Returning to the hustle and bustle of daily routines after over a year of lockdowns is a challenge many people are now facing. For former UC Davis gymnast Madeline Kennedy ’14, it is a challenge she is helping current Aggies overcome as a physical therapist at Student Health and Counseling Services.

Kennedy provides support for students’ physical well-being, many of whom are facing the realities of everyday in-person life again—whether it’s returning to club or team sports, using the ARC or adjusting to moving around campus once more.

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For the 2021-2022 academic year, the college is proud to welcome three new members to its faculty. Below you’ll learn more about the research interest of each faculty member, and what brought them to UC Davis.

Xiaomo Chen joined the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior as an assistant professor in September 2021. Before joining the UC Davis faculty, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.

Somehow December is here already. With the end of the year just around the corner, we can look back on what we have accomplished over the last 12 months, and reflect on how far we’ve come.

In the second year of this program, Chancellor Gary S. May and academic leadership selected five fellows, four from the Academic Senate and one from the Academic Federation. Each fellow has received $5,000 in academic enrichment funds.

Scientists are a step closer to breeding plants with genes from only one parent. New research led by plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, published Nov. 19 in Science Advances, shows the underlying mechanism behind eliminating half the genome and could make for easier and more rapid breeding of crop plants with desirable traits such as disease resistance.

The Biology Academic Success Center (BASC)—the one-stop-shop for academic support and advising services for undergraduate students in the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences—welcomed five new employees to the Aggie family this year. The additions include four new academic advisors and a program coordinator, who will all assist in guiding the academic journeys of the over 6,500 undergraduate students spread across the college’s 11 majors.

It’s estimated that over 281,000 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, according to the National Cancer Institute. And about one in seven women will receive a breast cancer diagnosis in their lifetime.

For those with breast cancer gene 2 (BRCA2) mutations, the risk of developing breast cancer is much higher. Between 45 and 69 percent of those with this genetic mutation will develop breast cancer by 70 to 80 years of age. 

There are myriad ways to view the world. Some people view it through the lens of art, others through the lens of anthropology or psychology. But Connie Rojas views the world through the lens of biology.

“Everything around you—the tree outside, how tall it is, the bark—everything makes sense  when viewed through the lens of biology,” said Rojas, who was selected to join UC Davis this year as a 2021-2022 Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow. “That type of thinking was very intuitive for me growing up.” 

Five students from the College of Biological Sciences have been selected for a prestigious global fellowship program that focuses on social impact projects, an achievement that was first announced by UC Davis Global Affairs earlier this fall.

The Millennium Fellowship is a highly selective semester-long global leadership development program run by United Nations Academic Impact and the Millennium Campus Network. Fellows convene to learn from and challenge each other, both at their home campuses and with peers at other institutions.