Much has changed at UC Davis since Tracy Irwin Storer (1889-1973) arrived on campus in 1923 as the lone professor of what was then called zoology. Today, both the university and its role as a scientific center have expanded greatly, and the once-tiny zoology department has grown into nationally recognized teaching and research programs in evolution, ecology, and the wider biological sciences.

The University of California, Davis, exceeded $1 billion in new external research awards in the fiscal year 2022-23 following the record set the previous year. The funding, which totaled $1.006 billion, will enable scientific discoveries and new technologies through research addressing a wide range of needs in human and animal health, digital systems, the environment and more.  

Faculty and staff in the college’s eight graduate groups were well-represented among this year’s recipients of mentorship and service awards by Graduate Studies, which presents awards annually to members of the graduate community who have made impactful and far-reaching differences in their programs, and in the experiences of their students.

Alyssa Parsons
Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular and Development Biology graduate group coordinator

For most people, contracting Zika virus, a flavivirus carried by mosquitos, is akin to getting any mildly inconvenient virus. 

You might get a fever and a rash, and it's gone in a few days. But for pregnant people, there is a roughly 4% chance that a bite from a mosquito with Zika virus could have life-altering effects on developing fetuses in the form of microcephaly, a neurological condition that indicates an under-developed brain.  

Blake Meyers, a principal investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and a professor of plant sciences from the University of Missouri - Columbia, has been named the new director and Novozymes Chair in Genomics at the UC Davis Genome Center. Meyers, who studies plant RNA biology, bioinformatics and functional genomics, will step into the role on March 1, 2024.

Beds of eelgrass (Zostera marina) form an important habitat in coastal regions throughout the northern hemisphere, crucial to many fish and other species and storing vast amounts of carbon. A new study published July 20 in Nature Plants shows that eelgrass spread around the world much more recently than previously thought, just under a quarter-million years ago. The results have implications for how eelgrass could be affected by a changing climate.

Peter Wainwright, a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, has been honored with the 2023 Joseph S. Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in Ichthyology. Conferred by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH), the award recognizes exceptional contributions to the realm of fish biology and aquatic ecosystems.

Wainwright received the award in honor of a distinguished career marked by groundbreaking research, transformative education and dedicated service to his field.

Elena Suglia, a soon-to-graduate Ph.D. candidate in the Population Biology Graduate Group, has spent her time at Davis tackling the “inextricably intertwined issues” of environmental protection, environmental justice, and equity.

In recognition of her leadership in working at the intersection of science and public policy, Suglia was awarded the 2023 Emerging Public Policy Leadership Award from the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Birth defects related to chromosomal abnormalities often stem from exposure to chemicals early in the mother’s life. But determining which chemicals are at fault poses a serious challenge — akin to solving a hit-and-run case, decades after the fact. Two College of Biological Sciences researchers are developing a method that could identify harmful chemicals far more quickly, with the help of red- and green-glowing zebrafish.

When the late Judith Simpson Schreider ’76 started giving informal advice to students interested in the health professions, she couldn’t have imagined that nearly 50 years later her generous spirit would live on, serving thousands of UC Davis students annually. Yet it does, in the form of the College of Biological Sciences’ distinctive, holistically supportive Health Professions Advising (HPA) office.