Researchers hope to use information to develop new strategies to prevent infection in various crops.

Endowed chair named for professor emeritus Steve Gliessman, holder of campus's first endowed chair and a pioneer in agroecology.

The main ingredient in vegetable oil is linked to weight gain, fatty liver, diabetes and insulin resistance.

Jacqueline Chang grew up in a Southern California suburb and never went camping as a child. So when she toured the Masumoto family’s 80-acre organic farm near Fresno in April with other UC Global Food Initiative student fellows, she was thrilled.

“It’s really cool for me to see literally where my food is coming from,” Chang said.

As undergraduates, identical twins Jon and Stan Schor teamed together at Caltech, serving as co-editors of the student newspaper and participating in the same three sports — track, fencing and cross country.

Every week for the past four years, Sanna Alas has volunteered at Jordan High, an underserved school in Watts, as part of UCLA’s Mentors for Academic and Peer Support program.

Ankita Raturi is a model student for the UC Global Food Initiative.

The UC Irvine graduate student in informatics has a different take on applying technology to agriculture: Her Global Food Initiative fellowship project is to model the environmental impacts of agricultural systems.

Ryan Dowdy’s creative juices began flowing as a young child in Alabama. Instead of starting a lemonade stand, he mixed oil, water and food coloring and then sold jars filled with the concoction to his neighbors for 50 cents apiece.

Now he is taking that entrepreneurial spirit and trying to convert food waste into electricity.

When Kate Kaplan enrolled at UC Berkeley, she wanted to be involved with sustainability but didn’t know where to start. After stumbling into the Student Organic Garden Association, she found a place to both grow food and pursue a career path.

Global Food Initiative fellows represent a broad cross-section of students.

Several dozen student fellows representing two of UC President Janet Napolitano’s initiatives — carbon neutrality and global food — will join together at a symposium July 20 in San Francisco.

The initiative is off to a fast start as faculty, students and staff from across the 10-campus UC system focus their collective power on food issues.