News

Latest News

UC Davis Creative Writing Series Expands Online

The Creative Writing Program of the UC Davis Department of English is expanding its reading series with online and in-person readings by visiting writers, creative writing Master of Fine Arts candidates, lecturers in the Creative Writing Program, and projects created in collaboration with art and music students.  

After Beating Leukemia, Aggie Will Ellis Finds a Cause in Helping Cancer Patients

After two decades of volunteer work with cancer charities, Will Ellis (B.A., communication and Italian, ’04) wasn’t about to let the cascading crises of 2020 derail him. Despite pandemic restrictions on in-person events, Ellis raised more than $103,000 in 10 weeks for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) Greater Bay Area Chapter to win its “Man of the Year” title.

Meteorites Show Transport of Material in Early Solar System

New studies of a rare type of meteorite show that material from close to the sun reached the outer solar system even as the planet Jupiter cleared a gap in the disk of dust and gas from which the planets formed. The results, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to an emerging understanding of how our solar system formed and how planets form around other stars.

Mount Everest Summit Success Rate Is Climbing

The number of climbers who successfully set foot on the summit has doubled since the 1990s, reaching as high as 60% in the past decade, according to a new study from researchers at UC Davis and the University of Washington. Meanwhile death rates have remained unchanged, despite the rise in climbers crowding the routes near the peak.

UC Davis Historians Receive National Parks Funding to Collect Women’s Stories

Two UC Davis historians have received funding from the National Park Service to address the educational gap in U.S. women’s history and role in the nation’s national parks. Professors Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor and Lisa Materson will craft 80 biographies of women involved in national parks in the western region of the United States, and, in a longer article, connect those women’s lives to the ongoing struggle for voting rights.

Two Alumni Named ACLS Emerging Voices Fellows

Two alumni scholars who use digital media to help Indigenous communities recover their history and ancestral language have been selected by the American Council of Learned Societies as inaugural Emerging Voices Fellows.

Jackson Wins Lilienfeld Prize

William Jackson, distinguished professor emeritus of chemistry, has been awarded the American Physical Society’s Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize.

Lorena Oropeza Named Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Diversity

Historian Oropeza also selected by Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities for Leadership Academy.

History professor Lorena Oropeza is having a leadership moment. On Thursday (Aug. 20), the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities named Oropeza as one of 26 fellows in the second cohort of its Leadership Academy/La Academia de Liderazgo. The same day, the UC Davis Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion announced her appointment as the interim associate vice chancellor for academic diversity.

Ichthyosaur’s Last Meal Is Evidence of Triassic Megapredation

Some 240 million years ago, a dolphin-like ichthyosaur ripped to pieces and swallowed another marine reptile only a little smaller than itself. Then it almost immediately died and was fossilized, preserving the first evidence of megapredation, or a large animal preying on another large animal. The fossil, discovered in 2010 in southwestern China, is described in a paper published Aug. 20 in the journal iScience.

Jairo Fúquene Patiño Named CAMPOS Scholar

Assistant professor of statistics Jairo Fúquene Patiño has been recognized as a 2020 CAMPOS faculty scholar by the UC Davis Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science, or CAMPOS. The center focuses on building diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

His research focuses on Bayesian approaches, which involve applying probability to statistical analysis of data-driven problems in public health and medicine, environmental data, and survey sampling data, among others.

David Olson Receives Neurochemistry Award

Assistant Professor David Olson has received the American Society for Neurochemistry’s Jordi Folch-Pi Memorial Award. The award is given to an outstanding young investigator who has demonstrated a high level of research competence and originality, has significantly advanced our knowledge of neurochemistry, and shows a high degree of potential for future accomplishments.