News

UC Davis graduate students made their presence known at this year’s Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Food Engineering Division graduate student poster competition, taking home all three top spots.

The University of California, Davis, has been awarded $20 million as part of a multi-institutional collaboration to establish an institute focused on enabling the next-generation food system through the integration of artificial intelligence, or AI, technologies. The award is part of a larger investment announced today (Aug. 26) by the National Science Foundation, or NSF, in partnership with several federal agencies — distributing a total of $140 million to fund seven complementary AI research institutes across the nation.

A new startup out of the UC Davis biological and agricultural engineering (BAE) department has developed an award-winning system that uses insect larvae to produce animal feed with less land and a smaller carbon footprint. Fresh off success in UC Berkeley’s 2020 Big Ideas competition and UC Davis’ 2019 Big Bang! Business Competition, BioMilitus is poised to use their lab-based research to make the planet more sustainable.

Associate professor Isaya Kisekka has received the 2020 Irrigation Association (IA) Excellence in Education Award. The annual award recognizes outstanding educators in irrigation, water management and water conservation. Kisekka was cited for being “instrumental in reviving the irrigation curriculum at UC Davis” by co-developing three new irrigation courses and helping create the Irrigation and Water Management minor.

Adjunct professor Zhongli Pan has received a Tanner Award for highest citations in the Journal of Food Science in 2017 for his paper, “Novel Umami Ingredients: Umami Peptides and Their Taste.” The paper, published in December 2016, is a literature review of research on umami peptides.

Ten teams of biological systems engineering seniors presented their senior design projects to the public in this year’s Engineering Design Showcase. Design Showcase is a capstone of the College of Engineering undergraduate experience and the culmination of three quarters of hard work on senior design projects, where they present the designs they built in teams for real-world clients.

When Yolo County issued a shelter-in-place order on March 18, the College of Engineering’s graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) and faculty members had less than two weeks to transition their spring classes online. While spring 2020 will be remembered as anything but a normal quarter, innovation in teaching and community among students and TAs have helped keep the college running and make the best of the situation.