Graduate Student Stories

From Chilean tidepools to the High Sierra, 12 UC Davis graduate students traveled the world this summer in search of answers to ecology’s most pressing questions.

In the blazing 100-degree Texas sun, Jon Aguiñaga waded through polluted waters on the side of freeways to capture tiny fish, which he then ran experiments on in the garage of an Airbnb. Marissa Sandoval flew to Florida to extract sexual-selection perfumes from the green inflorescent legs of orchid bees. MJ Farruggia trekked more than 1,000 miles in the Sierra backcountry for 240 days and is “still not tired of it.”

Coral reefs are home to a spectacular variety of fish. A new study by biologists at the University of California, Davis, shows that much of this diversity is driven by a relatively recent innovation among bony fish — feeding by biting prey from surfaces. The work was published the week of July 25 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This year’s graduate student awards emphasize the importance - and success - of mentoring younger scientists, and demonstrate the UC Davis commitment to collaboration, support and partnership that define interdisciplinary science. Graduate student awards support travel, research and professional development opportunities, and are made possible by generous philanthropic contributions to the college.

The Dean’s Mentorship Award recognizes graduate students who have demonstrated excellence in the mentorship of undergraduate students.

For the past two years, Population Biology Ph.D. Candidate Victoria Watson-Zink hasn’t solely spent her time at the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences studying the intricacies of land crab genetics. When she wasn’t in the lab, conducting fieldwork or teaching classes, Watson-Zink, a first-generation college student, dedicated her time to making the college a more welcoming and equitable place for its underrepresented students.

UC Davis graduate and professional degree programs are recognized among the best in the country, according to the U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 edition of Best Graduate Schools. The updated rankings were released on Monday, March 28.

Wildfires are devastating, but they can also bring new life by clearing existing vegetation and allowing new plants to spring up. Many plants in fire-prone areas actually require exposure to fire for seeds to germinate. In the past decade, scientists have discovered an ancient receptor protein that can detect molecules called karrikins in smoke from burnt plant material. The “smoke detector” protein, called KAI2, initiates molecular signals that speed up germination of seeds.

Four UC Davis postbaccalaureate researchers returned to campus this fall as both graduate students and fellows of the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The NSF GRFP supports outstanding scholars in STEM fields, providing a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees.

Drought can have a lasting impact on the community of microbes that live in and around roots of rice plants, a team led by UC Davis researchers has found. Root-associated microbes help plants take up nutrients from the soil, so the finding could help in understanding how rice responds to dry spells and how it can be made more resilient to drought. The work was published July 22 in Nature Plants.

Aldrin Gomes, a professor in the Departments of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, and Physiology and Membrane Biology, can still recall the reality he faced when he came to the United States to conduct postdoctoral research. Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, Gomes was accustomed to the cultural diversity of the island. But shortly after stepping on American soil, he started experiencing things he didn’t understand.

When first-generation student Nicole Rabaud was pursuing her Ph.D. in agricultural and environmental chemistry at UC Davis she felt “really lost.”

Rabaud was born and raised in Hong Kong to parents of French and French-Vietnamese descent whose education never progressed beyond high school. Despite her parents' lack of university education, Rabaud excelled at school from elementary school through college. When she got to graduate school at UC Davis, however, things changed.