UC Davis alumni Julian Garcia and Kush Narang chose different paths to public service — one through law, the other through medicine. This year, those paths led to a shared distinction: selection to the 2026 Knight-Hennessy Scholarscohort and recognition as UC Davis's first scholars in the program's nine-year history.
UC Davis now ranks sixth nationally among large institutions — schools with more than 15,000 students — after just 10 years of participation in the 25-year history of the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program.
Hundreds of local schoolchildren will get hands-on exposure to science, technology, engineering and math at the 2026 UC STEM Fest, to be held Saturday, May 2 from 9 a.m. to noon at Rex & Margaret Fortune Early College High School in Elk Grove.
This spring marks a new and reimagined Aggie Day, as UC Davis brings both admitted first-year and transfer students together on April 11 for an all-day, campuswide celebration.
The Early Academic Outreach Program, known as EAOP, turns 50 this year — and it plans to celebrate half a century of helping thousands of California students prepare for college with a statewide bash hosted by UC Davis Feb. 28.
Mikaila Hishaw, a fourth-year marine and coastal science major from Tucson, Arizona, arrived at UC Davis with plans to become a veterinarian. She soon discovered that research offered not just a new way to work with animals but also an avenue to explore her curiosity beyond the classroom.
Fourth-year biological sciences major and Barry Goldwater Scholar recipient Azucena Virgen studies the regenerative biology of Hydra — a freshwater organism known for its ability to regrow entire body parts — at the UC Davis Juliano Lab. What began as a fascination in a high school biology class in her hometown of Woodland, California, grew into a long-term goal to lead a research lab and mentor future scientists.
UC Davis fourth-year neurobiology, physiology and behavior major Rogelio Castillo did not expect undergraduate research to open a path for him to create change in his community. His family’s past experiences with rushed and impersonal medical care led him to turn to science to ask the questions that improve both health outcomes and quality of patient-provider relationships.
Iliya Voytsyshyn, a fourth-year systems and synthetic biology major from Ukraine, entered UC Davis with plans to study cancer. That initial goal grew into a fascination with tools that fuse biology, systems design and gene editing to reengineer cells.
