News & Events
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Lessons from COVID reveal how monopoly power in the biopharmaceutical industry is evolving
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Politics Professor Matt Sparke, co-director of UC Santa Cruz’s Global and Community Health Program, kept a close watch on the global biopharmaceutical industry. Like many others around the world, he was deeply concerned by huge global inequalities in access to testing tools, vaccines, and other biomedical counter-measures. As a scholar of…
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UC Santa Cruz projects win California Climate Action Grant funding
Last week, in partnership with the state, the University of California awarded more than $80 million in California Climate Action Grants to four-year academic institutions across the state. These two-year grants are designed to spur the implementation of solutions that advance climate resilience and social equity. Five UC Santa Cruz projects secured a total of more than…
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Rebates can offer solutions to California’s groundwater woes
Many aquifers in California and around the world are being drained of their groundwater because of the combined impacts of excess pumping, shifts in land use, and climate change. However, a new study by scientists at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, published on Oct. 18 in Nature Water, may offer a solution – it describes the…
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UCSC iGEM 2023 addressing harmful algal blooms through synthetic biology
This year’s team of student innovators, members of the UCSC International Genetically Engineering Machine (iGEM) program, is addressing a local yet widespread environmental issue: harmful algal blooms in Watsonville’s Pinto Lake. The team’s bioengineering approach targets the toxic genes of the specific bacteria responsible for the algal blooms, creating a non-invasive, long-term solution to preserve…
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UCSC’s David Deamer and Mark Akeson honored for invention of nanopore sequencing
Today, two UC Santa Cruz researchers were honored at the Library of Congress for the invention of nanopore sequencing, which became a new and revolutionary method to read DNA and RNA. David Deamer and Mark Akeson, both emeritus professors of biomolecular engineering at the Baskin School of Engineering, received the American Association for the Advancement…
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UCSC’s Center for Coastal Climate Resilience awards over $4.6 million to support California coastal projects
Graduate student working at the UC Santa Cruz Coastal campus
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Human pangenome reference will enable more complete and equitable understanding of genomic diversity
UC Santa Cruz scientists, along with a consortium of researchers, have released a draft of the first human pangenome—a new, usable reference for genomics that combines the genetic information of 47 individuals from different ancestral backgrounds to allow for a deeper, more accurate understanding of worldwide genomic diversity. By adding 119 million bases—the “letters” in…
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Genome of famed sled dog Balto reveals genetic adaptations of working dogs
Still a good boy nearly 100 years after historic sled run, Balto has now helped scientists explore the genetics of working dogs and demonstrate the power of comparative genomics The sled dog Balto has been celebrated in books and movies for his role in delivering desperately needed diphtheria antitoxin to Nome, Alaska, in 1925. Now,…
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National Endowment for the Humanities honors Watsonville Is In The Heart with a prestigious $75,000 project grant
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a prestigious $75,000 Public Humanities Projects: Exhibitions Planning grant to Watsonville Is In The Heart (WIITH). Housed in The Humanities Institute at UCSC, WIITH is a community-driven public history initiative to preserve and uplift stories of Filipino migration and labor in the city of Watsonville and the greater Pajaro…
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University launches new center, Campus + Community, to facilitate engaged scholarship
After more than 50 years of engagement in the region, UC Santa Cruz is launching a new center to coordinate campus and community connections for action-oriented scholarship that advances social justice. Campus + Community (C + C) builds on previous efforts by the university to build meaningful local partnerships, such as the longstanding work of the Community…