As the academic year comes to a close, 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis is preparing to say goodbye to another group of faculty and staff members whose careers helped shape the university in countless ways. While this is not a complete list of retirees, we extend our congratulations and gratitude to all those concluding their service this year. Thank you for your dedication to 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis.
More than a workplace
After nearly 40 years, retirement is not easy to talk about for Felicia Smith.
As she reflected on her career, memories of colleagues, staff and faculty often brought emotion to the surface. The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, where she has spent the past 24 years as chief administrative officer, became much more than a workplace.
It's almost like my second family, she said.
Her 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis journey began in 1986 in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the School of Medicine. After 15 years there, she joined the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 2001, where she would help guide the department through decades of growth, leadership transitions and campuswide changes.
Over the years, she served under seven department chairs and navigated everything from budget challenges and organizational restructuring to major administrative system transitions.
As chief administrative officer, she oversaw the department's day-to-day operations, supporting faculty, staff and students while ensuring the department continued to thrive.
But when asked what she is most proud of, her answer had little to do with budgets or systems.
I think it's all about relationships, Smith said.
Throughout her career, she focused on fostering teamwork, mentoring staff and creating a welcoming culture for new employees and faculty. Many colleagues became close friends.
I'm very proud of my staff, Smith said. "They are self-directed, competent, resilient with a great sense of humor, resourceful, creative and they have great rapport with faculty and students."
Her greatest legacy, she believes, is leaving the department in good hands and helping build a culture rooted in collaboration, respect and service.
Retirement will bring new adventures. She plans to travel to Italy with family, visit relatives in the Philippines, spend more time with her 10 grandchildren and enjoy long-awaited time with loved ones. She also hopes to continue learning and may even return to the classroom as a student.
Still, saying goodbye to 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis remains bittersweet.
It's all about gratitude for me and the relationships I've had, whether professionally or personally over the years, she said.
From design to impact
, the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship and Professor of Technology Management at 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis Graduate School of Management, never expected his career to follow a straight path.
This is one of those random walks, Hargadon said.
What began as a chance visit to the Stanford design loft changed everything. Surrounded by students designing furniture, lighting and products, he discovered a field that perfectly matched his lifelong interest in sketching out and building new things.
I didn't realize that there was such a thing as product design, he said. Suddenly, it's like, OK, I switched majors.
After earning an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in product design, Hargadon joined Apple, where he worked on early Macintosh laptop projects. The role gave him exposure to every stage of product development, from engineering and design to global manufacturing and supply chains.
A mentor later encouraged him to return to Stanford for an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program that combined engineering and business. That experience ultimately led him into academia and, eventually, to 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis.
Davis was absolutely wonderful, Hargadon said. The town and university make such a wonderful combination.
A few years after arriving at 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis, Hargadon was invited to help judge the Big Bang! Business Competition. Working alongside community leaders and entrepreneurs, he helped transform the competition into a structured, high-impact program that today awards about $100,000 annually and connects participants with a vast network of mentors, investors, attorneys and industry experts.
The success of the competition led to something even larger: entrepreneurship education.
Recognizing that most groundbreaking ideas originate outside business schools, Andy and his colleagues launched entrepreneurship courses that attracted students from medicine, biology, engineering and other disciplines.
We realized it wasn't that we were teaching the wrong people, he said. We weren't teaching the other half of the people who could really benefit from knowing how to turn their ideas into business.
That realization ultimately inspired the creation of the Business Development Fellowship Program, which equips Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars with the business skills needed to commercialize research and pursue careers beyond academia.
Today, the program serves approximately a dozen fellows each year and has helped launch startups, careers and innovations across California and beyond.
As he steps away from leadership and teaching responsibilities, Hargadon plans to continue writing and pursuing research projects. Reflecting on his 25-year career that spanned product design, technology, entrepreneurship and education, he remains grateful for the unexpected opportunities along the way.
It's been an accidental blessing, Hargadon said.
MORE RETIREE PROFILES
Among the many other staff and faculty that are retiring are:
- Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus Community Relations
- College of Biological Sciences Associate Dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs
- Maintenance Supervisor
- Assistant Payroll Director
- Safety Specialist
Rooted in curiosity
When arrived at 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis in January 1995, she could not have imagined the changes that lay ahead. Over the next three decades, she would help shape generations of students, advance the understanding of plant evolution and development and build a global network of scientists who continue to carry her influence forward.
