With the close of the academic year just around the corner, many in the college are being recognized for the previous year’s accomplishments by campus units. With awards for undergraduate students, as well as postdocs and faculty, CBS was well-represented across campus award and honor ceremonies. The full list of recipients can be found on the respective award websites.
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.
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.
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.
Animal Behavior Ph.D. candidate Amelia Munson won first place at the UC Davis Grad Slam final round on Thursday, April 8. Her winning presentation “Fact or Fiction: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger” earned her a $2,500 grand prize and the opportunity to advance to the University of California Grad Slam competition, which will be on May 7.
Her presentation examined how introducing environmental stressors on young fish in captivity impacted their ability to adapt to challenges and exhibit anti-predator behaviors as adults.
Marwa Zafarullah, a Ph.D. student in the Integrative Genetics and Genomics Graduate Group, investigates the pathology of a rare neurodegenerative disease called Fragile X- Associated Tremor/Ataxia Syndrome (FXTAS). As part of her Ph.D. dissertation research, she’s developing a biomarker for the early diagnosis and progression of the disease.
Keith Fraga won a Office of Science Graduate Student Research award, which gives Ph.D. students the opportunity to conduct research at a DOE national laboratory. Mary-Francis LaPorte won the DOE’s Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, which helps train next-generation leaders in computational science.
