Shellfish, along with other marine organisms, are facing a crisis, one that affects the integrity of their shells. As carbon dioxide emissions increase in the atmosphere, so too does the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by our oceans, leading to ocean acidification. Graduate student Meghan Zulian has devoted her doctoral studies to understanding how ocean acidification, and more broadly climate change, affects culturally, economically and ecologically important shellfish, including abalone

For decades, Geerat Vermeij has forged an illustrious career in the sciences by studying the intricacies of ancient seashell fossils. The findings he’s gleaned from his meticulous work have yielded broader insights about evolution, humanity, biology, economics and now, the role of power. In his new book, Vermeij explores how “the history of life on Earth can be meaningfully and informatively interpreted as a history of power” with the human species representing the current apex.

For her landmark work in the development and application of shock physics techniques to explain the origin and evolution of planetary systems, Sarah Stewart has been selected as an American Physical Society Fellow, a prestigious honor that no more than half of one percent of the society’s membership (excluding student members) are nominated for each year.

As dean of the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, the largest college on campus that more than 14,000 undergraduate students call home, Estella Atekwana envisions the college as a bridge that helps students make their dreams a reality while being a powerhouse for interdisciplinary research.

A fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of America, geochemist Kari Cooper, a professor of earth and planetary sciences in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, won the American Geophysical Union’s Norman L. Bowen Award, which honors a mid-career or senior scientist for outstanding contributions to the fields of petrology, volcanology and geochemistry.

A little over four and a half billion years ago, dust circling our young sun was collecting into balls that would become planets. Heat from radioactive decay melted these balls of dust into blobs of molten rock, growing as they accumulated more material. A small piece of one of these molten objects broke away and traveled around the solar system for eons before falling to Earth as a meteorite in the Algerian desert. Now, very accurate dating of this meteorite is giving new insight into the formation of the Solar System. The work, by an international team including Professor Qingzhu Yin and colleagues at the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Science and collaborators at Australian National University, was published Aug. 29 in Nature Communications.

An international research team led by a UC Davis alum has created a new method to reconstruct the drift path and origin of debris from Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which went missing over the Indian Ocean with 239 passengers onboard.

Over the course of her career, Distinguished Professor Isabel Montañez has created a research niche in the fields of geochemistry and paleoclimatology: applying an Earth systems science approach to recreate Earth from eons past. For her monumental work in the geology field, Montañez recently received the Geological Society of America’s Arthur L. Day Medal.

As we reckon with the effects of climate change, so too must the other organisms that call Earth home. But what if you couldn’t move away from your dwelling to escape a threat? What if your shelter, your refuge, was a part of your body? Shellfish face this plight. Supported by an $80,000 California Sea Grant Graduate Research Fellowship, UC Davis doctoral candidate Hannah Kempf is exploring how to unify modern scientific techniques with Indigenous shellfish management practices to help protect shellfish from ocean acidification.