Professor Michele Barbato, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor Louise Berben, Department of Chemistry

Professor Allen Gao, Department of Urologic Surgery

Professor Aijun Wang, Department of Surgery

Professor Ruihong Zhang, Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering

Professor Sharif Aly, Department of Population Health and Reproduction

Associate Professor Misty Humphries, Department of Surgery

Professor Daniela Barile, Department of Food Science and Technology

UC Davis Venture Catalyst is pleased to announce that Janine Elliott has joined the team as Associate Director, supporting university-associated innovators and startups commercializing exciting new technologies in physical science, engineering, agriculture, and computer science. Janine brings a mix of entrepreneurial experience, teaching skills, and program management backgrounds to her role. She has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and technology startups through recent roles at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator and VentureWell, a nonprofit organization focused on providing support, training, and access to networks and resources to science and technology innovators. Janine also co-founded a green chemistry startup in the SF Bay Area and taught youth leadership programs and field science in California and Maine. She holds an MBA with an emphasis in sustainability and social impact from Dominican University of California and her undergraduate degree from Colby College focused on Environmental Policy.

Thermo Fisher Scientific and the UC Davis West Coast Metabolomics Center announced the Center of Excellence in Clinical Metabolomics, a research collaboration to provide the metabolomics community with innovations, best practices and standard operating procedures to support the rapid scale-up of large cohort studies and clinical research. The Center of Excellence in Clinical Metabolomics, based on the UC Davis Sacramento campus, will enable targeted and untargeted metabolic profiling for large-scale population-based cohorts across translational research and precision medicine..... Read More

Researchers at UC Davis are developing a new type of pain medication from tarantula venom. Vladimir Yarov-Yarovoy, a professor of physiology and membrane biology, and Heike Wulff, a professor of pharmacology, are leading the 20-person team using computational biology to turn a poisonous peptide into one that can relieve pain. To create a nonaddictive but strong pain medication, the researchers are focused on pain signals traveling on sensory neurons. To stop these signals, they have targeted a particular type of protein “channel” found on the cell membranes of neurons and muscles..... Read More

Veterinarians at UC Davis have found that a cat’s DNA alters how it responds to a life-saving medication used to treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, a heart disease that affects 1 in 7 cats. While testing like this is not yet commercially available, researchers hope that eventually veterinarians will be able to rapidly test cats with HCM for these mutations as they are making prescribing decisions..... Read More

Elizabeth Morris, Chair of Department of Radiology at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been awarded a $600,000 Susan G. Komen® grant. The funds will be used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) models to predict breast cancer risk at a personalized level.... Read More

The UC Davis Cannabis and Hemp Research Center (CHRC) awarded grants to five researchers working to advance the research on cannabis and hemp while laying the groundwork for future innovations in science and technology. Each project will receive $20,000 with researchers investigating hemp pathogens in California agricultural spaces, prenatal exposure to cannabis and the potential impacts of vaping.... Read More

UC Davis Health is developing a new approach in nuclear medicine treatment called “theranostics", which combines both diagnostics and therapeutics in delivering targeted radiotherapy. Typically injected into the patient's bloodstream, the therapy radiopharmaceuticals travel and deliver radiation directly to a tumor site, destroying cancerous cells while leaving healthy tissue alone. As part of its growing commitment to advancing radioactive targeted therapy, UC Davis Health is planning a new clinic dedicated to the innovative treatment.... Read More

UC Davis raised a record $269.4 million from 36,016 donors during the last fiscal year. In addition, the UC Davis endowment has reached a total of $2.2 billion, more than doubling the $1 billion milestone reached just six years ago.

UC Davis Vice Chancellor for Research Prasant Mohapatra announced the selection of Denise Ehlen to serve as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Administration and Central Services within the Office of Research. Ehlen arrives in her new role at UC Davis with over 20 years of experience in research administration, with complimentary experience in business incubation and outreach. Most recently, Ehlen served as the associate vice president of Research Administration Services Units in the Office of Research Administration at Emory University.... Read More

John F. López, Department of Art and Art History, College of Letters and Science; and Jonathon Schofield, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering, each won $40,000 to support their work, as recipients of the UC Davis’ 2021 Early Career Faculty Awards for Creativity and Innovation. Lopez is an art historian who is researching a book on the centuries-old efforts by the Aztec and Spanish to combat catastrophic inundation in the “aquatic metropolis” of Mexico City and Schofield is an engineer who has teamed up with UC Davis Medical Center physicians to improve amputees’ control over their bionic prostheses.... Read More

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PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor (PitchBook) 

According to the newly published PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report, venture-backed companies have have raised more than $150 billion during the first half of 2021, which is more than 90% of the total for the entire 2020. Furthermore, investment firms have closed funds totaling over $74 billion, which again, is more 90% of the entire amount for 2020.... Read More

SBIR/STTR Application Success Rates Decreased From 2019 To 2020 at NASA (State Science & Technology Institute)

The overall success rate of NASA’s SBIR/STTR applications experienced a decline from 27% in 2019 to 24.9% in 2020. Phase I applications, making up over two-thirds of the total applications declined by less than one percentage point, going from 22.5% in 2019 to 21.7% in 2020, while Phase II applications experienced a greater decline in dropping by 4.5% in 2020 compared to 2019.... Read More

UC Davis Venture Catalyst supports the development of new ventures fueled by university research and technology. Venture Catalyst offers several innovative programs that bridge the gap between early-stage research and commercialization and provide entrepreneurs the resources, support, and connections needed to successfully form and grow technology-based startups. With a focus on accelerating technology-led economic development in the Davis-Sacramento region, Venture Catalyst also works closely with partners in the regional innovation and economic development ecosystems. 

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