Department News
2025
2025 Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching Recipient
Professor and Vice Chair of Education, Colleen Sweeney has been selected as a recipient of the 2025 Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching by the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Awards (DTA) Committee. This award recognizes outstanding teaching and dedication to student success. She was nominated by Professor and Vice Dean for Medical Education, Mark Servis. An in-person awards ceremony will be held on the evening of Thursday, May 29, 2025. Awardees will be highlighted in an upcoming UC Davis Dateline article.
Megan Dennis Honored as Chancellor’s Fellow
Megan Dennis, an associate professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at UC Davis Health, has been awarded the 2024 Chancellor’s Fellowship. This prestigious honor is given to outstanding faculty members early in their careers. As part of the award, she will receive $25,000 to support her research, teaching or service activities.
2024
Anti-anxiety and hallucination-like effects of psychedelics mediated by distinct neural circuits
New research suggests that it could be possible to separate treatment from hallucinations when developing new drugs based on psychedelics. The anti-anxiety and hallucination-inducing qualities of psychedelic drugs work through different neural circuits, according to research using a mouse model. The work is published in Science.
“In the past, we did this using chemistry by making new compounds, but here we focused on identifying the circuits responsible for the effects, and it does seem that they are distinct,” said study co-author David E. Olson, director of the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics (IPN) and a professor of chemistry and of biochemistry and molecular medicine at the University of California, Davis. “This is an important mechanistic study that validates our earlier results.”
2024 Joan Oettinger Memorial Award Recipient
Professor Yuanpei Li has been selected as 2024 Joan Oettinger Memorial Award recipient. In recognition of this achievement, Li will be acknowledged at the UC Davis School of Medicine Spring General Faculty Meeting on May 22, 2024.
The Joan Oettinger Memorial Award for outstanding lung or cancer research is given annually. This notable award is named in honor of Ms. Oettinger, a UC Davis graduate student who died of lung cancer in 1970.
Congratulations on this well-deserved award!
