Anna La Torre Vila, a faculty member in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, recently was recognized by UC Davis Graduate Studies for excellence in graduate mentoring and advising. Anna was recognized for her service to graduate programs, commitment to advising and mentoring, and positive impact on graduate students and colleagues. 

PREP@UCD alum Amy Leslie received one of two 2022-2023 travel awards from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. Amy, a doctoral candidate in Integrative Pathobiology and mentee of Dr. Allen Gao, will use her award to support attending a cancer-relevant meeting in 2023.

Congrats to Amy!

Colton Baumler, a PREP@UC Davis alumnus and graduate student in UC Davis' Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology program, received the College of Biological Sciences Dean's Mentorship Award in Spring 2022.  What's more, the quiet, self-effacing, and publicity-shy Baumler was featured as part of an article on first generation college students in the Fall 2022 issue of a UC Davis publication, In Greater Focus.

After nearly two months of editing our NSF GRFP essays, all five of the 2022-23 PREP scholars finally submitted our applications and immediately packed into cars and drove east to Fallen Leaf Lake.

We spent the weekend of October 14th-16th at the highly anticipated Molecular and Cellular Biology T32 Retreat. We'd been told that we would hear science talks from graduate students in the training program, network with other students and faculty, and explore the lake (situated about 1 mile from Lake Tahoe). 

Several labs at UC Davis currently are searching for junior specialists (i.e., lab techs in a one-to-two- year position focused on research, rather than lab management)

• María Maldonado, Assistant Professor of Plant Biology -- see https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF05309
• Grey Monroe, Plant Genomics lab -- see https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF05259

...and others.

Every week, UC Davis Chancellor Gary May interviews a member of the campus community about their role and work at UC Davis. For his 20th episode, he interviewed PREP mentor Crystal Rogers about Chonk, her work to bring students from historically excluded backgrounds into STEM, changing the face of the academy, and her research in developmental biology.

I can't imagine a world where I'm not a scientist.

It's Official.

Professor Joanna Chiu now is the director of the PREP site at UC Davis, with Dan Starr assisting as Co-Director.

Dan remarked, "I am delighted to pass the baton for PREP@UCDavis to Joanna. I couldn’t imagine a better person to be the next director. She'll serve future PREP scholars incredibly well."

PREP@UCD hosted scholars, faculty, and staff from our sibling PREP sites at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley in what we hope will become an annual tradition.

Catching up on folks' accomplishments....

Dr. Florentine Rutaganira (UC Davis alumna, now an Assistant Professor at Stanford) seeks research assistants! And her lab has the BEST name. a name as cool as the BESt lab.

PREP scholar Kiya Jackson coauthored a book chapter with Professor Joanna Chiu and Chiu labbies Yao Cai and Sergio Sotelo. Their work describes an assay based on circadian locomotor activity in Drosophila melanogaster that can be used with mutant screens and mechanistic studies to identify and characterize key molecular components of the circadian clock.

Congratulations, Kiya! 

Summer 2022 brought a new cohort of scholars to PREP@UC Davis. We're pleased to host Alex Garcia, Angel Ruiz, Arielle Hancko, Johnny Vertiz, and Kiya Jackson this year. They constitute our sixth (!) cohort since launching PREP@UC Davis. 

A week ago, we bid farewell to the 2021-2022 PREP@UC Davis cohort and undergrad affiliates. They all did a wonderful job presenting their research in the PREP@UC Davis research symposium. After a dinner with a mentors and a few days of R&R, they're off to their new graduate programs.

Forewarned is forearmed.

We invited current UC Davis grad students Arthur Flores (Immunology), Celena Lozano (Neuroscience), and Maribel Anguiano (Neuroscience) to talk with our current cohort of PREP@UCD scholars about their first year as grad students. 

The scholars peppered them with questions in our hour-long discussion.

The 2021-2022 Cohort of PREP@UCD scholars and affiliates are making have made decisions about grad school! They have worked hard and their mentors have provided tremendous support.

We are SO excited and proud of them.