Graduate Student Success

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.

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! 

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.

Sam Arcement—Director of Graduate Academic Programs for the College of Biological Sciences, and the program coordinator for the Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology (MCIP) Graduate Group—has been honored with the 2024 Outstanding Graduate Program Coordinator Award from the Office of Graduate Studies. This year saw a record number of nominations. “Sam tirelessly ensures that our needs and concerns are heard and addressed,” said one MCIP student, who praised Arcement’s dedication to student advocacy.

In many ways, Jessi Jarrin’s story at UC Davis is just beginning to be written. A first-year MFA in poetry student, Jarrin was awarded a prestigious Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, providing her with full tuition and fees plus a stipend for two years to support her graduate education.