Mainly Mozart All-Star Orchestra Festival to return to La Jolla
The Mainly Mozart All-Star Orchestra Festival is returning to La Jolla next month, and for the first time in eight years, a single concertmaster is running the series.
The 38th annual festival will run from Wednesday, June 17, to Saturday, June 27, with the first five concerts at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center and the final one at UC San Diego’s Epstein Family Amphitheater.
David Kim of the Philadelphia Orchestra will serve as concertmaster for all six performances, with programming by Mainly Mozart Music Director Michael Francis.
The schedule is:
• 7 p.m. Wednesday, June 17: “Mozart & Prokofiev”
• 7 p.m. Saturday, June 20: “Mozart & Beethoven: Heroic Visions”
• 3 p.m. Sunday, June 21: “Dances & Sunlight”
• 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 23: “Lully & Strauss: A Tale Retold”
• 7 p.m. Thursday, June 25: “Reflection & Radiance”
• 7 p.m. Saturday, June 27: Beethoven’s Fifth
Ticket packages for six, four or two shows are available at mainlymozart.org/2026-fest-sales or by phone at (619) 239-0100. Tickets for single shows are $68-$155 at The Conrad and $25-$250 for the amphitheater concert.
Personalized AI-driven depression treatment shows strides
In what UC San Diego in La Jolla describes as a first-of-its-kind study, researchers developed a program based on machine learning designed to help people deal with depression, catered to each person’s mood and daily habits.
People who started the program had reductions in depression symptoms over six weeks, researchers say.
The research was published May 19 in the scientific journal NPP — Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience.
The study logged information from 50 adults with mild to moderate depression, including heart rate, exercise levels and reported mood and quality of life four times a day over two weeks.
The study was conducted by Jyoti Mishra, an associate professor of psychiatry at the UCSD School of Medicine, and her team. They mapped each participant’s data to find the top lifestyle factors behind the person’s depressed state and worked with health coaches to create an individualized mood augmentation plan, or iMAP.
The study reported a 36% drop in anxiety symptoms, improvements in reported quality of life, higher scores on brief memory and attention tests and a large reduction in depressive symptoms.
Salk president named to American Philosophical Society
Dr. Gerald Joyce, president of the La Jolla-based Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has been elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The society, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, is the oldest learned society in the United States.
Joyce is credited with pioneering directed evolution, a technology for evolving molecules in a test tube so they can take on new functions. His research has helped illuminate how some of the earliest biomolecules may have arisen and how RNA could assemble, replicate and evolve. He also designed the first DNA enzymes, some of which are now being tested in human clinical trials on cancer, asthma and skin diseases.
Joyce began his scientific career at Salk as a Ph.D. student and postdoctoral scholar, returned as a faculty member in 2017 and served as senior vice president and chief science officer before becoming president in 2023.
Before joining Salk, Joyce was director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation and earlier was dean of faculty at Scripps Research.
Mutt Strutt returns June 20, aiming to help ‘pet detective’
La Jolla’s annual Mutt Strutt and scavenger hunt will be back next month, with a new twist.
Wookie, Minnie and Barkley walk La Jolla’s Village for the fourth annual Mutt Strut on June 22, 2025. (Noah Lyons)
The event, planned for 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 20, at Sotheby’s Plaza at 1111 Prospect St., will double as a fundraiser for East County “pet detective” Babs Fry, who helps reunite lost pets with their owners for free.
“She just shows up — 2 a.m. in the canyons, traps and night-vision cameras, sleepless nights — because nobody else was doing this work and she couldn’t stand it,” the La Jolla Loves Pets Foundation, Mutt Strut’s sponsor, wrote in an email to supporters. “This year, La Jolla Loves Pets is going all in for Babs — 80% of net proceeds from Mutt Strut go directly to [her nonprofit] A Way Home for Dogs.”
One of Mutt Strutt’s newest features is a Top Dog competition in which whoever raises the most money for Fry will have the person’s dog featured on a banner hanging in La Jolla’s Village in November.
The contest runs through Sunday, June 21, with the winner announced the next day.
As with past years, Mutt Strutt will encourage participants to complete a puzzle with a pet theme while walking their dogs and visiting pet rescue organizations that will be onsite.
Find out more at lajollalovespets.org.
UC San Diego receives $5M renewal for faculty recruitment
UC San Diego in La Jolla has been awarded a $5 million renewal for its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST) program, part of a nationwide initiative from the National Institutes of Health’s Common Fund to recruit early-career biomedical researchers and create an environment that maximizes their success.
Since it began in 2022, the FIRST program has been credited with enabling UC San Diego to hire 12 faculty members in life sciences across the campus who have collectively brought in $16 million in new research grants since their arrival.
UCSD researchers help centralize metabolomics research
An international team headed by UC San Diego and UC Riverside has helped give public metabolomics data a more centralized and easily searchable home.
Metabolomics is a larger-scale study of small molecules serving as end products of cellular processes, according to UC San Diego. It provides a holistic snapshot of a cell’s inner workings.
The research team recently developed a free web-based platform that allows users to search for chemical structures across billions of chemical spectra, or molecule signatures. The goal is to make metabolomics research as simple as a standard internet search.
The tool, StructureMAAST, has different tags intended to allow for more convenient searching. It is being updated continuously as new information comes in and has built-in quality-control features that make note of misleading data.
StructureMAAST is searchable at structure-masst.gnps2.org.
La Jolla Garden Club holds spring luncheon
The La Jolla Garden Club celebrated the past year of “innovative programs, thriving fundraisers and meaningful community outreach projects” at its spring luncheon May 16.
Three students from community colleges in San Diego County that have horticulture-related programs received scholarships to further their education. They are Rebecca Reeves and Daniel Clayton from MiraCosta College and Ingrid Salas from Southwestern College.
Southwestern College professor Holly McMullen, Southwestern College scholarship recipient Ingrid Salas, MiraCosta College scholarship recipients Daniel Clayton and Rebecca Reeves and MiraCosta College dean Mike Fino attend the 2026 La Jolla Garden Club spring luncheon. (Provided by Becky Carcova)
The amount of the scholarships was not disclosed. The awards are funded through the Garden Club’s membership dues and events.
The club, founded in 1968, meets monthly from September to May. To learn more, visit lajollagardenclub.org.
UC San Diego unveils newest course-inspired mural
On the heels of the initiative’s debut last year, UC San Diego unveiled its newest mural created by Sixth College students.
The new installation is titled “Fragments of Earth and the Ocean.” The series of mosaics, intended to draw awareness to climate issues, was formed in the UCSD Craft Center with assorted pieces, from porcelain tile and seashells to recycled materials.
The mosaics are on display in the Sixth College Admin Hub’s Catalyst Basement Lobby, accessible from the street-level entrance on Scholars Drive North. It is open to view free of charge from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
La Jolla High coach runs 100 miles to raise money for cancer research
For the 16th time, La Jolla High School water polo and swim coach Tom Atwell ran 100 miles to raise money in the fight against cancer.
La Jolla High coach Tom Atwell (crouching) speaks to his boys water polo team during the CIF San Diego Section Open Division championship game in 2025. (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)
His run started the evening of May 21 on the La Jolla High track. Atwell ran through the night and completed the run on the afternoon of May 22.
Atwell is a three-time cancer survivor, and his wife, Utahna, also is a cancer survivor.
Unlike in past years, when proceeds went to the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation, this year Atwell was raising money for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
To learn more about the run or to donate, visit support.pancan.org/goto/TomAtwell. ♦