Somehow it feels like February is the start of the new year. Maybe it’s because, after an initial delay in returning to the UC Davis campus after the winter break, the college and its students are finally back on campus. In October, I wrote that it was nice to see students biking past Green Hall again, and in the Science Lab Building. In that way, not much has changed. It is nice to see them back – again!

Campus is active too, and we’re once again handing out masks and distributing them across the classrooms and labs for our nearly 6,000 returning students. I suppose we’ve had some practice with this by now, and our outstanding students certainly know how to observe campus guidelines on how to remain safe in group settings – all this the positive, can-do Aggie attitude. Our students really are remarkable.

A lot has happened in the last month to prepare for our return to campus, and also on the faculty laurels front. In January, two of the college’s faculty members received significant recognition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and were elected as fellows to the association. They were among nine faculty from across campus to join this prestigious organization and the honor is in recognition of their significant accomplishments.

I have no doubt that as winter quarter goes on, we will see many more such achievements, and that our students will safely engage in the types of hands-on research that is the cornerstone of their education here at UC Davis.

From the masked-but-friendly student faces we saw in the Biology Academic Success Center early this week, to the welcome return of our campus community, the quarter promises to be both familiar and new. It’s a good feeling.

Go Ags!

Featured image: From a study on the impact of the Zika virus in the brain, the micrograph above shows part of the hippocampus and lateral geniculate nucleus of a developing rhesus monkey.

Researchers in the Department of Evolution and Ecology and Genome Center contributed to a study indicating that race and ethnic differences in the gut microbiome likely result from environmental influences rather than genetics.

Rebecca Calisi, an associate professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, uses art as a way of understanding the world. An original collage by Calisi was recently featured in the Los Angeles Times.

Genome Center researchers used DNA sequencing to determine that the odiferous compounds male cats use to mark their territory are not actually produced by the cats themselves, but by a community of beneficial bacteria.