Connections that UC Davis scholars built across campus and continents have led to a $298,000 National Science Foundation award to engage with Inuit fermenters in Greenland and support them in identifying the challenges and opportunities for creating a resurgence in Inuit fermented foods. Their research is part of “Navigating the New Arctic,” one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas.

Each year, 12 UC Davis graduate students are selected as Mellon Public Scholars to take part in a year of community-engaged research. This has been a very different year for them due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the students, all but one from the College of Letters and Science, have had to switch gears, change projects and not be physically present in the communities they are working with. Despite this, the students have completed projects and created videos that document their work, and in some cases is their work.

Among the projects: