Melinda Guzman, Cathy Rodriguez Aguirre and Lydia Ramirez attended UC Davis at different times, pursued different majors in the College of Letters and Science, and followed different paths to successful careers in law, business advocacy and banking. Their paths converged at various times, most recently with a shared honor: each was named to The Sacramento Bee’s inaugural list of Top 25 Latino Change Makers for leading positive transformations in their communities.
Marianne Page can count numerous accomplishments during her career as an economics professor in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, but none like an honor recently bestowed by a Napa Valley winemaker. Page appears on the label of The Sage, an organic red blend wine created by Kira Ballotta for her Cantadora brand that celebrates Page and two other women “doing extraordinary things in support of their communities.”
An app founded by a UC Davis graduate student is poised to revolutionize financial investing for the socially conscious. Fennel, a mobile investing app that gives users insights into a company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics, was recently named one of Fast Company’s “10 most innovative companies in personal finance of 2023.” What’s more, the company has raised roughly $8.5 million in seed funding to support its growth during its beta stages.
Created over 10 years ago by Professor of Chemistry Jared Shaw, the Davis Science Café meets on the second Wednesday of each month to provide an avenue for the community to learn about the current state of science across its many disciplines.
After the pandemic shut down movie theaters and slowed business for his film company in Singapore, Christian Lee (B.A., history, ’90) co-invented a new way for fans to enjoy films on the big screen.
Two College of Letters and Science faculty members are among 125 recipients of this year’s Sloan Research Fellowships, prestigious awards given by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to early-career scientific researchers seen as emerging leaders in their fields.
The 2023 fellows, including UC Davis’ Jesús M. Velázquez and Alexander S. Wein, “represent the most promising scientific researchers working today,” the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation said in announcing its selections Feb. 15.
Ten doctoral students across many disciplines in the College of Letters and Science and two students from outside the college will present research done as UC Davis Hemispheric Institute on the Americas Summer Fellowship recipients. The fellowships allowed the students to travel to further their scholarship into diverse topics ranging from music about the Panama Canal to examining human remains for insights into drought and societal collapse in Peru.
Ryan Lee Cartwright, an American studies professor in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, has received a $1.5 million award from the Mellon Foundation for a project to explore the intersection of research on disability and chronic illness. The three-year project in partnership with Yale University aims to develop a national network of scholars, culture workers and organizers who will bring disability justice approaches to the study of chronic illness.
Researchers from around the world who study the effects of meditation training and scholars from related fields will gather at UC Davis on Feb. 24 for a daylong summit, “Out of the Lab and Into the World: The Next Chapter of Contemplative Science.”
Babies learn from looking at human faces, leading many parents and childhood experts to worry about possible developmental harm from widespread face-masking during the pandemic. A new study by researchers in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science allays those concerns, finding that 6- to 9-month-old babies can form memories of masked faces and recognize those faces when unmasked.
As in years past, the UC Davis Global Tea Initiative for the Study of Tea Culture and Science annual colloquium will take a broad view of tea: its history, use as medicine, role in culture and society, agricultural practices and the tea industry. Taking place Jan. 19, this year’s colloquium is entitled “Tea and Value.”
Now in its 16th year, the California Families Project looks at the development of children of Mexican origin and a wide range of characteristics — individual, family, neighborhood, school and culture — that help them succeed in life. The landmark UC Davis study is the most comprehensive longitudinal study of its kind in the United States.
The Linguistics Society of America recently selected Robert Bayley from the UC Davis College of Letters and Science as the recipient of its 2023 Mentoring Award for his commitment to students before, during and long after their studies with him.
Twenty years after then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made a now-famous statement distinguishing "known knowns," "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns, a UC Davis economist is developing a logic for analyzing the most unpredictable category — the “unknown unknowns.”
Fukushima, Japan, was struck by a triple disaster on March 11, 2011 — earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant failure. The disaster and its impact on the nation’s psyche has been explored extensively through film, literature and art during the decade since the disaster.
