Graduate Student Stories

Each year, nearly 30 million Americans purchase a real tree for the holidays. Growing the perfect Christmas tree takes about seven years, during which farmers need to keep insects, fungal pathogens and hungry deer at bay. While researchers suspect the distinctive piney smell the trees emit plays a role in deterring these pests, not all trees smell the same, and which chemical blends confer resistance is unclear. 

Sam Arcement—Director of Graduate Academic Programs for the College of Biological Sciences, and the program coordinator for the Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology (MCIP) Graduate Group—has been honored with the 2024 Outstanding Graduate Program Coordinator Award from the Office of Graduate Studies. This year saw a record number of nominations. “Sam tirelessly ensures that our needs and concerns are heard and addressed,” said one MCIP student, who praised Arcement’s dedication to student advocacy.

Commitment. Passion. Empathy. These descriptors were just a few of the plaudits the winners of the 2024 Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award received in their nomination letters.

“[This professor’s] mentorship is always the perfect balance of pushing you to your full capacity, while also supporting at a level that fosters independence, creativity and self-ownership.”

“[This professor] combines a deep sense of empathy with a steely commitment to student development.”

Each year the college recognizes the importance of mentorship in the continued growth of both the undergraduate and graduate communities by awarding CBS Dean’s Mentorship Awards to graduate students. Funded by contributions to the CBS Dean’s Circle, the awards are open by faculty nomination to graduate students who have played a significant role in the growth and development of the younger generation of scientists. 

Jessica Bolivar, a graduate student in the Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (BMCDB) Graduate Group, knows firsthand the difference that one person’s mentorship can make. 

During her time at UC Davis, Bolivar has made it her mission to give back and inspire the next generation of scientists by balancing her research with a slew of community-uplifting and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The UC Davis College of Biological Sciences champions Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) through the Graduate Student DEIJ Leader Fellowship program. Now in its second year, the program empowers enterprising graduate students committed to enhancing DEIJ within the CBS community by supporting projects aimed at fostering a more inclusive academic environment. 

Plants need to be able to communicate with themselves—by sending signals from their leaves to their roots to their flowers—so that they can coordinate growth and optimize resource use. They also need to communicate with other plants and organisms, which they achieve by releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), tiny molecules that are often associated with distinct smells. Scientists know a lot about how plants emit these odorous signals, however very little is known about how they receive and interpret them.

Our understanding of schizophrenia has increased greatly in recent years, as studies of large groups of people have identified a multitude of genetic variants that increase a person’s risk of the disease. But each of those individual risk factors accounts for “only a very minor amount of the overall risk,” said Alex Nord, a professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior in the College of Biological Sciences and the Center for Neuroscience.

Early in the development of sperm, a strange event happens: the X and Y chromosomes condense into tight packages and are sequestered away from the other 44 human chromosomes. If any part of this process goes awry, the cells cannot mature into sperm. Researchers in the College of Biological Sciences have now identified an important link in this process — a little-known protein called ATF7IP2.

Pancreatic cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and only 12% of patients survive five years after being diagnosed. Severe pancreatic cancer is associated with metastasis, and it is this spread of secondary tumors that usually causes death, but little is known about the molecular mechanisms that drive metastasis.