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Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, Department of Evolution and Ecology, and Marina Ellefson, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, receive 2024 College of Biological Sciences faculty awards...  The college announced the recipients of the 2024 CBS Faculty Teaching and Research Awards.

Each year, the college’s top graduating seniors are recognized for their outstanding achievements at an awards ceremony attended by friends, family, mentors and donors. This year’s graduating senior and university award recipients were honored for their academic excellence, commitment to fostering community, service to campus and their peers and for exceptional research efforts.  Kyle Elshoff, Evolution, Ecology and Biodiversity major, was awarded the College of Biological Sciences Undergraduate of the Year.

Longtime UC Davis academic coordinator Carole Hom, who retires this year after a quietly influential career, is so beloved that she has two nametags: one bearing her official title, and another with alternates—“Spiritual Leader” and “Chief Guru”—made for her by colleague Rick Grosberg, a distinguished professor emeritus of Evolution and Ecology. 

Three UC Davis students, including two from the College of Biological Sciences, have won the highly prestigious and competitive Barry Goldwater Scholarship. 

Every year, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation honors fewer than 500 undergraduate second- and third-year students from across the country with scholarships recognizing their science, technology, engineering and mathematics research accomplishments and future potential.

UC Davis junior Caroline Donohew watched the everyday power of biology in just five minutes during her summer session class at UC Davis’ Bodega Marine Laboratory, or BML, a coastal research and education facility about 100 miles west of campus. Experiences like this are available to UC Davis students across all fields.

Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, has been awarded the prestigious National Academy of Science Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences for 2024.

Maize (corn) is one of the world's most important staple crops and has great cultural significance for Indigenous peoples in the Americas. New work by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, a Department of Evolution and Ecology faculty member at UC Davis, and international colleagues shows how maize was domesticated from two wild varieties.

Jay Stachowicz, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology who studies the biodiversity and resilience of coastal ecosystems, has been named the 37th recipient of the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement. The prize, which recognizes exceptional teaching and scholarship, is among the largest of its kind in the country.

Cats like many other animals use scent to communicate with each other. A new UC Davis study characterizes the range of scent chemicals from cats and the bacteria that make them. Connie Rojas, a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Jonathan Eisen at the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology and Genome Center, led a three-part study.

Jay Stachowicz, a professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology, has been named the interim director of the Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute (CMSI). Stachowicz succeeds the institute’s founding director, Rick Grosberg, a distinguished professor emeritus of evolution and ecology who retired from the university earlier this year.

Undergraduate research helps shape our understanding of the Ocean's coast and climate at Bodega Marine Laboratory. As an R1 university, UC Davis is part of a prestigious group of universities that is conducting research at the highest level. Fewer than 200 institutions in the U.S.

Beds of eelgrass (Zostera marina) form an important habitat in coastal regions throughout the northern hemisphere, crucial to many fish and other species and storing vast amounts of carbon. A new study published July 20 in Nature Plants shows that eelgrass spread around the world much more recently than previously thought, just under a quarter-million years ago.

Peter Wainwright, a Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, has been honored with the 2023 Joseph S. Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award in Ichthyology. Conferred by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH), the award recognizes exceptional contributions to the realm of fish biology and aquatic ecosystems.

Each year, the College of Biological Sciences recognizes outstanding members of its faculty for significant efforts in the classroom and laboratory.  This year, Bruce Draper, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology who studies how germline stem cells are regulated and function in vertebrates, and Laci Gerhart, an assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Evolution and Ecology who teaches the ever-popular “Wild Davis” course, were

Laci Gerhart, an assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Evolution and Ecology, teaches EVE 016 or Wild Davis, which offers students the chance to learn about community science and the urban ecology and natural history of Davis.  And in conjunction with that course...  The Arboretum and Public Garden at UC Davis is about to get a fresh set of water quality data after students fanned out earlier this month along the Arboretum Waterway to measure salinity and fecal coliform levels.