UC Davis

Widely known as the “father of the plug-in hybrid,” Professor Andrew Frank has championed this approach to fuel-efficient vehicles that combines gasoline engines with electric motors running on rechargeable batteries.

All living things depend on water, but a handful of organisms including tardigrades, brine shrimp and baker’s yeast can survive for long periods in a dehydrated state.

Professor Harold Olmo developed 30 grape varieties, and his study of the chardonnay grape led to its economic viability. Chardonnay is now California’s most important wine grape variety, cultivated on nearly 100,000 acres throughout the state.

UC Davis plant breeder Jack Hanna and engineer Coby Lorenzen teamed up in the 1950s to invent a machine that could mechanically harvest tomatoes and develop a tomato that would be tough enough to survive a harvester.

Thomas Cahill and colleagues at the Crocker Nuclear Lab used the lab’s cyclotron to study air quality, among other things. In the 1970s, Cahill’s team provided evidence showing how lead pollution spread from freeways over neighborhoods, leading then-Gov. Jerry Brown to introduce the first controls on lead as a gasoline additive.