Campus News
UCSC faculty receive Early Career Faculty Research Excellence Awards
The awards reflect a renewed systemwide investment in early-career faculty at a time of increasing pressure on research funding. In total, 54 faculty were selected.
Five UC Santa Cruz faculty members have been selected for the University of California’s Early Career Faculty Research Excellence Awards. The inaugural program supports the scholarship and creative activity of early career faculty across the UC system. In total, 54 faculty were selected.
The awards reflect a renewed systemwide investment in early-career faculty at a time of increasing pressure on research funding. The inaugural competition was highly competitive, with nominations from across all 10 UC campuses. Each award provides a one-time $50,000 allocation to support a proposed research or creative project during the upcoming academic year.
The UC Santa Cruz recipients are:
Arts Division
- akua naru, assistant professor of Music
Longing To Tell: A Blues Opera
An interdisciplinary performance work that centers Black women’s testimony, blending music, spoken word, and performance to explore trauma, resilience, and healing. - Chari Smith, assistant professor of Film and Digital Media
Harriet: Performing Anarchive
A digital performance and archival project that uses new media and immersive technologies to explore Black archival practices and cultural memory.
Baskin School of Engineering
- Soumya Bose, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Self-Powered In Situ Fog Sensing in California’s Redwood Forests
A battery-free CMOS sensing chip for energy-autonomous fog monitoring in redwood forests, supporting research on water availability, ecological stress, and wildfire risk.
Division of Physical and Biological Sciences
- Ethan F. Williams, assistant professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Dendroseismology: A Scalable Monitoring Framework for Forest Hydrology
A new approach to measuring how forests store and move water, using trees’ own motions to estimate changes in their mass and stiffness over time.
Division of Social Sciences
- Rekia Jibrin, assistant professor of Critical Studies of Education
School Safety in Police-free Schools
A study examining how the removal of school police shapes discipline, safety, and student experiences, with attention to race, gender, and disability.
These awards recognize early career faculty whose work is advancing research and creative activity across disciplines at UC Santa Cruz.
“The work recognized through these awards reflects the innovation and creativity of our early career faculty and the ways they are advancing new ideas across disciplines and investigating complex questions,” said Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Christina Ravelo. “I congratulate these awardees on this well-deserved recognition and the distinctive contributions they are making at UC Santa Cruz.”
Additional information about the program is available on the Division of Academic Affairs website.