Celebrate the achievements and impact of our vibrant community in this year's Cognitive Science Alumni Newsletter! This issue spotlights distinguished alumni recognized at the June 2025 Cognitive Science Honors & Awards Ceremony, showcases current majors who won the Social Entrepreneurship Award at the Big Bang! Business Competition, and features inspiring success stories from graduates making waves across industries.

Cognitive Science Alumni Newsletter

Here is the intro from the program director, Dr. Zoe Drayson:

Dear Alumni and Friends of the Cognitive Science Program,

Please join me in celebrating the first ten years of Cognitive Science Program at UC Davis! In the original proposal for the major, we speculated that “the program may have as many as 150 to 250 majors when it matures”. We surpassed this by 2017 and currently have over 650 majors, so it’s fair to say that we’ve exceeded our own expectations. The growth of generative artificial intelligence over the past year has highlighted the value of our interdisciplinary degree, which enables students to understand cognition both within and beyond the boundaries of biological systems.

All programs at UC Davis go through a regular process of review, and Cognitive Science has been undergoing its first review this year. The team of internal and external reviewers who visited us in March described our program as “robust and thriving”. They noted our exceptional strengths in helping students develop interdisciplinary and holistic approaches to solving complex problems, which serve as vital assets in a rapidly changing world. We’ll receive feedback from Undergraduate Council over the next months to help us develop the program further. In preparing for the review, I’ve been supported by my faculty colleagues on the Cognitive Science Program Committee: Jochen Ditterich (NPB), Gabe Dupre (Philosophy), Richard Huskey (Communication), Masoud Jasbi (Linguistics), Patrice Koehl (Computer Science), Steve Luck (Psychology), Yuko Munakata (Psychology) and Georgia Zellou (Linguistics), and by Malina Gillies-Doherty and Jillian Mather in Yellow Cluster Undergraduate Advising.

Our undergraduate students and program alumni continue to impress us with their successes. In this newsletter we highlight their scholarly achievements, their entrepreneurship, and their service to the Cognitive Science community. We wish all of our graduating seniors the very best for the future!

Dr. Zoe Drayson
Director of Cognitive Science
College of Letters and Science, UC Davis