News

It’s early—almost too early to be out walking. But Leo Konefat, a rising third-year undergraduate at UC Davis and one of the 2025 EVE Scholars, has an urgent appointment with a low tide. On that first morning, getting up at dawn to reach the field site on time, the fog was low, the stars were overhead, and the foghorn’s low bleat in the distance offered a first glimpse of the coastal world he would be immersed in for the next ten weeks.

The UC Davis College of Biological Sciences (CBS) is launching a major revision of its introductory biology curriculum, known as the BIO123 Series, beginning this academic year. This initiative modernizes the long-standing BIS2A/B/C sequence, which was introduced in 2008 and has grown to serve over 9,000 students annually. Offering introductory biology comprises over 30% of CBS’s total student credit hours.

In a new study published in Science Advances on September 10, a team of UC Davis researchers tracked the movement of fluorescent particles inside the cells of microscopic worms, providing unprecedented insights into cellular crowding in a multicellular animal. They found that the cytoplasm inside the worms was significantly more crowded and compartmentalized than in single-celled yeast or mammalian tissue culture cells, which are more commonly used to gauge internal cellular dynamics.

The mind of a fruit fly encompasses 125,000 nerve cells, squeezed into the space of a poppy seed. At first glance, the fly brain looks nothing like a human brain. But many of the underlying neural circuits are surprisingly similar.

Fumika Hamada, a professor of neurobiology, physiology, and behavior, is using fruit flies to study a critical but oft-overlooked brain function: the regulation of our body temperature in a consistent daily rhythm.

Although teaching is a core part of being a professor, most academics learn how to teach on the job. CBS’s Future Undergraduate Science Educators (FUSE) program is changing that.

How can plants adapt to their environment, and how will they be able to adapt to climate change? Those are among the biggest questions Johanna Schmitt has sought to answer during her career as a plant geneticist and evolutionary ecologist.

Vision neuroscientist Marie E. Burns has been appointed the sixth director of the Center for Neuroscience (CNS), effective July 1, 2025, after serving as interim director for the past year.

A professor with joint appointments in the departments of Ophthalmology and Vision Science, and Cell Biology and Human Anatomy in the School of Medicine, Burns brings more than 20 years’ leadership experience to the role.

Human eyes are complex and irreparable, yet they are structurally like those of the freshwater apple snail, which can completely regenerate its eyes. Alice Accorsi, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Davis, studies how these snails regrow their eyes — with the goal of eventually helping to restore vision in people with eye injuries.

After a decade of leadership marked by growth in research, student success and interdisciplinary advances, Mark Winey will step down as dean of the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences in 2026. A national search for his successor will begin this fall.

Winey, the college’s longest-serving dean, said he was first drawn to UC Davis by its uniquely expansive and collaborative biology community—and by the opportunity to serve on a broader scale.

Each year, more money is spent in the U.S. on musculoskeletal pain than on heart disease and diabetes combined. Exercise physiologist Keith Baar, a professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and Physiology and Membrane Biology, is working to change that.