The award recognizes outstanding teaching and dedication to student success. Leal will be honored with other Academic Senate and Academic Federation award recipients at a ceremony in the spring.

Associate Professor Santiago Ramirez, Department of Evolution and Ecology, was among the 20th class of Chancellor's Fellows. This marks the 20th anniversary of the program that provides philanthropic support to exceptional early career faculty members.

Assistant Professor Celina Juliano, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, was recently named as the winner of the 2020 Elizabeth D. Hay New Investigator Award. Juliano studies the regenerative capabilities and “biological immortality” of Hydra (Hydra vulgaris), a small freshwater invertebrate.

Professor John Harada, Department of Plant Biology, was recently recognized by Japan’s Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) with an honorary doctorate of science. The honor comes after over a decade of fruitful collaboration between the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences and NAIST.

For his contributions to cell biology knowledge and the scientific community, Mark Winey was named a fellow of the American Society for Cell Biology. The ASCB cohort of fellows was formally recognized at the joint meeting with the European Molecular Biology Organization.

The National Academy of Inventors announced today the election of 168 new fellows, including Walter Leal, distinguished professor, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Our DNA is built of base pairs, a spiral ladder of adenines, cytosines, guanines and thymines. In this molecular dance, adenine pairs with thymine and cytosine pairs with guanine. Undergraduate researcher Madeline Bright is trying to figure out just how damage to our DNA at the molecular level leads to disease-causing mutations.

Professors Jonathan Eisen and Veronica Martínez-Cerdeño were awarded the 2019 ADVANCE Scholar Award for their work to improve gender equity in STEM through their teaching, research and service in addition to encouraging research, leadership, and outreach to underserved communities and/or mentorship of underrepresented students.

Last year, Associate Professor Siobhan Brady and her colleagues published “a core set of genes that are critical in nitrogen metabolism” in Nature. For her research, Brady was recognized with the 2018-2019 College of Biological Sciences Faculty Research Award.

In December 2018, Distinguished Professor Venkatesan Sundaresan and his colleagues published in Nature a method that allowed them to produce clonal seeds directly from plants, bypassing the sexual reproduction process. Replicating this process in the lab could prove vital to providing the world’s farmers with high-yielding, disease-resistant or climate-resistant food crops.