Chemical engineering professor Greg Miller and chemistry professor Mike Toney teach the “Chemical and Engineering Principles in Whiskey and Fuel Alcohol” (ECH/CHE 168) course at UC Davis, which teaches undergraduate students the chemical engineering and chemistry of making whiskey.
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.”
After closing 2021-22 with a near-record high of $65.7 million in grants and contracts representing 448 projects — the most ever recorded — the UC Davis College of Letters and Science started this year even stronger. In the first quarter of 2022-23, faculty received more than $25.5 million in research funding, up 37.8 % from the same period last year.
The UC Davis College of Letters and Science will be well represented when the Modern Language Association holds its annual convention in January. About 30 UC Davis faculty members and graduate students will present research at the gathering in San Francisco of the MLA, the leading organization for scholars of language and literature.
Robin Erbacher, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Letters and Science, has been recognized among the top female scientists around the globe, as assessed by Research.com in its first ranking of the “Best Female Scientists in the World."
Chemist Justin Siegel is one of two UC Davis faculty members elected to the National Academy of Inventors’ 2022 class of fellows. Siegel's work in computational enzyme engineering is focused on discovering catalysts that improve health and environmental outcomes. He holds more than 100 global patents and has co-founded eight startups in the last 10 years.
Albert J. McNeil, UC Davis professor emeritus of the Department of Music and an original faculty member and chair of the Department of African American and African Studies, died on Nov. 29. He was 102. At UC Davis from 1969 to 1990, McNeil transformed the University Chorus from an occasional course to a full public performance group and also created the Chamber Singers.
Maceo Montoya is a UC Davis professor, writer, artist and scholar, and recently made his first film. He’s also added editor to his many titles, leading the highly regarded Huizache: The Magazine of a New America.Montoya recently piloted the relaunch of the journal with a new issue coming out this month.
Kirk Colvin spent a year as U.S. Coast Guard attaché to the American Embassy during the final months of the brutal Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier regime in the 1980s. His time there informed his novel Bloodless Coup, winner of the Maurice Prize for Fiction. The $10,000 prize is awarded to UC Davis alumni and was established in 2005 by bestselling author John Lescroart in honor of his father.
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.
As part of an ongoing study stretching from Davis to Germany and across the many islands of Indonesia, the UC Davis Department of Music is holding a second conference on Indonesian music. “Rethinking The History Of Indonesian Music” on Nov. 5 brings together scholars from around the globe and is organized by Professor Henry Spiller and Professor Emerita Anna Maria Busse Berger.
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.
