Comedian Hasan Minhaj (B.A., political science, ’07) was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2019. A former senior correspondent on The Daily Show, Minhaj hosts his own weekly talk show, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, on Netflix. His first stand-up comedy special, 2017’s Homecoming King, won a Peabody Award and was filmed at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis.
Sarah Stewart, MacArthur fellow
MacArthur fellow
Sarah Stewart, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences who combines theory and experiments to understand how planets form, was honored with a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship. She is one of three College of Letters and Science faculty member who have received a five-year “Genius Grant.”
2
New minerals named for faculty in the Department of Chemistry. Discovered in Utah’s old uranium mines, “caseyite” and “navrotskyite” honor the geochemical contributions of Professor William Casey and Distinguished Professor Alexandra Navrotsky.
7
The number of recent College graduates offered 2018–19 Fulbright Fellowships to study, conduct research, or teach English in countries around the world.
Keelan Doss (photo by Tony Gonzales/Oakland Raiders)
Going Pro
Aggie football standout Keelan Doss (B.A., sociology, ’18), who set campus records for touchdowns and all-purpose yards, is now a wide receiver with the Oakland Raiders. Three other Aggies — all hailing from the College — were invited to NFL spring rookie minicamps: Mason Moe (Philadelphia Eagles), Vincent White (Denver Broncos), and Isiah Olave (Tampa Bay Buccaneers).
Jennifer Gross (Jason Spencer/UC Davis)
3
Number of times in the past three seasons that UC Davis women’s basketball coach Jennifer Gross (B.A., sociology, ’97) has been named Big West Conference Coach of the Year. She has led the team to 97 victories, four postseason appearances, three conference championships, and a conference tournament championship.
Barbara Molloy photo
Pin that
A compostable diaper created by students for a biodesign course won a 2019 Community Choice Prize in the Design Education Initiative category of Core77 Design Awards. The Sorbit Diaper — made from bacterial cellulose, a kombucha byproduct — was also runner-up in the 2018 Biodesign Challenge competition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
6
The number of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that alumni Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have written scripts for — most recently, Avengers: Endgame. The screenwriting duo earned their master’s degrees in English in 1996.
“This is a very strange animal.”
— Ryosuke Motani, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences who, with colleagues, discovered a fossil of a marine reptile with a bill like a platypus.
Cheeto, the pudgy physics cat, was catapulted to worldwide fame this past spring on social media after funny signs asking people not to feed him went viral.
Your Guide to the Universe
A new IMAX movie, Secrets of the Universe, stars physics professor Manuel Calderón de la Barca Sánchez as the viewers’ guide inside the biggest machine ever built: the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Scientists use the collider to probe the tiniest particles in the universe.
Photo by Lynne Isbell/UC Davis
“Evolution isn’t a progression. It’s about how well organisms fit into their current environments.”
— Lynne Isbell, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology, in a July 14 LiveScience article, “Why Haven’t All Primates Evolved Into Humans?”
