News

The College of Biological Sciences was pleased to welcome five new faculty members to its ranks during the 2023-24 academic year. Joining the Departments of Plant Biology, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, and the Center for Neuroscience, each faculty adds breadth and depth to the college’s research and teaching portfolio.

UC Davis researchers have developed a rapid, noninvasive tool to track the neurons and biomolecules activated in the brain by psychedelic drugs. The protein-based tool, which is called Ca2+-activated Split-TurboID, or CaST, is described in research published in Nature Methods.

Marie E. Burns, a professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology and Vision Science, and Cell Biology and Human Anatomy in the School of Medicine, and a core faculty member at the Center for Neuroscience (CNS), has been appointed the CNS interim director, effective July 1, 2024. 

SACRAMENTO — On exhibit this summer at a museum near you: The Last Hope: Glial Cells Attacking SARS-Co-V2-Infected Neurons, a 3D reconstruction of cells that could be mistaken for modern art, and Pillars of Memory, an image of clusters of neurons in the hippocampus that looks like the Milky Way Galaxy. 

Visitors to the SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity (MOSAC) are seeing firsthand what UC Davis neuroscientists and trainees know well.

DAVIS – Inspired by her mother, a talented painter, local artist Davida Feder has cultivated a lifelong passion for creation, first finding solace and joy in the intricacies of sewing projects. However, after she retired, Davida delved into photography classes, and when she exhausted those, she enrolled in art classes. Since the pandemic, Davida’s favorite pastime is getting lost in her art, enjoying the meticulous craft of handmade books and cards, which she lovingly sends to friends, each imbued with a fragment of herself.

Researchers in the College of Biological Sciences have received a grant to study the role of the cerebellum in autism. “We need a more holistic understanding of the brain circuits that drive this disorder,” says Alex Nord, an associate professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior (NPB); psychiatry and behavioral sciences; and a core faculty member at the Center for Neuroscience (CNS). “The cerebellum is a key component that has been largely overlooked until recently.”

As interviewed by Gabriela Lee

Dr. Xiaomo Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences, a core member of the Center for Neuroscience, and an affiliated faculty at the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine at UC Davis.

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; psychiatry and behavioral sciences; and a core faculty member at the Center for Neuroscience.

Charan Ranganath admits he can be forgetful. This is true of most people, but most people are not leading experts on the neuroscience of human memory.

“Everybody knows I have a terrible memory,” said Ranganath, a professor of psychology and core faculty member at the Center for Neuroscience, “and yet I got a Ph.D., and I publish papers all the time. I'm totally functional, so maybe the expectations we have are just wrong.”