UC ANR Native American Advisory Council meets in Davis
The UC ANR Native American Advisory Council met in person for the first time Jan. 27-28 at the ANR building in Davis. The council held its first virtual meetings last year. Council members include A-dae Briones, Shasta Gaughen, Holly Hensher, Vincent Medina, Lena Ortega, Lorelle Ross, Alexii Sigona, Jose “Moke” Simon and MK Youngblood. The council offers important insights on the Native American experience and perspectives on Tribes’ history with the UC.
Wang named UC Davis Olive Center director
Selina Wang, a professor of Cooperative Extension with the UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology and UC ANR, has been named faculty director of the UC Davis Olive Center.
For nearly 20 years, the Olive Center has worked to improve the olive and olive oil industry through research, education and outreach.
Wang joined the Olive Center as a postdoctoral researcher in 2010 and served as research director from 2011-2022, where she led the center’s research efforts in olive oil quality, purity and standardization, managed research collaborations and developed several extension courses.
"It’s an honor to lead the UC Davis Olive Center into its next chapter,” Wang said. “We will strengthen partnerships across the olive industry, advance interdisciplinary and applied research that supports a resilient and competitive sector, and expand education and outreach that brings together students, researchers, growers and producers.”
Her research focuses on food quality and safety, sustainable production, and fruit and vegetable processing. From 2009 to 2011, she led studies through the Olive Center testing imported and domestic extra virgin olive oils sold nationwide, work that helped establish state regulations and new testing methods.
“My work already spans research, education and extension, and the Olive Center allows me to reach even more people and create greater impact,” Wang said. “In my lab, we currently have multiple research projects on olives and olive oil. One focuses on the key quality parameters of extra virgin olive oil that could inform future standards, and another addresses various practical applications for byproducts. With the Olive Center, we can expand to have more collaborative projects domestically and internationally.”
Read more at https://caes.ucdavis.edu/news/selina-wang-named-faculty-director-uc-davis-olive-center.
Garbelotto has fun with fungi in museum exhibit
Blending science with art, Matteo Garbelotto, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and director of the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab at UC Berkeley, is striving to educate the public about fungi with an art exhibit in the Netherlands.
Garbelotto and artist Kyriaki Goni created a multimedia installation about heterobasidion root rot for Nieuwe Instituut’s “FUNGI: Anarchist Designers” exhibit in Rotterdam.
“In this show, fungi are not passive building materials, but rather anarchic co-designers – unconscious and uncontrollable – of a world that can only exist through alliances between humans and other living things,” explains the museum’s website.
The exhibit was featured in The Guardian.
“Capable of ripping through conifer plantations, heterobasidion root rot is one of the most feared diseases,” wrote The Guardian. “Its balefully destructive impact is crystallised in a multimedia installation by forest pathologist Matteo Garbelotto and artist Kyriaki Goni, entitled: ‘We shall by morning, inherit the earth’ after Plath’s chilling poem.”
Garbelotto attended the exhibit’s opening, where his fungal manifesto was also on display (See text attached below).
“We had more than 1,000 people at the opening,” he wrote in an email. “The museum said it was the most popular opening of the year (and it was the end of November!!!)”
Garbelotto carries Olympic torch
On Jan. 17, Matteo Garbelotto, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and director of the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab at UC Berkeley, learned he had been chosen to be a torchbearer at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy.
He is one of 10,001 people carrying the Olympic flame in the relay from Greece to Italy for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Games, according to Forbes.
“You may not know that in 2018 I had a major ski accident that left me in a wheelchair and that was followed by a massive pulmonary embolism while on a field project for UC,” Garbelotto said in an email.
While Garbelotto was recovering from both injuries a few months later in Sardinia, a puppy arrived at his door, he told Robyn Schelenz, a writer at UC Office of the President, for a news release. He named the little Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever mix S’Abba, meaning “the water” in Sardinian. With help from a trainer, S’Abba became his service dog, enabling the forest specialist to walk again.
S’Abba is a little “hero,” he told NBC Bay Area.
S’Abba’s support has been critical for continuing his sudden oak death research in the mountains, Garbelotto told the Daily Californian.
He explained his recovery story to Olympics organizers in his application to be a torchbearer.
“The Olympics committee asked me to carry the torch with S’Abba. She will be the first service dog of a self-functional person with a mobility disability to carry the torch. This will happen on January 28 in Canazei, Fassa Valley, in Trentino (Tirol), the region where I grew up in my native Italy.”
He added, “I was told that the fact that I am a forester at UC also played a role in my selection.”
UC ANR has posted a video of Garbelotto and S’Abba walking in the snow with the flame in Italy on Facebook and LinkedIn.
While raising awareness of the value of service dogs, Garbelotto started raising money to benefit older service and guide dogs.
