2021
Awards and Honors
- July 29, 2021
David Haussler ranked 6th among top scientists in computer science
Haussler, a distinguished professor of biomolecular engineering and director of the Genomics Institute, is ranked sixth in the 2021 Seventh Edition of the Top Scientists Ranking for Computer Science & Electronics.
- July 29, 2021
Oakes Founding Provost J. Herman Blake receives lifetime achievement award
Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Founding Provost of Oakes College J. Herman Blake is being recognized by the American Sociology Association for his distinguished career spent advancing access and equity in education.
- July 16, 2021
History professor wins prize for article on post-Civil War incarceration of African American children
Associate professor of history Catherine Jones has been honored with the 2021 Richards Prize for the best article published in The Journal of the Civil War Era in 2020. The journal explores how knowledge of the Civil War era informs our understanding of 21st-century politics and society.
- July 14, 2021
Physics PhD student receives Graduate Instrumentation Research Award
Funding from the American Physical Society program supports graduate student Yuzhan Zao’s research on silicon detectors for particle physics experiments.
- July 02, 2021
Quantitative ecologist Kai Zhu wins NSF funding for climate change research and education
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Kai Zhu won an NSF CAREER award to support research and education focused on the interconnections between climate change and plant phenology.
- July 02, 2021
New research on aquaculture feed will test alternative ingredients to help minimize water pollution
A new grant will support UC Santa Cruz’s ecological aquaculture lab in their efforts to increase the variety and quality of low-polluting aquaculture feed options available to fish farmers.
- June 16, 2021
Hydrologist Margaret Zimmer wins NSF CAREER Award
Margaret Zimmer, assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences, has received an award from the National Science Foundation to support her research on the role of Earth’s subsurface in regulating the water cycle.
- June 09, 2021
Doctoral student wins Ford Foundation fellowship for work on gender, race, and policing
Uriel Serrano recently won a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship to support his research on how gender ideologies are formed in relation to carceral violence.
- June 03, 2021
Feminist studies Ph.D. student receives Institute for Citizens & Scholars fellowship
Claire Urbanski, a Ph.D. candidate in feminist studies, has been named a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation).
- June 02, 2021
Social Sciences Division celebrates outstanding students
The Social Sciences Division is recognizing 21 students for excellence in scholarship and research.
- May 28, 2021
Professor Karen Holl wins MacArthur Foundation endowed chair to support work on natural climate solutions
Environmental Studies Professor Karen Holl has been awarded the MacArthur Foundation Chair at UC Santa Cruz for her work to increase the effectiveness of forest restoration efforts in combating climate change.
- May 12, 2021
Alumna Reyna Grande wins Latino Spirit Award for Achievement in Literature & Advocacy
UC Santa Cruz alumna Reyna Grande (Kresge '99, B.A. creative writing, film & video) has received a 2021 Latino Spirit Award from the California Latino Legislative Caucus.
- May 04, 2021
Strauss Foundation award recognizes student’s work with families affected by incarceration
Legal studies undergraduate Matt Sioson recently won $15,000 in funding from the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation.
- April 28, 2021
2021-22 Dickson Emeritus awards support faculty research in history, literature, and psychology
Karen Yamashita, professor emerita of literature; Dana Frank, research professor in history; and Thomas Pettigrew, research professor in psychology, were each awarded Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorships in recognition of their outstanding achievements in scholarship and teaching.
- April 28, 2021
Physical and Biological Sciences Division honors three prominent alumni
PBSci Distinguished Alumni Awards recognize contributions to society by graduate and undergraduate alums.
- April 23, 2021
Three UCSC professors elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Angela Davis, distinguished professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies; James Estes, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology; and Barbara Rogoff, distinguished professor of psychology, are among the newly elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- April 16, 2021
IMS Director Dan Costa named a fellow of the Society for Marine Mammalogy
Daniel Costa, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, has been honored by the Society of Marine Mammalogy (SMM) in its inaugural class of SMM Fellows.
