2026 Reaching Across the Causeway Awards
The Reaching Across the Causeway (RAC) Awards program, now in its fourth year, is a joint funding initiative led by the Vice Dean for Research of the School of Medicine (SOM), the Associate Dean of Research at the Weill School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM), with contributions from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center.
This unique program brings together the strength of the two schools (majority who are based across the Yolo Causeway) to address complex health issues and reflects the ability to conduct groundbreaking research in our nationally ranked medical and veterinary schools, located less than 20 miles from each other across the Yolo Causeway.
The RAC pilot awards are designed to spark innovative, cross-disciplinary collaborations between the School of Medicine and the Weill School of Veterinary Medicine. We are seeking bold, high-impact ideas that will open new avenues of investigation and significantly enhance the potential for future extramural research funding.
By bridging disciplines and schools, this annual program aims to address today’s most complex scientific challenges through collaborative, team-based science. Each team consists of at least one PI from either the School of Medicine or the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine and at least one co-applicant from the other school. Each winner will receive $50,000 in seed funding to generate preliminary data and position the projects for future extramural funding.
2026 Awardees
Damian Genetos
Damian Genetos, professor of anatomy, physiology, and cell biology in the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine, for the project, "Bone-mimetic Engineered Niches as Selective Traps for Early Capture and Molecular Profiling of Skeletal Metastasis," the goal of which is to develop bone-like implants that can capture and identify the cancer cells most likely to spread to bone.
Angela Gomez-Simmonds
Angela Gomez-Simmonds, assistant professor of infectious diseases in the School of Medicine, for the study, "Assessing Clostridioides difficile Colonization Resistance and Antimicrobial Resistance Genes Across Patient Samples." The team will study how healthy gut bacteria protect against C. difficile and antibiotic-resistant infections.
Qizhi Gong
Qizhi Gong, professor of cell biology and human anatomy in the School of Medicine, for "Regulation of Barrier Integrity at the Nose-Brain Interface," which will study a vulnerable gateway where smell-related nerves connect the nose to the brain to understand how infections and inflammation may affect the brain's natural defenses.
Alessandro Venosa
Alessandro Venosa, associate professor of molecular biosciences in the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine, for the project, "Obesity as a Modifier of Environmental Lung Injury," which focuses on bile acid signaling pathways that may contribute to inflammation following exposure to air pollution.
Yin Allison Liu
Yin Allison Liu, associate professor of ophthalmology & vision science in the School of Medicine, for the project, "Bioelectric Modulation of Microglia to Promote Recovery After Acute Ischemic Optic Neuropathy," which will utilize electrical stimulation, advanced imaging and neuroimmunology to investigate whether bioelectric signals can direct immune cells toward a reparative state and improve recovery after optic nerve injury. This project is supported by funding from the CTSC.
Adrien Dupanloup
Adrien Dupanloup, assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery in the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine for the project "Defining the Cross-Species Immune Landscape of Pituitary Tumors to Enable Immunotherapeutic Strategies," which will examine how the immune system interacts with pituitary tumors in dogs and humans. This project is supported by funding from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Past Awardees and projects may be found here.
Save the Date:
April 28, 2027
Join us for our next RAC event:
The Comparative Dermatology Forum - Bridging Human and Veterinary Medicine for Translational Discovery
Organized by Drs. Maija Kiuru (SOM) and Tyler Jordan (WSVM)