General News

The presidencies of UC Davis student governments and hired advisors to the chancellor and the dean of Graduate Studies are among the most high-profile student positions on campus. Among the five featured who’ve taken on the roles this year, two are graduate students.

Luna Loganayagam (Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis)

Luna Loganayagam, a fourth-year doctoral student in English, leads the Graduate Student Association, representing about 5,000 graduate academic and professional students.

Miguel Craven, a current graduate student at UC Davis, is stepping into one of the most influential student leadership roles in the University of California system: student regent-designate. He is this month’s guest on Face to Face With Chancellor May.

Effective Sept. 15, 2025, Graduate Studies has eliminated the student candidacy fee.

Both master’s and doctoral students were previously charged the candidacy fee as part of their advancement to candidacy. The candidacy fee has now been eliminated as part of recent modifications to the advancement process. This adjustment reflects Graduate Studies’ ongoing efforts to evolve our processes in conjunction with our university’s and community’s needs.

Graduate Studies established the GradPathways Institute for Professional Development (GPI) in 2004 to support an enhanced professional development ecosystem at UC Davis for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

Congratulations to the Graduate Class of 2025 who received their degrees from UC Davis Graduate Studies on June 12 at the University Credit Union Center on campus. In order to honor graduates more personally, two distinct ceremonies were organized by degree type with the Master's Ceremony beginning at 10 a.m. and the MFA and Doctoral Ceremony beginning at 3 p.m. We celebrated not only the hard work and dedication of our graduates, but also the support of family, friends, and mentors who have been part of this journey. 

Claire Murphy, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Population Biology Graduate Group, wants everyone to feel like they belong in research. Based at the Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML), Murphy studies how tiny seagrass crustaceans avoid being eaten by fish, crabs, and other predators. Since coming to UC Davis in 2020, she’s mentored 11 UC Davis undergraduates, including five independent summer research projects.

The School of Veterinary Medicine brought home the campus’s top placement in U.S. News & World Report’s most recent rankings of professional and graduate programs, published Monday (April 7).

UC Davis again ranked first in the nation for veterinary medicine, consistent with its placement in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, released in March.

Grad Slam is almost here! (Register to attend in-person Friday, April 11, 2025).

We asked 2024 UC Davis Grad Slam champion Sasha Neil Pimento to share her experiences throughout the competition.

The University of California, Davis, has launched a website and video series titled, “From Labs to Lives,” to highlight federally funded research, describe how the research benefits the public, and share the consequences to the public if funding is reduced or eliminated.

Victoria Watson-Zink, Ph.D. ’22, a postdoctoral evolutionary marine biologist, received the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Hanna H. Gray Fellowship last month. This year’s fellowship supports the transition of 25 early-career scientists to leading labs and becoming tenured faculty.