Awards and rankings

Grace Woodmansee, M.S. student in Plant Sciences, UC Davis, received the Young Professionals Conclave Outstanding Early Career Award at the national Society for Range Management annual meeting. She is recognized for her leadership and mentoring of students.

Ranked as a top producer of Fulbright Scholars, UC Davis has a long history of plant scientists receiving the scholarships. Steve Fennimore, a Cooperative Extension specialist, is one of this year’s recipients, and recent recipients include Cameron Pittelkow and Kassim Al-Khatib. Fennimore and Pittelkow both worked in Uruguay, and Al-Khatib worked in Turkey.

Distinguished Professor David Neale, Plant Sciences, will be honored with a symposium at the first biennial meeting of the new North American Forest Genetics Society. His research on the genomics of forest trees will be recognized.

Valerie Eviner is a Community Engaged Learning Faculty Fellow at UC Davis. A professor of Ecosystem Management and Restoration, Department of Plant Sciences, she works in collaboration with land managers to address ecological understanding, and challenges in ecosystem management.

Ten UC Davis faculty members have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, including Dina St. Clair, a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences. She was elected in the Section on Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources for her work on plant breeding and genetics.

Eduardo Blumwald and Jorge Dubcovsky are among 16 UC Davis researchers who have been named in the annual Highly Cited Researchers 2019 list. The list identifies scientists and social scientists who have published multiple papers ranking in the top 1 percent by citations. Both are Distinguished Professors in the Department of Plant Sciences.

Awards for UC Davis’ Hellman Fellows, Class of 2019, total $250,000. The Hellman Fellows program in its 12 years at UC Davis surpassed $3 million in total awards, given to 148 faculty. Barbara Blanco-Ulate, Department of Plant Sciences, is one of this year’s recipients.

Dave Ramos, retired walnut specialist at UC Davis Plant Sciences and UCANR received the “Outstanding Emeritus” award from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences for his research and outreach with UC and the walnut industry. He was a faculty member in the Department of Pomology, now part of the Department of Plant Science

Steve Fennimore, faculty in the Dept. of Plant Sciences, UC Davis, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to conduct research and teaching at the INIA Las Brujas horticultural field station in Uruguay as part of a project to develop sustainable weed management systems in specialty crops.