Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program at UC Davis

Applications for the 2025-2026 cohort of PREP@UC Davis now are available!

• For a narrative about application, please see https://prep.ucdavis.edu/apply
• For the application site itself, go to https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF06864

Application review begins in mid-February. For questions not addressed on the web page, contact PREP@UC Davis coordinator Connie Champagne.

Dr. Iván Olaya gave the UC Davis Molecular and Cellular Biology seminar yesterday, Chromosome asynapsis and unrepaired DNA double-strand breaks fail to elicit a strong meiotic prophase checkpoint response in zebrafish. In presenting his dissertation research, he told a detailed story about his meticulous work to investigate the mechanisms that regulate repair of double-strand breaks in zebrafish DNA. 

Professor Manuel Navedo has been named the 2025 recipient of the Robert M. Berne Distinguished Lectureship of the American Physiological Society. This award, presented annually by the Cardiovascular Section, recognizes Navedo's groundbreaking research on novel channel-signaling pathways in the circulatory system.

We've heard from a few of our alumni.

November addition: Colton Baumler now is a Fellow of the UC Davis Professors for the Future. His project focuses on training graduate students to use modern research tools to help organize their projects. UC Davis folks, watch for notices of upcoming workshops.

September version:

From Johnny Vertiz at UC Irvine:

Our chests are puffing out with pride! Congrats to Maribel Anguiano for coauthoring a review published in this week's issue of Science!

The paper summarized new tools from chemical biology that scientists can use to monitor neuromodulator and neuropeptide signals in awake organisms. 

Neuromodulator and neuropeptide sensors and probes for precise circuit interrogation in vivo

J. Muir, M. Anguiano, and T. Kim.

To close out the year on an energetic note: Emari Mann created a TikTok to depict a typical day in her life as a PREP@UCD scholar: professional development, research, social time with her cohort, and more research.

Check it out!

Clarification: the postbacc program is PREP@UC Davis, which differs from the one referenced by a commenter. 

Thanks, Emari! We will miss you and the others in the 2023-2024 cohort!

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

Winning a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) award is a major achievement for aspiring scientists and researchers. Beyond the financial support it offers (which, let's be real, is fantastic!), the GRFP presents amazing personal and professional growth opportunities. In this blog post, l explore the journey of applying for, winning, and thriving in the aftermath of the GRFP.

Iván Olaya, a UC Davis alumnus and PREP@UCD scholar from our founding cohort, has received an IRACDA postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA! 

The UCLA IRACDA program awards postdoctoral fellowships to scholars who have demonstrated interest in academic careers and promoting DEI in STEM disciplines. In addition to mentored research, the program supports its fellows with training in pedagogy and a faculty-mentored teaching experience at partner institution CSULA.

The PREP scholars decided to explore a bit further past Davis and headed to Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz county! 

To explore the multitude of hiking opportunities in NorCal, we explored one of the 49 redwood state parks California has to offer. Not sure if we'll hit the other 48 anytime soon, but it's good to know they're there. 

We had a few goals when going into this hike: 

The College of Biological Sciences wrote a iovely profile of the 2023-2024 PREP@UCD cohort! Check it out when you have a chance!

There's lots of celebratory joy out our way... our PREP scholars have made decisions about their destinations for next year.

As of 9 April, the sites linked below still are accepting applications. For some, the website says that the deadline has passed. The directors say to apply anyway. Others close in mid or late April. Either way, do not procrastinate.

Count 'em, four.

We are proud and happy (i.e., giddy and thrilled) to announce (i.e., shout to the world) that four PREP@UCD scholars from the 2023-2024 cohort received fellowships from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. And one affiliate who joined partway through the 2022-2023 program year received an Honorable Mention. 

Every year for the past 20-ish years, the T32 Training Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology hosts an annual retreat at Fallen Leaf Lake to foster cohesiveness and community.  In October 2023, we joined the UC Davis T32 graduate students and faculty on their retreat.  

A brisk 3.5-hour drive to Fallen Leaf Lake, a smallish lake near Lake Tahoe, took us to a cabin-style conference center (and resort where Stanford alumni spend their summers) that has stood for more than a century. Over this retreat weekend, I took in the wooded scenery and intriguing science.