Police Chief Joe Farrow was named a Yolo County Public Safety Hero by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Napa).

“Chief Farrow is a leader in law enforcement and works to improve trust and communication between UCDPD and the UC Davis community,” Thompson said in a news release. “He promotes effective and modern policing while keeping our community safe.”

Farrow joined the UC Davis Police Department in 2017 and has worked in law enforcement for four decades, including nearly a decade as commissioner of the California Highway Patrol.

Thompson also named the members of the Clarksburg Fire Protection District as Public Safety Heroes.

Video earns recognition

A video of Gary S. May reflecting on his first five years as chancellor has won a Video, Visual and Virtual Award for best interview or profile from Ragan Communications, a training and consulting firm. The video also earned an honorable mention in the education and academic video category.

UC Davis was the only higher education institution to win a video award in the competition, in which other awardees included companies like 3M, Mastercard, CBRE and others.

The eight-minute video about May “mixes formal and informal scenes, following the educator through a typical day and making him relatable,” Ragan said.

“Sometimes the best way to understand a person in a high-profile job is to follow them for a day,” the organization said about the video, produced by the Office of Strategic Communications. “That was the approach UC Davis communicators chose for a video celebrating Chancellor Gary S. May’s five years at the university.”

Separately, other communications projects from UC Davis and UC Davis Health earned recent honorable mentions from Ragan:

• UC Davis’ response to last year’s off-campus stabbings, in the crisis or reputation management category of PR Daily’s 2023 Media Relations Awards
• UC Davis Health’s Cultivating Health Blog, in the blog category of PR Daily’s Social Media and Digital Awards
• UC Davis Health’s Health Magazine and the School of Medicine 2022 Year in Review, both in the print publication category of Ragan’s 2023 PR Daily Awards

Zhang receives Everett M. Rogers Award

Associate Professor Jingwen Zhang, Department of Communications, received the 2023 Everett M. Rogers Award from the Public Health Education and Health Promotion section of the American Public Health Association.

Zhang, an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Public Health Sciences, was honored for her significant contributions to advancing public health communication theory and research, her dedication to teaching and mentoring future generations of public health communication practitioners and scholars, and her efforts in advancing the field of health communication in public health. The K. Everett M. Rogers Award honors outstanding contributions to advancing the study and/or practice of public health communication. During his 47-year career, Everett Rogers made significant contributions to both public health communication scholarship and practice through his work in diffusion of innovations, communication networks, communication and social change, and entertainment education.

— Soojong Kim

Awards of Distinction to Kimsey, Holmes

The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences named Lynn Kimsey as an exceptional faculty member and Lisa Nash Holmes as an exceptional staff member. Kimsey is a distinguished professor with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, while Holmes is the teaching coordinator, facility manager and advising center supervisor for the Department of Animal Science. Read more on the college’s website.

Saif Islam receives Technology Achievement Award

Saif Islam, an electrical and computer engineering professor and director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and Banatao Institute at UC Davis, has received the 2024 SPIE Aden and Marjorie Meinel Technology Achievement Award.

The annual award recognizes outstanding technical accomplishments in optics, electro-optics, photonic engineering or imaging and honors the legacy of Aden and Marjorie Meinel, a husband-and-wife duo that pioneered solar energy and created advanced space telescope designs.

SPIE, the international not-for-profit society for professionals in optics and photonics, selected Islam for the award to recognize his influential innovations in ultrafast and highly efficient photodetectors.

Read more on the College of Engineering website.

UC Davis showcased in national report on publicly engaged scholarship

A UC Davis grant program that helps faculty launch equitable community partnerships is featured in a new Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities report, "Modernizing Scholarship for the Public Good: An Action Framework for Public Research Universities."

The report provides institutions with a roadmap for bolstering their publicly engaged research. The grant program — the UC Davis Public Impact Research Initiative — is highlighted as a case study on funding that supports relationship-building with community partners.

Read more on the Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement website.