The following UC Davis faculty have been tapped to play key roles in shaping policy in federally funded scientific research, food safety, graduate education, and other areas:

Kent Lloyd, associate dean for research and graduate studies in the School of Veterinary Medicine and director of the Mouse Biology Program, has accepted an invitation to serve for three years on the Council of Councils of the National Institutes of Health. Lloyd will help to advise the NIH director on research efforts, policies and activities.

Carl Winter, a Cooperative Extension toxicologist and director of the FoodSafe Program in the Department of Food Science and Technology, has been appointed to a four-year term on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Food Advisory Committee. The committee addresses emerging food safety, nutrition and other food- or cosmetic-related health issues.

Jeffery Gibeling, dean of Graduate Studies, has been named to a new commission tasked with examining how the United States can be more effective at guiding students through graduate school and into professional careers. The commission comprises nine university leaders and five corporate leaders, as well as the presidents of the two organizations that convened the commission: the Council of Graduate Schools and the Educational Testing Service. The commission grew out of the 2010 report “The Path Forward: The Future of Graduate Education in the United States.” The report argued that the nation’s future prosperity and ability to compete in the global marketplace depended on producing graduate degree holders prepared to address the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

Professor Tom Tomich, director of the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute and the UC-wide Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, has been named an expert adviser to AGree, a new initiative to transform food and agricultural policy. AGree is funded by a consortium of leading foundations: Ford, Bill and Melinda Gates, William and Flora Hewlett, W.K. Kellogg, McKnight, Rockefeller, David and Lucile Packard, and Walton Family. Tomich is the inaugural holder of the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems at UC Davis.

James Carey, professor of entomology, and Peter Wainwright, professor of evolution and ecology, join the more than 300 fellows who govern the California Academy of Sciences, which is at the forefront of efforts to understand and protect the diversity of Earth's living things. The academy operates an aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum and four-story rainforest in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Peter Moyle, professor of wildlife, fish and conservation biology, has been honored for his four-decade long engagement in public policy. Moyle is the recipient of the Brown-Nichols Science Award, which promotes the practice of good science in regard to the San Francisco Estuary and watershed. Moyle, associate director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, is known for documenting the declining status of many native California species as well as invasions by alien species.