Mentorship

To ensure a bright future, Peter Cala believes it’s crucial to help bright young people maximize their full potential. The UC Davis professor and Arline Miller Rolkin Endowed Chair in Physiology and Membrane Biology is heavily involved in efforts to nurture junior academics, and has earned a dean’s award from UC Davis Health System for his mentorship.

“I was fortunate to have had a number of dedicated and enthusiastic mentors, and it was a great help to me,” said Cala, whose research focuses on ways to prevent cell damage associated with a restricted blood supply. “I want to be sure that the next generation has the same opportunities and advantages that I enjoyed.”

The legacy of support will continue far into the future, thanks to a planned gift Cala and his wife Anita Moore made to support junior faculty basic-science research at UC Davis. Moore is a retired assistant director of the UC Davis Center for Comparative Medicine, a cooperative effort of the university’s medical and veterinary schools that investigates human diseases using animal models.

“With the decline of both state and federal funding, the ability of young scientists to launch their careers is made all the more difficult – and we must find ways to support them, lest they wither on the vine,” Cala said. “I believe that philanthropy is the vehicle”.