Student Spotlights

Here at UC Davis, there are endless opportunities for students to make a global impact. A living testament to this is Judi Eppele, a current graduate student in the Community Development Graduate Group. Most central to Judi’s character and pursuits is her passion for climate and environmental education and community sustainability.

Fourth-year Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. candidate Eden Winslow won first place at the UC Davis Grad Slam Semi-Final round on Friday, April 3, 2026. Her winning presentation "Born Without a Hand: Changing the Narrative of Children's Prostheses" earned her a $5,000 first prize.

Winslow's presentation and research examined how children born without a hand use the muscles in their arms, with the aim of showing that they're capable of using advanced prostheses.

Grad Slam is almost here! (Register to attend in-person Friday, April 3, 2026).

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.

When Nicole O’Shea came to the University of California, Davis, she was embarking on a new path away from her background in English and toward engineering. Not knowing exactly where her journey would take her, she has put down roots in the materials science field and grown a passion for inspiring and informing the next generation of materials researchers.

Yara Khatib, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Pharmacology and Toxicology Graduate Group, won second place in the UC Grad Slam competition held on April 29 at the UC Student and Policy Center in Sacramento. This is the first year the University of California hosted its systemwide competition in the state’s capital after moving it from the LinkedIn Center in San Francisco. Khatib competed against nine other graduate students representing each of the other universities in the University of California system.

We're excited to announce that Ingrid Sub Cuc, a doctoral candidate in Native American Studies, has been selected as a 2025 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellow!