Amanda Guyer, professor in the Department of Human Ecology and a faculty researcher at the Center for Mind and Brain, is helping uncover how brain development influences the way children and adolescents respond to social and emotional challenges. She is this month’s guest on Face to Face With Chancellor May.
Tamara Swaab, professor of psychology at UC Davis, has been elected as a foreign member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, or KHMW, one of the highest honors bestowed on scholars in the Netherlands.
Swaab, who has served on the faculty in psychology since 1998 and is an affiliate of the Center for Mind and Brain, is widely recognized for her research on how the brain supports language comprehension and adapts to different language environments across people’s lives.
Erim Kızıldere and Dr. Lisa Oakes from the Infant Cognition Lab along with Dr. Katherine Graf Estes have had new research published in the Developmental Psychology journal that was also recently highlighted in the UC Davis news. Congratulations to PhD candidate Erim as first author!
Professor Simona Ghetti, a faculty member at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain (CMB), was elected a 2025 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS is the largest multidisciplinary scientific society in the world, with over 120,000 members, and is the publisher of the leading scientific journal Science.
CMB affiliate Distinguished Professor Emeritus John S. (Jack) Werner was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship to the University of Oxford in the Departments of Experimental Psychology and Engineering Science. He was also elected a Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Oxford. Dr. Werner is visiting Oxford this academic year (2024-25), where he has given lectures and consulted on research and training.
UC Davis is a powerhouse for breakthroughs and impact. Our interdisciplinary research plays a vital role in building the region’s economy. Our research contributes to our nation’s global leadership in technology and innovation. Through collaboration between our top-ranked hospital and veterinary school, as well as our science and engineering discoveries, our research directly improves American lives.
On Give Day, you have the opportunity to make a lasting impact on the Center for Mind and Brain! Your generosity fuels research innovation, empowers trainees, and strengthens the impacts of brain research on society that shape the future.
In the garden, butterflies flutter all around and in all directions. The task is to catch them with a virtual net, but only the blue ones. The red ones are a distraction. Sometimes they end up in the net by accident.
Lee Miller vividly recalls the day in 2021 when he met a woman who had lost the function of her vocal cords. In hoarse, whispering tones she explained how her voice had been instrumental to her vocation. Losing it, she said, undercut her life’s purpose. Her words were faint, but the lesson was powerful.
The CMB is pleased to award two new research initiatives supported by seed grants from the Child Family Fund! One award goes to CMB Professor Lee Miller for his work "Precise Localization of Epilepsy using Noninvasive EEG" and another to CMB Professors Katie Graf-Estes and Lisa Oakes for their work "The dynamics of parent-infant shared book reading".
How the brain remembers has a lot to do with focus. It’s in this area of cognitive science that Steven Luck, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, has built a career pushing the frontiers of both science and teaching.
The University of California, Davis, is awarding over $480,000 to help scientists advance compelling research and innovations toward commercial applications through the Science Translation and Innovative Research (STAIR™) proof-of-concept grant program. The program plays an important role in helping campus innovators bridge the early-stage hurdle of access to funding during one of the most challenging phases in new technology development.
