come Gokberk- i know u are not available, please send your Critiques to me and give your grant copy to Ehsan. Thanks Best Nasim Sent from my iPhone UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 038 PAGE 37 Forcing Students to do Her Work SOHYUNG LEE <sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu> Fwd: Reminder - Abstract Reviewer Invitation - TERMIS-AM 2019 Meeting 5 messages Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com> Thu, May 16, 2019 at 12:14 AM To: sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu, sh.gholizade@gmail.com Would u plz let me know who is reviewing this? Best N Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: From: "Tatiana Veres (TERMIS-AM)" <tveres@ahredchair.com> Date: May 15, 2019 at 2:18:52 PM PDT To: Nannabi <nannabi@ucla.edu> Subject: Reminder - Abstract Reviewer Invitation - TERMIS-AM 2019 Meeting Reply-To: tveres@ahredchair.com Dear Dr. Nasim Annabi, This is a reminder that you have been invited to participate as an abstract reviewer for the TERMIS-AM Annual Meeting and Exposition December 2 – 5, 2019 in Orlando, FL for the following category: Skin, Wound Healing, and Inflammation. The timetable for the 2019 review process is: Electronic Abstract Deadline: May 29, 2019 Online abstracts and grading system available to reviewers: June 16, 2019 Scores due to abstract processor (OASIS): June 30, 2019 Please indicate indicate your participation status no later than Wednesday, May 15, 2019 by filling out an online form which can be found by clicking here or by copying and pasting the link below. Even if you cannot participate, please fill out the form so we know to invite alternative reviewers. If you do not fill out the form by the deadline, we will ask others in your place. https://form.jotform.com/91214995294163 Thank you for your assistance with this important task and please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions at all. Sincerely, Tatiana Veres Meeting Coordinator TERMIS-AM 1120 Rt. 73, Suite 200 Mt. Laurel, NJ 08054 Tel: 856-793-0910 Fax: 856-439-0525 tveres@ahredchair.com www.AHredchair.com www.facebook.com/AHredchair www.twitter.com/AHredchair UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 039 PAGE 38 Forcing Students to do Her Work Advancing Organizations to Greatness. AH is an association management company accredited by the AMC Institute (to ANSI standard). This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual entity to which they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. Please note any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. Shima Gholizadeh <sh.gholizade@gmail.com> Thu, May 16, 2019 at 9:38 AM To: Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com> Cc: SOHYUNG LEE <sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu> Hi Nasim, I would not be able to review the abstracts within the next two weeks since I have multiple tasks to be taken care of! Best, Shima [Quoted text hidden] SOHYUNG LEE <sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu> Thu, May 16, 2019 at 9:49 AM To: Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com> Cc: Shima Gholizadeh <sh.gholizade@gmail.com> Dear Nasim, Sorry there was a misunderstanding between Shima and me. 2 days ago, we had a quick talk about it and the category was 'Regenerative Medicine in Ophthalmology'. Shima said it's something you have asked her before and she would check it and talk later. And I've just heard Shima has already told you in person that she has other priorities, so I think I was supposed to follow up but I didn't know. The deadline was 5/15 so I'm not sure if we can do it. I'll see you after your class to talk about it. Thanks. Best, Sohyung PhD Student Department of Chemical Engineering University of California Los Angeles [Quoted text hidden] Nasim Annabi <annabi.nasim@gmail.com> Thu, May 16, 2019 at 9:51 AM To: SOHYUNG LEE <sohyunglee@g.ucla.edu> Cc: Shima Gholizadeh <sh.gholizade@gmail.com> I think I ask shima to do BMES and you to do TERMIS i understand everyone has lots of things to do but we should complete the tasks that we said we do this is priority too Best UCLA v. Annabi CONFIDENTIAL UNDER BYLAW 336 UCLA 040