Alumni and Friends

Professor Emeritus Ellen Gold Establishes Fellowship to Reduce Stress for Grad Students

Environmental and lifestyle factors can have a big impact on a person’s health.

It is a truth that UC Davis Professor Emeritus Ellen Gold, Ph.D. has dedicated her career to investigating as a nationally renowned epidemiologist. It also is what inspired her to create a fellowship for generations of UC Davis epidemiology graduate students and to make other gifts to ensure graduate students’ basic needs are met.

Alumnus Prem Jain Receives Cal Aggie Alumni Association's Distinguished Achievement Award

Prem Jain, M.S. ’77, tech entrepreneur and 2017 Graduate Studies Commencement speaker, is among this year's CAAA honorees. Jain will be formally presented with the Distinguished Achievement Award at the virtual  “A Night at the Aggies" event on  Friday, May 7. All alumni and community members are invited to attend, free of charge. CAAA will announce at a later date how people can watch the online event.

Two Graduate Alumni Named ACLS Emerging Voices Fellows

Two alumni scholars who use digital media to help Indigenous communities recover their history and ancestral language have been selected by the American Council of Learned Societies as inaugural Emerging Voices Fellows.

Maria G. Gutierrez and Loren Michael Mortimer are among 45 early career scholars nationwide awarded the yearlong fellowship, launched this year by the ACLS “to assist a vanguard of scholars whose voices, perspectives, and broad visions will strengthen institutions of higher education and humanistic disciplines in the years to come.”

Ph.D. Alumnus David Loury Among Recipients of 2020 UC Davis Alumni Awards

This week, the California Aggie Alumni Association announced that David Loury ’79, Ph.D. ’84, has been named the recipient of the 2020 Aggie Service Award in recognition of his contributions to multitude of campus initiatives over the course of several decades. The award honors UC Davis graduates who have demonstrated exemplary Aggie pride and dedication to UC Davis through personal commitment of time, energy, volunteerism and leadership.

Alumna Kristin Aquilino On Quest to Save the White Abalone

Kristin Aquilino is the director of the Bodega Marine Laboratory’s white abalone captive breeding program. She’s spent years investigating ways to help bring this species back from the brink of extinction. Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration honored Aquilino for her work with the Species in the Spotlight Recovery Hero Award.  

Zoology Alumnus Protects Oceans as Director of Bodega Marine Laboratory

Since 2009, Cherr has served as the director of the Bodega Marine Laboratory and as an associate director of the Coastal & Marine Sciences Institute. But he became an Aggie well before that. After completing a B.A. in Biology at Sonoma State University in 1979, he enrolled at UC Davis for graduate studies in the Zoology Department, a program within the Division of Biological Sciences, which later became the College of Biological Sciences.

Graduate Neuroscience Alumnus Richard Addante's NASA Dreams Come to Life

When Richard Addante, ’11 Ph.D. in Neuroscience, was seven, his mother took him to see the Space Shuttle Columbia launch from Cape Canaveral, FL. At that moment, his lifelong dream to become an astronaut was born. He became enamored with space, building model rockets and devouring books on the subject.

“It was so exciting for a young boy, and it ignited a spark in me that has continued to burn with a passion to explore our world and beyond,” said Addante. 

Alumna Honored in Fellow Publication

UC Davis graduate student alumna Dr. Emily Prieto was highlighted in the spring 2008 issue of “ADELANTE!”, a newsletter created by National Hispanic Science Network (NHSN) and the Summer Research Training Institute (SRTI) and distributed to their Fellows.

Emily attended SRTI in 2004 when she was a doctoral student at UC Davis. While at UC Davis, Emily won the Walker Award for Outstanding Academic Staff Advisor in 2005. Her graduate work focused on HIV interventions for hard-to-reach populations in Mexico.

Alumnus Makes a Difference in Nigeria

Dr. Vincent Seaman, a UC Davis alumnus of the Pharmacology and Toxicology Graduate Group, is helping to eradicate polio. He found his way to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after graduating in 2006.

During his four years at UC Davis, he gained the background and experience necessary for the work he does today. His research and dissertation, "The Origin and Occurrence of Acrolein in Ambient Air", focused on developing an analytical method to determine potential human exposure levels to a known air pollutant.