UCR nematology professor Holly Bik is pioneering the use of microscopic worms as indicators of pollution and environmental change in marine environments. For this effort, Bik has won California Sea Grant’s 2019 Special Focus Award, one of only four such awards handed out in the entire state. The award provides her lab with $70,000 to evaluate the...

Laila Lalami, a creative writing professor at UC Riverside, has won the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize, which honors midcareer fiction authors. The Simpson Literary Project announced Lalami’s selection on April 2, describing her as “a world-class writer.” Lalami is the author of multiple award-winning novels, including “The Moor’s...

UC Riverside physicist Igor Barsukov, who specializes in experimental condensed matter physics, is being honored by the journal Communications Physics as an outstanding reviewer of manuscripts for the month of March 2019. Outstanding referees are those who “have gone above and beyond what is expected of a reviewer in terms of the value of their...