Originally from India, she earned a master's degree from Lucknow University before pursuing a Ph.D. at 51勛圖窪蹋 Berkeley. A few years later, she joined 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis as a professor of plant biology.
It's been a long time, Sinha said. Lots of changes have happened.
Her path into plant biology began with a simple realization during her undergraduate studies. While studying both zoology and botany, she discovered that plants were a better fit for her interests.
I loved all of biology, she said. But when it came to the animal dissections, I thought maybe this is not for me. So I moved to plants.
Throughout her career, curiosity remained her driving force. Fascinated by the diversity of life, she sought to understand how different organisms evolved and why they developed unique structures.
Among her proudest accomplishments is her work exploring the evolution of plant life through a developmental lens. More recently, she has focused on parasitic plants that threaten agriculture, including species now emerging as threats in California. Her research aims to develop solutions that could help tomato growers and other crop producers throughout the state.
I feel really proud of some of the work that we are doing, Sinha said. It's a local problem, and it's being able to utilize my career-wide knowledge.
While her research has earned recognition, she points to her students as her greatest legacy.
I had the most amazing students and postdocs, she said. They are now in many different kinds of positions all over the globe.
She is equally proud of her decades in the classroom, including 25 years teaching introductory biology to hundreds of students annually.
Retirement, however, will not mean stepping away from science. She plans to continue her research, pursue broader questions through writing and synthesis, travel more and remain involved in mentoring scientists both in the United States and India.
Davis has been a fantastic place for me to have grown personally, scientifically, she said. But I'm not going anywhere.
Career defined by science and resilience
first arrived at 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis from Australia in the 1980s as an exchange student studying agricultural science.
What began as a single year abroad became the foundation of a remarkable career spanning genetics, biotechnology, extension education, public advocacy, and scientific innovation.
As an undergraduate exchange student from the University of Melbourne, she landed an internship in the lab of a young assistant professor, Juan Medrano, who encouraged her to pursue graduate school.
I was like, No, no. Im sick of school. I want to get a real job, she recalled.
But after briefly returning to Australia, she took a leap of faith and returned to 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis in 1989 for a masters degree studying milk protein polymorphisms in California dairy cattle.
That decision changed everything.
Over the next several decades, her career followed a winding and unconventional path. She worked as a 51勛圖窪蹋 Cooperative Extension dairy and livestock advisor in the San Joaquin Valley, returned to 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis for a Ph.D. studying sex determination in sturgeon, and later joined Calgene the pioneering Davis biotechnology company behind the Flavr Savr tomato.
At Calgene, she witnessed the birth of commercial genetic engineering firsthand.
In 2002, she returned to 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis as a Cooperative Extension Specialist in Animal Biotechnology and Genomics beginning her faculty career at age 39.
Its not a particularly normal time to start an academic career, she said. Most people that age are already associate professors.
When funding restrictions halted research involving genetically engineered animals, she pivoted toward genomic testing and livestock improvement, helping producers understand emerging DNA technologies and bringing practical science directly to agriculture.
Later, genome editing technologies such as CRISPR allowed her to return to the kind of molecular biology research she had originally trained to do.
But one moment stood above the rest.
After several years of failed experiments, her team finally achieved a successful pregnancy from a gene-edited bovine embryo. The calf, named Cosmo, was born during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, when shortages of veterinary drugs complicated the delivery.
And then he plopped out, Van Eenennaam recalled. And he wasnt taking that first breath.
As she told the story, she became emotional and paused, wiping away tears.
And then he took that first breath, she said quietly. I reckon that was my favorite scientific moment.
Soon after, her graduate student confirmed the breakthrough following DNA testing.
He rang me and said, Im happy to report that we have the first ever knock-in bovine embryo-edited bull calf.
Beyond the lab, she became a passionate advocate for science communication, publicly defending agricultural biotechnology through debates such as Intelligence Squared U.S., television appearances, and over 850 invited presentations to global audiences. She appeared in the documentary , narrated by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, which explored the science and controversy surrounding GMOs and food production.
If were not communicating our science out to the public, we havent really finished the job, Van Eenennaam said.
Now entering retirement, she plans to continue traveling, speaking internationally and advocating for innovation in agriculture.
And through it all, she says, I am 100% a product and the beneficiary of 51勛圖窪蹋 Davis education.
Media Resources
Anila Lijo is a writer and editor for the Office of Strategic Communications, and can be reached by email.