Biography

By Derrick Bang

JASON DEJONG, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, operates in a field — geotechnical engineering — that is (in)famous for its elusiveness.

DAVIS, CA­­­; July 8, 2015–Jennifer Sinclair Curtis has been named as the Dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering effective October 19, 2015.  Curtis currently serves as the Associate Dean for Research and Facilities at the University of Florida’s College of Engineering.  She will replace Interim Dean Jean VanderGheynst who graciously agreed to serve effective July 1, 2015, in the wake of former 

After earning his Ph.D. in engineering under the guidance of UC Davis Professor Emeritus Don Margolis, Woong-chul Yang went to work as a technical assistant at Ford Motor Company in 1986.

In 1996, biomedical engineer M. Allen Northrup partnered with Thomas L. Gutshall and Kurt Petersen to found Cepheid, a company they hoped would become the reference standard for DNA analysis. Northrup soon became chief technology officer and vice-president of research, and the company’s first product was released in 2000: the SmartCycler, a device that improved upon existing fast-cycling techniques for preparing DNA samples.

On May 16, 2011, Professor Katherine Ferrara was presented with an Outstanding Mentor Award from the Consortium for Women and Research at UC Davis. These awards honor faculty members who have engaged in sustained and successful mentoring of women at the university; Ferrara was nominated by students and peers, many of whom wrote lengthy and quite moving letters of support.

In 1984, fledgling computer animator John Lasseter’s short film The Adventures of André and Wally B drew plenty of attention; when he then directed Luxo Jr. in 1986, the upstart company dubbed Pixar was well on its way. Both films were praised for the manner in which CGI visualized real-world objects and environments.

In 1961, after the Bay of Pigs invasion when approximately 1,200 prisoners were held hostage in Cuba, Fidel Castro offered a trade with the United States: He would release most of the captives in exchange for 500 tractors. To negotiate this famous “Tractors for Prisoners” trade, an “unofficial” group of U.S. delegates was sent to Havana — “unofficial” to support the federal government’s claim that it hadn’t been involved in the invasion.

Some people simply aren’t allowed to retire.

After having served as dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering from 1983 to 1996, Mohammed S. Ghausi probably felt that it was time to relax. No such luck: Then-Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef pulled Ghausi back into the UC Davis fold for an additional year, to simultaneously serve as interim Vice Chancellor for Research, Dean of Graduate Studies and Vice Provost for University Outreach.

When Alan Laub accepted his position as the fourth dean of the UC Davis College of Engineering in October 1996, he demonstrated a talent for prescience:

“Just as the physical sciences have formed the cornerstone of engineering in the 20th century,” he said, “the biological, computational and information sciences will play an equally fundamental role in the 21st century.”