Grants and Writing Resources for the University of California, Davis

On April 3, 2026, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group took first place and $5,000 at the UC Davis Grad Slam semi-final with a talk titled "Born Without a Hand: Changing the Narrative of Children's Prostheses," as the graduate group reported.

Money for Undergraduate Projects

The Undergraduate Research Center's Provost's Undergraduate Fellowship pays up to $1,500 toward costs tied directly to a research or creative project guided by a UC Davis faculty member. Past projects have included lab work, field studies, film production, music composition and travel to library or research collections. A student can hold the fellowship once, files a final report when the project ends, and presents the work at the spring research conference.

Students presenting at a research conference or professional society meeting can apply to the center for a travel award. For 2024-25 travel it reimbursed up to $500 for out-of-state trips and up to $250 for trips within California, one award per academic year, with a faculty letter of support.

Where Student Work Appears

The Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference is open to undergraduates in any field whose research is supervised by a UC Davis faculty member or professional. They present posters, show work in the Arts and Design Exhibit or speak in oral sessions in Wellman Hall, and the public can attend for free.

Finished research can go to Explorations, the UC Davis undergraduate research journal established in 1998, which takes work from the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities once a faculty mentor signs off. Undergraduate writing from any discipline competes for Prized Writing, an annual juried anthology dating to 1989. It draws more than 400 entries a year and publishes about 20.

Fellowships for Graduate Students

Continuing graduate students apply once a year to Graduate Studies' internal fellowship competition, which listed 45 fellowships in its 2025-26 round. Several are written for the dissertation stage. In that round the Bilinski Dissertation Writing Fellowship ran 15 months with a stipend, full tuition and fees, and a $1,000 research and travel allowance, and the Schwall Dissertation Year Fellowship carried a $5,000 research and travel allowance. The UCD Graduate Research Award offered up to $3,000 for a research project.

A number of the named awards are restricted by field of study, county of residence, high school or financial need.

Writing Center and Thesis Filing

Peer consultants at the UC Davis Writing Center hold 50-minute sessions for undergraduates on course papers, honors theses, capstone projects and fellowship applications, plus brief drop-in help. Graduate and professional students get consultations on theses, dissertations and publishable papers, along with dissertation writing retreats, writing groups and standing appointments with one consultant.

Committee-approved theses and dissertations are uploaded as one PDF to ProQuest ETD. Graduate Studies staff check the formatting only; content and style follow the committee and the standards of the field, and the text can't change after upload. Students choose Traditional publishing in ProQuest, and the work is released open access on the UC eScholarship platform at no cost.

An uploaded thesis can't be edited, so grammar, consistency and format are best checked before filing. See our UC Davis dissertation and thesis editing and UC Davis essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• The Secret to Better Grades: Starting Your Writing Process Early
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• ProQuest Readiness: The Final Mechanical Audit