Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program at UC Davis

Need a few minutes to close your eyes or just chill? Check out the Nap Map, starring Cleo the Cow. Curated by undergrads and supported by the UC Davis Health Education and Promotion unit.

Cow??? Why a cow?

After a whole year here at UC Davis, my time here has come to an end. There are many creatures that I will miss in this charming college town. 

Growing up in Los Angeles, California, my lifestyle was very different from the slow-paced world of UC Davis. At UC Davis, instead of being surrounded by buildings and traffic, I found myself surrounded by nature and agriculture. Soon after arriving at Davis, I found myself slowing down and taking in the beautiful scenery.

As a Southern California Native, Davis and Sacramento had been my only taste of what Northern California was like. Davis’ 113 ℉ heat wave back in September was unbearable, the hottest climate I ever had the misfortune to experience; the rest of the month still hovered around the 80’s. To say I was excited to finally experience weather below 70 ℉ at San Francisco in early October was an understatement. I couldn’t wait to experience this famous city that was well known across the globe and would always pop up in cultural media and cinema.

Karen Zito, Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her "contributions to understanding excitatory synapse formation and the dynamics of postsynaptic excitatory proteins."

John Albeck, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, was recently named a 2021-22 UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow, which includes $25,000 in support of research or other scholarly work. 

PREP@UC Davis trainer Wil Joiner (Associate Professor, Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior) works with UC Davis faculty member Jonathon Schofield (Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering) to design improved prosthetic limbs for children.

Joiner studies how the brain controls the limbs and movement, and collaborates with Schofield and clinicians at the Northern California Shriners Hospital for Children in this project.

PREP@UCD mentors Dr. Megan Dennis and Dr. Crystal Rogers both earned National Science Foundation CAREER Awards this year! The CAREER Award, NSF's most prestigious grant to early career faculty, provides five years of funding in support of both research and mentoring. UC Davis now has 23 faculty who have been selected for these awards in the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 cycles.

The start of 2022 has brought changes. First, PREP@UC Davis is open for applications! Second, these four little cuties (or their siblings) have popped up across the university. 

Elva Diaz and Aldrin Gomes, both faculty in PREP@UCD, have been named to UC Davis' second cohort of Chancellor's Fellows for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion! Diaz and Gomes were recognized for their significant track record of abiding commitment to reducing opportunity gaps for students from historically marginalized groups.

UC Davis faculty member Crystal Rogers studies neurodevelopment, and specially addresses how neural crest cells migrate and differentiate to form facial features, external pigment, and parts of the nervous system. What's more, she uses a comparative lens and studies development in chickens, quail, peafowl, and axolotls. Insights from her research may lead to increased understanding of vertebrate evolution, as well as disorders in developmental pathways that can lead to some types of cancer.

PREP@UCD scholars and three talented undergrads celebrated successful completion of their GRFP proposals with lunch, courtesy of the UC Davis Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

And now we wait....and prepare posters for an in-house symposium...and visit the PREP site at UC Santa Cruz...and apply to PhD programs...and do research...and more research...etc.