Mathematicians are challenging the idea that dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, mathematicians from the University of California, Davis, provide mathematical proof that instabilities inherent in the Einstein-Euler equations imply that the current model of the expanding universe is not viable.
An author blending fact and fiction in her second novel, an anthropologist studying the origins of rituals and pilgrimages, and a mathematician investigating the complexity of large datasets have been named the 2026 Dean’s Faculty Fellows for the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis.
Here in the College of Letters and Science, we love all that Picnic Day has to offer, but we love what our departments are doing best! So, if you, like us, don't want to miss what L&S Aggies are planning for April 18, we wanted to make it easier by providing this guide, featuring events from across the arts and humanities as well as math and science.
Four faculty from the College of Letters and Science are among the 2025-26 Chancellor’s Fellows, a recognition that is given each year to early career academics doing exemplary work. Recipients carry the title for five years and are awarded $25,000 in unrestricted philanthropic support for research or other scholarly work.
Sameer Iyer, an associate professor of mathematics at the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, recently received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program to advance his theoretical work on two enigmatic aspects of the Navier-Stokes equations: the boundary layer between an object and a fluid, and the large time dynamics of a fluid’s flow.
Your DNA may be a string of code, but it’s also made of shapes that twist and fold. By combining math and biology, UC Davis researchers are able to predict R-loops, tiny structures that influence gene expression and even diseases like cancer.
Knots are a part of nature. From pocketed headphones to carelessly packed garden hoses, they find ways to manifest in strings and loops. This isn’t just a truth of mathematics; it’s a truth of biology. In fact, DNA molecules can also get tied into knots.
Mathematics permeates our lives. It’s there even when it escapes our comprehension. Anne Schilling discusses the predictive power of mathematics and her research on “Markov chains,” which are probability models that describe the sequence of events/states based on the past. It’s a concept that can be applied to a lot more than just your dresser drawer, including weather, voting procedures and quantum physics.
View the world through UC Davis mathematician Roger Casals Gutiérrez’s eyes and you’ll realize that mathematics is everywhere. In this article, Casals Gutiérrez shows how we encounter objects of his research interests, like singularities, in daily life.
Lishan AZ, Laura Starkston and Hannah Tierney have been named the 2025 Dean’s Faculty Fellows for the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. The three-year fellowships are part of the College of Letters and Science Faculty Investment Initiative to support early faculty research excellence and development.
