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Graduate Studies is pleased to announce and recognize the dedicated and talented individuals who have earned awards and recognition for their outstanding achievements in the 2024-25 academic year, as well as acknowledge incoming fellows.

The following graduate students and postdoctoral students are recognized for their exceptional contributions in research and teaching. The incoming cohorts for the President's Postdoctoral Fellowships / Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowships and Professors for the Future program are also listed.

In the 2025-2026 academic year, UC Davis Graduate Studies will celebrate 100 years of graduate education in Davis!

Congratulations to the Graduate Class of 2025 who received their degrees from UC Davis Graduate Studies on June 12 at the University Credit Union Center on campus. In order to honor graduates more personally, two distinct ceremonies were organized by degree type with the Master's Ceremony beginning at 10 a.m. and the MFA and Doctoral Ceremony beginning at 3 p.m. We celebrated not only the hard work and dedication of our graduates, but also the support of family, friends, and mentors who have been part of this journey. 

Graduate Studies and Graduate Council are thrilled to honor two extraordinary faculty members with this year's Distinguished Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentorship Awards. These awards shine a light on the power of mentorship in shaping the academic and professional journeys of UC Davis graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

Claire Murphy, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Population Biology Graduate Group, wants everyone to feel like they belong in research. Based at the Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML), Murphy studies how tiny seagrass crustaceans avoid being eaten by fish, crabs, and other predators. Since coming to UC Davis in 2020, she’s mentored 11 UC Davis undergraduates, including five independent summer research projects.

The big day has finally arrived! After years of tireless work, it’s time to savor every second of this incredible celebration. We’ve got you covered with our top tips to ensure your graduation day runs smoothly, so you can focus on basking in the glory of your hard-earned achievement.

Yara Khatib, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Pharmacology and Toxicology Graduate Group, won second place in the UC Grad Slam competition held on April 29 at the UC Student and Policy Center in Sacramento. This is the first year the University of California hosted its systemwide competition in the state’s capital after moving it from the LinkedIn Center in San Francisco. Khatib competed against nine other graduate students representing each of the other universities in the University of California system.

We're excited to announce that Ingrid Sub Cuc, a doctoral candidate in Native American Studies, has been selected as a 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellow! 

Fourth-year Pharmacology and Toxicology Ph.D. candidate Yara Khatib won first place at the UC Davis Grad Slam Semi-Final round on Friday, April 11, 2025. Her winning presentation "The Road to Recovery: Psychedelic-like drugs for Improving Mental Health" earned her a $5,000 first prize.

Khatib's presentation and research examined how different drugs affect the structure of brain cells, an interest that began as an undergraduate.

The School of Veterinary Medicine brought home the campus’s top placement in U.S. News & World Report’s most recent rankings of professional and graduate programs, published Monday (April 7).

UC Davis again ranked first in the nation for veterinary medicine, consistent with its placement in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, released in March.

Grad Slam is almost here! (Register to attend in-person Friday, April 11, 2025).

We asked 2024 UC Davis Grad Slam champion Sasha Neil Pimento to share her experiences throughout the competition.

The University of California, Davis, has launched a website and video series titled, “From Labs to Lives,” to highlight federally funded research, describe how the research benefits the public, and share the consequences to the public if funding is reduced or eliminated.

Victoria Watson-Zink, Ph.D. ’22, a postdoctoral evolutionary marine biologist, received the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Hanna H. Gray Fellowship last month. This year’s fellowship supports the transition of 25 early-career scientists to leading labs and becoming tenured faculty.

The genetics behind the alternating sexes of walnut trees has been revealed by biologists at the University of California, Davis. The research, published Jan. 3 in Science, reveals a mechanism that has been stable in walnuts and their ancestors going back 40 million years — and which has some parallels to sex determination in humans and other animals.