Foundations

For the first time in university history, the W.M. Keck Foundation has awarded two research teams at the University of California, Davis, with $1 million each in the same award cycle. One will study where chemical reactions occur in deep regions of the brain to improve the treatments for brain disorders; the other will create new technology for communications and medicine that operates at wavelengths that are not currently utilized.

Thanks to a $247,000 in funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Awards Program, the MIND Institute is building a network of partnerships with self-advocates, families and community organizations. It will serve as a foundation to make clinical practices, research and systems of care more inclusive and accessible.  

Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the College of Engineering and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis, Ralph Aldredge, received a Course & Program Grant from the VentureWell Foundation. The grant will support targeted outreach to introduce underrepresented undergraduate students to entrepreneurship at the Student Startup Center.

The UC Davis School of Medicine has successfully pursued new funding opportunities to provide research funds to early-career biomedical researchers working on clinical research projects and facing extra-professional demands of caregiving increased by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and its funding partner – the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the School of Medicine has received a $500,000 award that will support 10 faculty members.

University of California, Davis, evolutionary biologist Rachael Bay has been awarded a 2021 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The fellowship offers Bay, assistant professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology, College of Biological Sciences, an opportunity to advance her work on the role of human action on evolutionary trajectories of species.

The Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science, or CAMPOS, recently secured a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to further advance STEM faculty diversity by assisting underrepresented minorities with research development and family care during and after the coronavirus pandemic.

Celina Juliano, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Jacob Robinson of Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering have won a $1 million Keck Foundation grant to advance the team’s synthetic neurobiology effort to define the connections between neurons and muscles that drive programmed behaviors in living animals.

The RDM Positive Impact Foundation is funding an ambitious $1.25 million research project at the UC Davis MIND Institute to study SYNGAP1. The rare genetic condition causes seizures (epilepsy), intellectual disability and developmental delays. It is also highly associated with autism; about half of all SYNGAP1 patients have an autism diagnosis. 

The Bay Area is home to an impressive concentration of colleges and universities. It is also demographically diverse, home to many students who ardently hope to be the first in their families to earn a college degree. 

David Olson, assistant professor of chemistry, is one of only 16 early-career researchers nationwide selected for the 2021 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

The laboratory of Richard McKenney, an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology has published new research on the role of the KIF1A motor protein in degenerative disorders in children.

Two faculty members at the University of California, Davis, have been named as 2021 Sloan Research Fellows by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The University of California, Davis, has a received a nearly $500,000 Seeding Solutions grant from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) to increase the dietary fiber content in wheat products.

Patrick Shih, a biologist who studies the evolution of enzymes that play a central role in taking carbon out of the atmosphere, has been awarded a 2020 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Two University of California, Davis, historians have received funding from the National Park Service to address the educational gap in U.S. women’s history and role in the nation’s national parks.