Two Letters and Science undergraduate students received the 2024 UC Davis Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research in recognition of their outstanding research and scholarship.

Alexandra Serna Godoy, a double-major in psychology and neurobiology, physiology, and behavior (NPB), and Sarah Grimes, a double-major in art history and design, were two of this year’s three winners. Each winner receives the Dean Keith Simonton Prize and $1,000 stipend.

Meet this year’s L&S honorees:

Alexandra Serna Godoy 

Double major in Psychology and Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior

For three years, Godoy’s research at UC Davis has been part of a broader study taking place in psychology professor Brian Trainor’s lab. The team has broadly been working with mice to identify brain differences that cause males and females to react differently to stress. In October, 2023, she was a co-author on a published study resulting from the project. 

Godoy won the Chancellor’s Award for her individual contribution to the lab’s research to identify the genetic materials in different parts of the brain that are related to stress-responses. Godoy optimized the processes the team used to identify this genetic material. 

“I feel like I really found my place here at UC Davis, especially when I started doing my research in the Department of Psychology” said Godoy. “I feel like I found like my passion about science and that made me realize all the dreams and everything that I wanted to achieve in life.” 

This fall, Godoy will join UC Berkeley in the Psychology Department’s Ph.D. program in Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience.

Sarah Grimes 

Double major in Art History and Design

Grimes did her research project as part of the undergraduate honors program in the Department of Design major. For her honors thesis, she studied how art museums can make their gallery spaces more engaging and educational for children by redesigning them to incorporate exhibition methods used in children’s museums.

Grimes has won prior honors as an undergraduate student before receiving this year’s Chancellor’s Award. In 2022 she placed third for the UC Davis Library Lang Prize for an art history paper that sheds new light on the design and meaning of psychedelic rock posters and their place in the counterculture movement of the 1960s.

“I feel like a lot of people when they think of research they think of like STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) research,” said Grimes. “The College of Letters and Sciences has been very open with providing research opportunities for non-STEM majors.” 

Grimes is currently interviewing for positions at art museums around the U.S. and plans to attend graduate school to pursue a Ph.D.

Learn more about the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research