A carcinogen with potentially serious impacts on human health was found in neighborhoods in the months after the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires and may have spread to communities as far as six to nine miles downwind from the fire zones, according to newly published work by University of California researchers.
Southern California is confronting another wildfire season while researchers from the University of California, Davis continue studying the lasting impacts of the devastating 2025 fires on air quality, human health and the environment. Their early findings are shaping future rebuilding strategies, public health precautions and fire resilience policies.
Before coming to UC Davis, Keira Folkers saw environmental engineering as a way to turn research into solutions that address climate issues and help protect ecosystems. Now, she sees it as a necessary piece in a much larger restoration and conservation puzzle.
Engineering is both a rigorous discipline and an art form to Natalia Wilson, an outgoing civil engineering student at UC Davis. “Throughout my time here, I’ve come to understand that our engineering education is really about teaching a way to think,” she said.
After months of studying, fourth-year civil engineering major Clifton Heatlie completed and passed his Fundamentals of Engineering exam. He reflects on the steps he took to prepare and other aspects of engineering at UC Davis that supported him along the way.
Kaveh Madani, Ph.D. ’09 has been awarded the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize, known as the “Nobel Prize of Water.” Madani is recognized for his global leadership in water security, climate adaptation and the water-energy-food nexus.
UC Davis scientists are in Antarctica to deploy Gull, an autonomous underwater vehicle known as a glider, that will help us understand how fast one of the world’s biggest and most important glaciers — Thwaites — is melting. Thwaites Glacier and neighboring Pine Island Glacier are potential glacial flow from the West Antarctic ice sheets. If this system collapses, it could raise sea levels across the world.
The U.S. government is in full retreat from its efforts to make vehicles more fuel-efficient, which it had been prioritizing, along with state governments, since the 1970s.
When it comes to resilience, Andrea Solis Olguin clearly embodies it. As a recent UC Davis graduate with a B.S. in civil engineering and a minor in sustainability in the built environment, Solis carries the weight and strength of various identities: she was a reentry student, an international student, and a transfer student. She is also an engineer, a photographer, a storyteller, and a mosaic of lived experiences.
Some forms of engineering deal with predictable, controlled environments. Ross Boulanger deals with the kind that can change from place to place and day to day.
He is a distinguished professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering, focusing on geotechnical earthquake engineering, a field where decisions can be shaped by the unique geologic conditions found only in the location where a dam, bridge or other project is being built.
Prof. Michele Barbato has been named as the incoming President of the American Society of Civil Engineers Engineering Mechanics Institute. The EMI is the premiere interdisciplinary organization of engineering mechanics, with a focus on addressing existing and emerging engineering and societal issues through research and the application of scientific and mathematical principles. Read Prof.
by Jay Lund, Jamie Anderson, William Fleenor, and Fabián A. Bombardelli
San Francisco Bay is a tidally-energetic estuary where clay muds are the dominant sediment building wetlands, depositing in channels and harbors, and responding to sea level rise since San Francisco Bay was most recently inundated about 8,000 years ago. These sediments mainly come from the Central Valley and become cohesive when they encounter enough salinity in the western Delta. This causes the cohesive sediments to flocculate into larger particles which then settle, deposit, erode, circulate, and redeposit where the tides and flow take them.
When a public building catches fire, its built-in systems automatically respond: Smoke alarms blare, sprinklers kick on, and occupants quickly evacuate.
But what if the life-threatening danger isn’t fire but invisible airborne contaminants that can make occupants sick? Could a similar smart-building system monitor and improve the quality of the air indoors, where Americans spend 90 percent of their time?
Air quality scientists have detected elevated levels of hexavalent chromium and silver in air samples collected from the debris cleanup zones for the Eaton and Palisades wildfires, which occurred January 2025 in Los Angeles County.
Alissa Kendall, the Ray B. Krone Endowed Professor of Environmental Engineering, has been named the new director of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, or ITS-Davis, the Office of Research announced today (Sept. 15). Kendall succeeds founding director Dan Sperling, who has led the institute since its establishment in 1991.
Prof. Jason DeJong has been honored as one of two extraordinary faculty members receiving this year's Distinguished Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentorship Awards. These awards shine a light on the power of mentorship in shaping the academic and professional journeys of UC Davis graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.
Professor Miguel Jaller is appointed chair of the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Jaller is the co-director of the Institute of Transportation Studies' Sustainable Freight Research Program, where he researches sustainable transportation systems and humanitarian logistics.
