Grants and Writing Resources for the University of California, San Diego
Two members of the Class of 2027 took category wins in the 2026 Undergraduate Library Research Prize, each with $1,000, at a ceremony on May 27, 2026. A neurobiology major won in the life and health sciences for work on obesity-related microbial dysbiosis as a potential modulator of tumor progression. An applied mathematics major won in physical sciences and engineering with a hybrid gradient descent ascent framework for nonconvex-nonconcave min-max optimization problems. A human biology major in the Class of 2028 earned an honorable mention for testing whether heart-health dietary indices fit South Asian immigrant diets.
Where Undergraduates Present
Presenters at the Undergraduate Research Conference must be nominated by a faculty member, and the conference takes students of every discipline and class standing. Each presenter gets 12 minutes with slides plus questions, in moderated panels of three or four talks grouped by subject.
The Undergraduate Research Hub lists other conferences as well. Summer researchers give oral talks at the Summer Research Conference. Sophomores, juniors and seniors in the Faculty Mentor Program present at MURALS, the Mentored Undergraduate Research and Applied Learning Symposium, which took that name in 2025. CRASSH recognizes undergraduate research in the arts, social sciences and humanities.
Prizes and a Student Journal
The Undergraduate Library Research Prize judges entries in three categories: life and health sciences; physical sciences and engineering; and social sciences, arts and humanities. In 2026 each category winner received a $1,000 cash prize.
Three biology majors started Saltman Quarterly in 2004 as a research journal for undergraduates. Its annual Research Journal prints student manuscripts, abstracts and feature articles, and the group's Undergraduate Biology Research Showcase puts student posters in front of faculty judges, who give awards for the best ones.
Graduate Fellowships and Prizes
The graduate office, GEPA, lists campus awards on one fellowships page. Three dissertation year fellowships, the UC President's, the Fletcher Jones and the Marye Anne Fox, each pay a $37,500 stipend to Ph.D. candidates expected to finish by the end of the award year. The Kenneth and Dorothy Hill Fellowship gives a $12,000 stipend plus tuition and fees for one quarter to doctoral students whose work centrally uses UC San Diego's Special Collections. Each program can nominate one enrolled doctoral student who will receive the Ph.D. by the end of the academic year for the $1,500 Jean Fort Dissertation Prize.
At the start of the degree, the Katzin Prize goes to a select group of incoming doctoral students from all disciplines.
Writing Help and the Dissertation Manual
Graduate students book 30- or 60-minute consultations at the Writing Hub in the Teaching + Learning Commons, and can join twice-weekly writing circles or two- to three-day writing retreats. Its consultants will not edit or proofread a draft; they help writers become stronger editors and proofreaders of their work. Undergraduate writing support has moved to Academic Support Learning Services, booked through TracCloud as "TLC Writing Support."
Dissertations and theses follow the 2025-2026 Preparation and Submission Manual. The manual makes the student responsible for a manuscript free of spelling and other errors and asks every committee member to read the entire content. Final copies go to ProQuest through the submission process, which offers an optional formatting pre-check, and become available through ProQuest and eScholarship, with a copy preserved by the UC San Diego Libraries.
For a final pass on grammar, consistency and format before a manuscript goes to your committee or to ProQuest, our editors are available. See our UC San Diego dissertation and thesis editing and UC San Diego essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.
From Our Writing Guides
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Managing Editor of Editors For Students. Links checked October 2026.
Editors For Students is an independent editorial service and is not affiliated with the University of California, San Diego, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your UC San Diego writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.