Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program at UC Davis

Brayan Vilanova-Cuevas just defended his dissertation in the Field of Microbiology at Cornell University. In January, he will be off to do a postdoc at the University of North Carolina -- Charlotte under the mentorship of Dr. Elaine Luo. His research in the Luo lab will focus on grazing by marine snails on corals, with implications for management and conservation of coral reefs.

Congratulations, Brayan!

Meet Dr. Brandy Weathers, PREP@UC Davis alumna from the 2020-2021 cohort.

Brandy just completed a PhD from the Molecular and Computational Biology program at USC under the direction of Sean Curran. She studied host-pathogen interactions, signal transduction, and immune response in C. elegans.

Want some of the details? You can read some of her work in Nature Communications.

PREP alumna Celena Lozano has come a long way since her days as a UC Davis undergrad. 

Congratulations to PREP alumna Dr. Anna Andronicos (Georgieva), who defended her dissertation at UC Irvine late last month. In addition to her research on the role of methionine in the cell cycle, Anna was a member of the UCI GPS-STEM program and led the 2024 Science Policy and Advocate Certificate Program.

The National Academy of Sciences and Medicine is hosting a two day summit in person and online, Reimagining STEMM Graduate and Postdoctoral Education. One of the panel discussions includes PREP@UCD alumna Alyssa Paparella!

We hosted the 2024-2025 PREP@UC Davis research symposium today and wrapped a celebration of our alumni.

So proud of them all. Open the .pdf and you'll see why!

2024-25_PREP_retrospective.pdf

PREP@UC Davis alumni continue to make substantial contributions to improving access to STEM.

Jonathan Amezquita (PREP@UCD 2018 cohort) just presented his exit seminar at the University of Washington, with Dan, Carole, and mentor JoAnne Engebrecht watching on zoom. Beautifully executed and an impressive amount of very cool work on the regulation of sensory neurons in C. elegans. 

You can read the publication from the first part of his dissertation at PLoS Genetics, 2024 Dec 13;20(12):e1011496. A second manuscript is in review.

The members of the 2024-2025 PREP@UC Davis cohort have made decisions about their next steps.

PREP@UC Davis faculty members continue to accrue honors.