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Viral cell recognition Artificial intelligence startup works on technology with diagnostic potential
ELECTION 2022
MacLearn challenges Holland for assessor/clerk Editor’s note: This is part of a series about candidates in advance of the June 7 primary. By KATHERINE ZEHNDER NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
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Rupert Dodkins, a data scientist with ViQi, stands at his office in Goleta. The company has worked on the development of machine learning for viral cell infection image recognition.
By KATHERINE ZEHNDER NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
ViQi, a Goleta artificial intelligence startup that was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, has received the second phase of National Science Foundation funding to continue the development of machine learning for viral cell infection image recognition. Kathy Yeung, CEO of ViQi, told the News-
Press the technology holds the potential of being diagnostic. “AIs could be trained to diagnose which viruses are being identified in cells,” said Ms. Yeung. She talked about the history of the work. “In April of 2020, the National Science Foundation put out a COVID grant call looking for solutions to help with the pandemic,” she said.“ViQi developed over 10
years at UCSB. “Our chief science officer, Dr. Ilya Goldberg, ran a lab at the National Institute of Health for over 10 years,” she said. “He proposed to train an AI to detect subtle changes in a cell that is infected with virus before it is humanly visible. In any kind of antiviral or vaccine development, you have to quantify how many Please see AI on A10
Public trust, transparency and integrity of both the elected official and the election process are the core values on which Elrawd MacLearn, candidate for county-clerk recorder-assessor has built his campaign. He has stepped up to challenge incumbent Joe Holland, who has held the office for 20 years in Santa Barbara County. Mr. MacLearn currently works for the county health department as a health inspector. Mr. MacLearn has served in politics since he was in high school when he started working as a polling place inspector for the registrar of voters when he was 18, and he was eventually promoted to a supervisor role. “I am a person who believes in solutions and creating solutions and not just complaining about it and not doing anything,” Mr. MacLearn told the NewsPress. “One of the issues that is discussed at every single election is election integrity. Even when I was younger listening to the elections between Al Gore and George Bush and the recounts they had to do, that was really cemented in my mind. Even further back to the 2000 election, when I was even younger it made a huge impact on my psyche.” This is not Mr. MacLearn’s first run for public office. In 2020, he ran for Santa Barbara Unified School District School Board trustee and lost. “Being a candidate allowed
Elrawd MacLearn
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me to see different aspects of elections,” said Mr. MacLearn. “Aside from campaign costs, running for office can be very expensive. Mandatory fees can be a few thousand dollars to $12,000. These fees must be paid by the candidate before the candidate can actually do anything.” The duties of the county-clerk recorder assessor office fall into three primary categories: maintaining marriage, birth and death certificates; assessing property value; and managing elections. The last area involves printing ballots, counting and certifying ballots, ensuring that candidates are qualified to run, and maintaining voter registration. “In public offices there should be transparency in what is going on. The voters have a legal right to access. To be ignored is total Please see MACLEARN on A10
Westmont amplifying downtown Santa Barbara presence By KAITLYN SCHALLHORN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Westmont College is continuing to expand its presence in downtown Santa Barbara — a move meant to foster community and connection between the private liberal arts school and the city. Thanks to a donation from Celeste and Robert White last year, Westmont was able to purchase a four-story building at 29 W. Anapamu St. The building is nestled directly across the street from its Westmont Downtown headquarters at 26 W. Anapamu St. Official plans and programs for the building are still in the works, but college leaders said they hope to have it ready by the fall of 2023. The possibilities for the new building are endless, from expanding health care and film studies to adding general-purpose spaces to be utilized by both Westmont and the Santa Barbara community to potentially adding housing options, Rick Ostrander, the executive director of the Westmont Downtown program, said. “Generally, for the new building, we want to develop programs that will be academic excellence with
Westmont College President Gayle D. Beebe, left, and Westmont Downtown Executive Director Rick Ostrander
a liberal arts foundation,” Dr. Ostrander told the News-Press. “Along with that, we want to use the new building for community engagement and to benefit the Santa Barbara community since our main campus is over the ridge, so to speak, in Montecito. It gives us an opportunity for more direct connection to organizations and people in the downtown Santa Barbara community.” Adding the building will also give Westmont the ability to up its enrollment without increasing the
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Westmont College has expanded its presence in downtown Santa Barbara with the purchase of this building at 29 W. Anapamu St., across the street from Westmont’s downtown headquarters.
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number of students on its main campus which is capped at 1,200. “I’m proud to expand enrollment in ways that we’ve never conceived of before in terms of having more students in Santa Barbara but not on the main campus,” Westmont President Gayle D. Beebe said in an interview. The donation and new building “allowed us to think about how we can expand the enrollment of the college, expand the regional Please see WESTMONT on A4
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