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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.

During the months of November, December, and January, Graduate Studies and the Graduate Center will have modified hours to account for holidays, events, and limited staff coverage. Please note the changes to our schedules and dates that we will need to close the building to the public.

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.

Check out the below links for information on voting and other resources:

The American Physiological Society recently named UC Davis Professor Manuel Navedo the 2025 recipient of the Robert M. Berne Distinguished Lectureship. This award is presented annually by the society’s Cardiovascular Section to an established leader in cardiovascular research.

Commitment. Passion. Empathy. These descriptors were just a few of the plaudits the winners of the 2024 Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award received in their nomination letters. 

“[This professor’s] mentorship is always the perfect balance of pushing you to your full capacity, while also supporting at a level that fosters independence, creativity and self-ownership.”

“[This professor] combines a deep sense of empathy with a steely commitment to student development.”