In this Laurels column, find awards given for proposals and innovation, as well as an induction, an addition to an index and two new fellows.

Dateline UC Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.

Research Corporation for Science Advancement Bridge Award

Research Corporation for Science Advancement has awarded $800,000 to 11 Cottrell Scholars through its RCSA Bridge Awards. This emergency initiative will help stabilize strong research programs that have experienced disruptions due to abrupt changes to their federal funding. Jesús Velázquez, associate professor of chemistry, is among the awardees.

The proposals collectively highlighted the stresses currently facing early career faculty and their trainees. These included funding pauses, delays or cancellations; uncertainty about funding renewals and future grant solicitations; and loss of support for students, postdocs and technical staff.

Velázquez's proposal is called “Stabilizing Research and Student Training in Multinary Chalcogenides and Microenvironment-Driven CO₂ Valorization.”

-RCSA

CITRIS-CDSS Innovation Fellowship

Zhaodon Kong, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, will bring a sensor network for early wildfire detection from the lab to the wildlands, thanks to a new award.  

The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute, or CITRIS, and the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science and Society, or CDSS, with support from the Academic Innovation Catalyst, has selected Kong as one of five recipients for the 2025 CITRIS-CDSS Innovation Fellowship and AIC Award.

“At its core, this program is about advancing technology that serves the public good,” said Matt Sonsini, principal and co-founder of AIC and member of the CITRIS advisory board. “The ingenuity of UC faculty combined with the right support, resources and pathways to scale has the power to turn breakthrough research into solutions that address society’s most pressing challenges.”

-Hope Muñoz

Ecological Society of America’s Graduate Student Policy Award

UC Davis master’s student Gabriel F. Calistro is one of 20 U.S. recipients of the 2026 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America, or ESA.

The award honors students who are engaged in advocacy with an interest in science policy. Awardees travel to Washington, D.C., for policy, communication and career training followed by meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Calistro is part of the UC Davis Graduate Group in Ecology, and his studies are supported by the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center Graduate Fellowship. His research focuses on remote sensing and machine learning in the mountain lakes of the Sierra Nevada, where he aims to autonomously document, identify and predict algal blooms, notes the ESA announcement.

“This year’s Graduate Student Policy Award recipients represent an exceptional group of emerging leaders in ecology,” said ESA President Peter Groffman. “Their interest in public service signals a bright future for ecological science.”

Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities member

Tamara Swaab, professor of psychology at UC Davis, has been elected as a foreign member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, or KHMW, one of the highest honors bestowed on scholars in the Netherlands.

Swaab, who has served on the faculty in psychology since 1998 and is an affiliate of the Center for Mind and Brain, is widely recognized for her research on how the brain supports language comprehension and adapts to different language environments across people’s lives.

The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, or Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen in Dutch, was founded in 1752, and is the oldest learned society in the Netherlands. Its mission is to advance scholarship across the sciences and humanities and to promote meaningful engagement between science and society.

Swaab will be honored at a new member induction ceremony in the Netherlands on March 30. 

-Alex Russell

Inspiring Black Scientists

Several UC Davis faculty members have been named to Wiley's Index of Inspiring Black Scientists.

This list, created by a board of scholars and the publisher Wiley, compiles scientists and their research interests. Scientists in the database are nominated based on their contributions to the scientific community and come from a diverse set of fields and backgrounds.

The UC Davis honorees are:

• Diane Beckles, professor of plant sciences
• Daril Brown, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology, UC Davis Health
• Aldrin Gomes, professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior; and physiology and membrane biology
• Theanne Griffith, assistant professor of physiology membrane biology
• Gary S. May, chancellor
• Crystal Rogers, associate professor of anatomy, physiology and cell biology 

 

 

 

IEEE fellows

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization, has elected Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Lifeng Lai and Professor of Biomedical Engineering Ramsey Badawi to the level of fellow.

Lai’s visionary research has propelled signal processing efficiency and secure communication protocols to the modern age. He has also set the stage for applying machine learning to wireless networks through research that will have a lasting impact on emerging intelligent communication systems, such as cognitive radios. 

IEEE has recognized Badawi for his contributions to the development, implementation and application of the world’s first total-body positron emission tomography scanner, EXPLORER. 

-Matt Marcure