Sam Arcement—Director of Graduate Academic Programs for the College of Biological Sciences, and the program coordinator for the Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology (MCIP) Graduate Group—has been honored with the 2024 Outstanding Graduate Program Coordinator Award from the Office of Graduate Studies. This year saw a record number of nominations. “Sam tirelessly ensures that our needs and concerns are heard and addressed,” said one MCIP student, who praised Arcement’s dedication to student advocacy.
Commitment.Passion. Empathy. These descriptors were just a few of the plaudits the winners of the 2024 Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award received in their nomination letters.
“[This professor’s] mentorship is always the perfect balance of pushing you to your full capacity, while also supporting at a level that fosters independence, creativity and self-ownership.”
“[This professor] combines a deep sense of empathy with a steely commitment to student development.”
Marie E. Burns, a professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology and Vision Science, and Cell Biology and Human Anatomy in the School of Medicine, and a core faculty member at the Center for Neuroscience (CNS), has been appointed the CNS interim director, effective July 1, 2024.
The UC Davis College of Biological Sciences champions Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) through the Graduate Student DEIJ Leader Fellowship program. Now in its second year, the program empowers enterprising graduate students committed to enhancing DEIJ within the CBS community by supporting projects aimed at fostering a more inclusive academic environment.
Researchers in the College of Biological Sciences have received a grant to study the role of the cerebellum in autism. “We need a more holistic understanding of the brain circuits that drive this disorder,” says Alex Nord, an associate professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior (NPB), and a researcher at the Center for Neuroscience (CNS). “The cerebellum is a key component that has been largely overlooked until recently.”
Our understanding of schizophrenia has increased greatly in recent years, as studies of large groups of people have identified a multitude of genetic variants that increase a person’s risk of the disease. But each of those individual risk factors accounts for “only a very minor amount of the overall risk,” said Alex Nord, a professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior in the College of Biological Sciences and the Center for Neuroscience.
Charan Ranganath admits he can be forgetful. This is true of most people, but most people are not leading experts on the neuroscience of human memory.
“Everybody knows I have a terrible memory,” said Ranganath, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Davis, “and yet I got a Ph.D. and I publish papers all the time. I'm totally functional, so maybe the expectations we have are just wrong.”
When it comes to brain anatomy, the thalamus occupies a humble position. It sits at the top of our brainstem — an apparent vestige of our reptilian past — and is dwarfed by the massive, wrinkled cerebral cortex, which sits above it. The cortex is often credited as the throne of human intellect. But a team of researchers across the country, with UC Davis led by W. Martin Usrey, sees the thalamus as a critical coordinator of our thoughts and perceptions – and pivotal in human disease.
Christina Kim, a faculty member in the Center for Neuroscience and an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurology, has been selected as a 2023 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award recipient. The award, announced last month, is part of the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program.
