Two College of Letters and Science at UC Davis faculty members and one affiliated research center were honored with awards from the UC Davis School of Medicine Office of Wellness Education for their pioneering work in the wellness space.

An ergonomic mouse. A lending library of field gear. A Slack channel where small safety questions are welcome. These are a few ways this year’s UC Davis Lab Safety Award winners keep safety in their daily routine.

Dawn Sumner — a UC Davis geologist, planetary scientist and astrobiologist — is among the 53 scientists newly elected as fellows of the American Geophysical Union, or AGU, for outstanding achievements and contributions to earth and space science.  

Five researchers from the University of California, Davis, including two from the College of Letters and Science, were listed among recipients for the inaugural awards through the U.S. Department of Energy’s, or DOE, Genesis Mission — a national program leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, discovery science and national security.

Seven early career faculty members at UC Davis are being recognized with awards from the university and the UC Office of the President that highlight their research and creative exploration.

The American Geosciences Institute, or AGI, recently announced that paleontologist Sandra J. Carlson, a Professor Emerita in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, has been named the 2026 recipient of the William B. Heroy Jr. Award for Distinguished Service to AGI. This award is given in recognition of exceptional and beneficial long-term service to the AGI.

The Regeneration Research Program is designed to help faculty fill gaps created by the current constrained funding environment. Grant awards range from $5,000 to $20,000, depending on proposed needs and budget justification.

For her innovative research in Indigenous studies and on the politics of knowledge, de la Cadena was recently elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. 

Chemistry graduate student Cocoro Nagasaka works at the interface of environmental and energy sciences. And now he’s continuing his research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, or LLNL, through the prestigious U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research program.

Monique Borgerhoff Mulder has been recognized again with the 2026 Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award, which exemplifies tremendous contributions of emeriti to the continued excellence of the University of California system.