News | Big Ideas

Frieders Earns Education Abroad Award

"Zachary “Zak” Frieders, director of UC Davis Study Abroad, recently received the Lily von Klemperer Award for leadership in his field, sharing his skills, knowledge and expertise with colleagues, and maintaining the highest standards of professional ethics.

Via UC Davis Global Affairs

UC Davis Building New Veterinary Hospital

Health

The state-of-the-art facility will be completed in phases over the next 15 years.

via KOVR

UC Davis Honors International Community at Graduation Celebration

Education

On June 14, the UC Davis community came together to celebrate the graduation of more than 1,100 international graduate and undergraduate students from 56 countries. To mark such an achievement, Global Affairs hosted an International Graduation Celebration, held amongst the various UC Davis college and school ceremonies.

Via UC Davis Global Affairs

Farm Robots Need to Be Trusted to Tell Crops From Weeds

Sustainability

Robots will move along fields either spraying herbicides through a pen-like nozzle or pulling weeds as soon as 2019 after their makers perfect programming them to distinguish weeds from crops like tomatoes.

Closing the loop on sustainable aquaculture

Sustainability

On a farm just outside of Sacramento, hundreds of prehistoric-looking fish swim around in 50-foot diameter tanks. These are white sturgeon, the largest freshwater fish in North America. They’ve been around since dinosaurs, can grow more than 7 feet long and lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time.

UC Davis Among Top Producers for Gilman Scholarships for Programs Abroad

Education

UC Davis was recently recognized as a top producer of Gilman scholars for 2016-17 with the third highest number — at 47 — among universities with more than 15,000 undergraduates.

Learning Enhances Synapses Between “Memory Cells” in Mice

Health

When making memories, certain neurons form larger, denser connections, according to a study published April 26, 2018 in Science.

The Smart Farm Initiative: the future of precision agriculture

Sustainability

At UC Davis, a team of professors have kicked off the Smart Farm Initiative. Lead by biological and agricultural engineering professor David Slaughter, the initiative strives to utilize and progress technology in agriculture to increase productivity and transform farm work to a STEM-based industry.

Researchers are looking for ways to make farming a little smarter with robots and drones that could one day revolutionize the way our food is grown.

UC Davis MIND Institute Turns 20

Health

Twenty years ago, a small group of Sacramento-area parents of children with autism decided to search for more medical research into understanding and treating autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. The result was the creation of the UC Davis MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute, which is marking its 20th anniversary. Dr. Leonard Abbeduto, director of the MIND Institute, and one of the founding parents, Chuck Gardner, join Insight host Beth Ruyak in studio to talk about why they began this journey and how the last 20 years might influence the future of autism.

Smart Farming—Automated and Connected Agriculture

Sustainability

There are more humans alive on Earth right now than ever before—7.3 billion—and that number is still growing, with UN projections that it will reach 9.7 billion by 2050. A population of this magnitude brings a lot of challenges, food production chief among them.

Thousands in the San Joaquin Valley Have Unsafe Drinking Water, But Clean Water Is Close

Sustainability

Tens of thousands of people living in the San Joaquin Valley’s unincorporated, rural, low-income communities have unsafe drinking water pouring from their taps. That water is delivered from a patchwork of community water systems that often don’t meet state or federal standards for drinking water, or from private wells that are not tested.

UC Davis Firearm Violence Prevention Expert Garen Wintemute On Parkland Shooting

Health

Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, champion of the Center for Violence Prevention Research Big Idea, is a leading scholar investigating the data behind shootings and the policies that have proven effective in preventing them. He’s been outspoken since Parkland about background checks, gun violence restraining ordersand federal funding for gun violence research, and he shares his ideas on Insight.