- April 15, 2021
Two UC Santa Cruz arts professors receive 2021 Guggenheim Fellowships
Film and digital media professor Irene Lusztig and art professor Elizabeth Stephens were among the 184 artists, writers, scholars, and scientists selected this year from nearly 3,000 applicants to receive Guggenheim Fellowships.
- April 06, 2021
Erika Zavaleta honored for diversity efforts by Ecological Society of America
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) has chosen Erika Zavaleta, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, to receive its 2021 Commitment to Human Diversity in Ecology Award.
- April 01, 2021
UCSC awarded three 2021 VOICE grants from UC National Center for Free Speech
UC Santa Cruz has received three awards from the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement's Valuing Open and Inclusive Conversation and Engagement (VOICE) Grant Program.
- March 25, 2021
UC Santa Cruz faculty recognized for excellence in ecology
The Ecological Society of America announced its 2021 Fellow and Early Career Fellow awards, and UC Santa Cruz’s faculty were the most decorated of any university on this year’s list.
- March 22, 2021
Two UCSC research teams recognized for outstanding papers in PNAS
The Cozzarelli Prize recognizes selected papers as outstanding contributions to the scientific disciplines represented by the National Academy of Sciences.
- March 03, 2021
Shiva Abbaszadeh wins Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award
The award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging supports the advancement of women in medical imaging sciences.
- March 03, 2021
Yuan Ping wins OpenEye award for outstanding junior faculty
The award from the American Chemical Society identifies junior stars in the area of computational chemistry.
- February 09, 2021
Astronomer J. Xavier Prochaska honored for top research paper in Science
J. Xavier Prochaska, distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, and his coauthors of a landmark paper describing a fast radio burst from a massive galaxy have been chosen to receive the prestigious AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize.
- February 04, 2021
Three UCSC film alumni recognized by International Documentary Association
Three alumni from UCSC’s Film and Digital Media Department received nominations for this year's prestigious International Documentary Association Awards (IDA).
- February 02, 2021
Seawater intake replacement, bike path improvement projects win public works awards
A $1.1 million project to replace the seawater intake structure at the UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab was selected as environmental project of the year by the Monterey Bay chapter of the American Public Works Association.
- February 02, 2021
Two UCSC astronomers elected Fellows of the American Astronomical Society
Astronomers Raja GuhaThakurta and Garth Illingworth were honored as 2021 AAS Fellows for their extraordinary achievement and service.
- February 01, 2021
Anthropologist Savannah Shange wins book award for insights on race and education
Anthropology faculty member Savannah Shange received one of the most prestigious honors in the field when she was awarded the 2020 Gregory Bateson Book Prize from the Society for Cultural Anthropology.
- January 27, 2021
Fellowship program gives UCSC grad policy experience in Sacramento
After earning his Ph.D. in 2020, Jason John will work at the California Natural Resources Agency as a CCST Science Fellow.
- January 20, 2021
Italian newspaper ranks sociology professor among top women of the year
Camilla Hawthorne is being recognized for shedding light on emergent Afro-Italian identities and activism during a time of racial reckoning in Italy and beyond.
- January 13, 2021
Computer scientist Cormac Flanagan elected ACM Fellow
Cormac Flanagan, professor of computer science and engineering at UC Santa Cruz, has been named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's leading computing society.
- January 11, 2021
Physicist Steven Ritz receives Outstanding Faculty Award
Physics Professor Steven Ritz has received the 2019–20 Outstanding Faculty Award from the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences.
- January 08, 2021
Two UCSC geophysicists honored by Royal Astronomical Society
Thorne Lay and Emily Brodsky, both professors of Earth and planetary sciences, are receiving the Gold Medal for Geophysics and the Price Medal, respectively.
- January 08, 2021
Professor recognized among the art world’s top influencers for 2020
Anthropology professor Anna Tsing won international acclaim for an interdisciplinary project that documents drivers of the Anthropocene in creative new ways.
