This year, we are excited for the 2024 UC Davis Plant Sciences Symposium to represent work across the plant sciences with the theme, “Plant diversity from genes to ecosystems.”
The event is this Friday, April 11, in the Walter A. Buehler Alumni Center. Registration and coffee start at 8 a.m., with the event opening at 8:45 a.m. Jason Rauscher will speak; he’s the R&D academic relations lead for our event’s core partner Corteva Agriscience. The day includes speakers, poster sessions and networking.
Doctoral student Matt Davis traveled to Washington, D.C., recently to experience first-hand the intersection of agricultural science and federal policy-making.
“We were there to learn about careers in government and policy,” Davis explained. “We learned how to communicate with legislators and went to the legislators’ offices to talk about the 2024 Farm Bill and the importance of funding agricultural research.”.
Ph.D. candidate Deniz Inci is the Weed Science Society of America graduate student of the month. Here, he offers some background on his passion for finding solutions to the problem of weeds in agriculture.
Graduate students took home first- and second-place honors for their poster presentations at the annual California Plant and Soil Conference, hosted by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources in Fresno, Calif., recently.
Graduate student Paige Kouba discussed her research with California legislators as part of a program to train scientists to better communicate with policy-makers. Kouba met with Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar Curry (D-Winters) and other legislative leaders at the state Capitol recently. Her goal is to inform science policy coming out of Sacramento.
Early career scientists from the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences were hosted to a recent conference where they networked with industry professionals and attended educational sessions.
Alyssa Arias, a sophomore at UC Davis, passionate about agriculture, receives the "William and Charlotte Lider" and "2nd Lieutenant Warren R. Salz Memorial" scholarships. Inspired by family farming heritage, she majors in international agricultural development.
Matthew Fatino, a Ph.D. candidate in UC Davis' Department of Plant Sciences, was named WSSA graduate student of the month. Passionate about weed science, his research focuses on in-season management of branched broomrape, a threat to California's tomato and seed industries.
Doctoral student Marie Klein’s career is getting bolstered with recognition and connections after being named a 2023 Borlaug Scholar by the National Association of Plant Breeders.
Brian Bailey, Dan Kliebenstein, Amanda Crump and Alessandro Ossola were honored by the UC Davis Graduate Program with the 2023 Advising and Mentoring Award. They were among 34 faculty recognized across the university.
This summer, four students from historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, came to UC Davis for seven immersive weeks of research, fieldwork, training and mentoring. The students worked with faculty studying plant, food and other sciences as part of the Plant Agricultural Biology Graduate Admissions Pathways program.
Red, ripe cherries hide in small clusters amid long leaves in the UC Davis teaching orchard. They’re sweet, juicy, beautiful. In area grocery stores, such delights cost up to $8 a pound, but these would have gone to the birds. They must be harvested by hand, and at the price of labor, they’re too expensive to pick, said orchard manager Victor Serratos of the Department of Plant Sciences.
Amanda Crump and Marina Vergara, of the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, have won a federal grant to use the cacao value chain as a point of both learning and international engagement for students here and at La Salle University in Bogotá, Colombia.
Eduardo Blumwald sees them every year: the freshmen in his courses who wrestle with basic scientific concepts. The father of three knew he could help ‒ by providing relatively simple information about advanced research to high school teachers.
