Jorge Peña, an assistant professor of communication, has recently been teaming up with researchers across disciplines to observe the impact that virtual experiences, which includes playing video games, can have on people in the real world.

Here is Peña discussing some of his recent work and what they tell us about opportunities for the future.

Security on the web has as much to do with the programmers writing code as it does with firewalls and virus protection. Linguistics Associate Professor Raúl Aranovich studies language structure and theory, and is working on a project for the National Science Foundation that could identify programmers most likely to write vulnerable code.

Last year, Aranovich won funding to lead a collaboration with UC Davis computer scientists P. T. Devanbu and V.

Children whose parents are in prison have worse health, poorer school performance and are at a greater risk for depression, anxiety, asthma and HIV/AIDS, according to a policy brief released by the Center for Poverty Research at UC Davis.

In 2010, an estimated 2.7 million children, and one in nine African American children, had an imprisoned parent.