UCLA professor regrets emails to Epstein

He was seeking a $500,000 donation from Jeffrey Epstein to boost research into how sound-like lullabies or a mother's voice - could reduce pain, stress and heart rates among premature babies hospitalized in neonatal intensive care.

- JAWEED KALEEM

UCLA is among several universities where faculty felt backlash for trying to get funding from Jeffrey Epstein.

MYUNG J. CHUN Los Angeles Times

Dr. Mark Tramo, an adjunct professor of neurology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, ultimately received only a fraction of what he wanted from Epstein before the convicted sex offender died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

But after his name surfaced hundreds of times in emails contained in a trove of recently released Justice Department documents among them a 2007 email in which the professor expressed support to Epstein amid prostitution charges Tramo has faced backlash, including a petition with thousands of signatures calling for his firing. UCLA scrubbed his profile from a directory of faculty experts.

When a link to his class Zoom meeting was posted on Reddit this month, he canceled the session. "Fire Mark Tramo," said a sign during a small protest last week outside the building where Tramo's class is typically held.

"I wish I never had anything to do with him," said Tramo, who researches the connection between neuroscience and music. "I never visited his island, never flew on his planes, and never saw him with young girls... I have been subjected to harassment, false accusations and threats via email, telephone and fax."

Files have broad academic fallout

The Justice Department's release of millions of pages of Epstein files last month sent shock waves across the globe. It also jolted higher education institutions, putting a spotlight on how the quest for research funding by professors entangled them with Epstein during and after the period from 2006 to 2008 when he first faced a charge in Florida for a sex crime involving a minor and pleaded guilty.