Dr. Mehdi Abouzari was accepted into the UCI CIRM Alpha Clinic Clinical Trial Investigator Training Program from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and joined the 2025 cohort. This program is a collaboration with UCI AC REAL, which incorporates established partners (Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Long Beach Veterans Administration Health Care, and University of California, Riverside), spans four California Counties (Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles), and serves all age groups – from children to our nation’s veterans. The UCI AC REAL expands leadership role within the CIRM AC network, enabling access to CIRM-funded and FDA-authorized Clinical Trials (CTs) to an increasing number of patients with unmet medical needs by building strong partners in the neighboring communities (from hospitals to CIRM Community Care Centers of Excellence, or CCCEs).