National & International Faculty Honors

UC Davis is home to globally renowned visionaries in the arts and education, law and letters, engineering, and the physical and life sciences, assuring its place as one of the top public universities in the country. Click through the categories on the right to view a sampling of the many premier faculty honors received. For more faculty distinctions by discipline and related stories, visit the colleges and schools linked here.

Hannah Buxbaum, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law, was elected to the leading law society, Institut de Droit International. (Photo: UC Davis)

Professor Emerita Lynn Kimsey walking down a row lined with people carrying bug catcher nets.

Lynn S. Kimsey, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Entomology, has been elected a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. (Photo: Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Cristina Davis, Prof. of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Assoc. Vice Chancellor for Interdisciplinary Research and Strategic Initiatives, received the inaugural Anton Amman Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the International Association of Breath Research. (Photo: UC Davis)

Marina Leite, Prof. of Materials Science and Engineering, has been named a 2026 IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer. (Photo: UC Davis)

Professor Maceo sitting down, palms clasped on knees.

Maceo Montoya of the departments of English and Chicana/o/x Studies (with co-author Javier O. Huerta) received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for Imaginative Possibilities: Conversations with Twenty-First-Century Latinx Writers. (Photo: UC Davis)

David Gold, Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. (Photo: UC Davis Strategic Communications)

Prof. Joanna Chiu wearing gloves while holding a dropper and a test tube.

Joanna Chiu, Professor and Chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology and faculty in the UC Davis Genome Center, has been elected a fellow of the Entomological Society of America. (Photo: Kathy Keatley-Garvey)

Louise Berben, Professor of Chemistry, was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society. (Photo: Karin Higgins/UC Davis).

The multi-disciplinary and multi-state Louis Lab Team, represented by Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist Luis Peña-Lévano of the School of Veterinary Medicine, received the 2025 IFAMA World Best Case in Agribusiness Award.

Theanne Griffith, Asst. Prof. of Physiology and Membrane Biology, and Sergey Stavisky, Asst. Prof. of Neurological Surgery, have received McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience Scholar Awards. Griffith and Elisa Zhang, Asst. Prof. of Physiology and Membrane Biology, have received Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholar Awards.

Biswanath Mukherjee, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, has received the 2026 Eric E. Sumner Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Patsy Owens sitting outside with a field of trees and greenery behind her. She is smiling with her hands on her knees.

Patsy Owens, Associate Dean of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Professor of Human Ecology, received the Environmental Design Research Association’s 2025 Great Places Place Book Award, for the monograph, Outdoor Environments for People: Considering Human Factors in Landscape Design. She shares the award with co-authors Yiwei Huang (Assoc. Prof., Purdue) and Jayoung Koo (Assoc. Prof., Augsberg University).

Dr. Diane Farmer in the middle of a surgery.

Diana Farmer (center), Distinguished Professor and Chair of Surgery, and Surgeon in Chief of UC Davis Children’s Hospital, has received the ACTS Edward H. Ahrens, Jr. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Patient-Oriented Research. (Photo: Wayne Tilcock, UC Davis Health)

Neil Hunter, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, has been elected a Fellow of The Royal Society, UK. (Image: TJ Ushing / UC Davis)

Evolutionary Geneticist Graham Coop smiling while holding blow-up dinosaur

Graham Coop, Professor of Evolution and Ecology in the College of Biological Sciences, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (Katrina Huynh/UC Davis)

Class of 2025 AAAS Fellows: Alexander Aue (Statistics), Dario Cantu (Viticulture & Enology), Frédéric Chédin (Molecular & Cellular Biology), Raissa D’Souza (Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering), Simona Ghetti (Psychology), Stephanie Hampton (Environmental & Science and Policy), Dawn Sumner (Earth & Planetary Sciences), Huaijun Zhou (Animal Science).

Professor Aldrin Gomes in his lab wearing a lab suit.

Aldrin Gomes, Prof. in the departments of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, College of Biological Sciences, and Physiology and Membrane Biology, School of Medicine, has received the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.

A photo of both Professors Marina Leiti and Jeremy Munday standing next to one another outdoors. Their hands are by their hips.

Marina Leite, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Jeremy Munday, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have been elected Fellows of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

A photo of Professor Bogad in front of the theatre building on campus

L. M. Bogad, Professor of Theatre and Dance, has been awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency for Summer 2025, and a Creative Fellowship from the Wolfsonian Museum of Florida International University.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, Distinguished Professor and Physician in Emergency Medicine, the Susan P. Baker-Stephen P. Teret Chair in Violence Prevention, and Director of the Violence Prevention Research Program, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine.