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.

New advances in hydrophone technology spearheaded by a UC Davis scientist are giving us an unprecedented view into the lives of whales. Over the past year, in both southeast Alaska and off the coast of Maui, Hawaii, James Crutchfield, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the College of Letters and Science, has deployed an advanced prototype underwater microphone to record humpback whale songs and social calls for the first time in 3D.