December Impact Report

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DECEMBER 2021

Top stories of the year: In this month's issue of the Impact Report, we are celebrating our top stories (the ones that got the most attention) and major honors from 2021. Thank you to everyone in the science community for continuing to push toward excellence even in the midst of a pandemic and providing us a foundation to start out strong in 2022.

Our Top Stories of the Year

Underwater photo of Northern California bull kelp forest

OCEAN SCIENCES, UCSC NEWSCENTER

The collapse of Northern California kelp forests will be hard to reverse

Our research on the collapse of Northern California kelp forests was the most viewed news article for campus this year. The story was covered by multiple news outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, CBS Sacramento, the Associated Press, NPR's Morning Edition, Smithsonian Magazine, and the New York Times.

Composite image of supernova SN 2020fqv

UCSC NEWSCENTER

Astronomers observe the death of a star

Submersible pilots studying mammoth tusk

UCSC NEWSCENTER

Researchers recover ancient mammoth tusk

Artist rendering of James Webb Telescope

UCSC NEWSCENTER

UC Santa Cruz researchers and the Webb telescope

Photo of 3D printed stellar nurseries

UCSC NEWSCENTER

Astronomers create the first 3D-printed stellar nurseries

Top Tweets

1. Snowflake moray eels can feed on land

2. As cargo shipments boom, ship strikes imperil whales

3. Researchers discover first possible planet outside our galaxy

4. Disrupting and demystifying grad school

Ten Honors This Year

Photo of Roxanne Beltran

OCTOBER 14

Roxanne Beltran won a Packard Fellowship and funding from the Beckman Young Investigator Program

Photo of J. Xavier Prochaska

FEBRUARY 9

J. Xavier Prochaska and Sunil Simha were honored for top research paper in Science

Photo of Jim Estes

APRIL 23

James Estes was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Photo of Erika Zavaleta

OCTOBER 28

Erika Zavaleta was honored twice by the Ecological Society of America (ESA) & appointed to the California Fish and Game Commission

October 15, October 19 | Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz was awarded the American Physical Society’s Nicholson Medal for Outreach and the SACNAS Distinguished Mentor Award.

September 29 | UCSC’s Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells has received three new funding awards for their pre and post-doctoral training programs.

January 8 | Thorne Lay received the Gold Medal for Geophysics and Emily Brodsky received the Price Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society.

February 2 | Raja GuhaThakurta and Garth Illingworth were elected Fellows of the American Astronomical Society.

October 27 | Pradip Mascharak was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

March 22 | Two UC Santa Cruz research teams were awarded the Cozzarelli Prize for outstanding contributions in PNAS.

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