Bike at a bikestand

Our Program

What makes UC Davis PTX special?

  • UC Davis CampusUC Davis is the third largest campus in the UC system and the only campus to have a medical school, a veterinary school, a business school, a law school and colleges of agriculture and engineering. In fact, this academic range makes us fairly unique among universities throughout the United States.
  • The campus has a long-standing history of excellence in advanced training in the biological sciences, graduating more PhD's in this area per year than any other school in the country.
  • We have the largest of the seven regional primate research centers in the country and one of the two repositories in the country for knockout and transgenic mice.
  • Our state-of-the-art Core Facilities for mass spectrometry, NMR, gene expression profiling, proteomics, metabolomics, genomics and structural biology provide the latest tools to address research questions.
  • Faculty within the Pharmacology and Toxicology Graduate Group are currently Principal Investigators on several large program projects, highly competitive centers and training grants, underscoring the quality of our faculty and their commitment to our cohesive yet interdisciplinary environment. This offers a substantial advantage for students who wish to carry out collaborative projects that involve several subdisciplines in pharmacology and toxicology.
  • Students are not restricted to the techniques and approaches available in the laboratory of their Major Professor (faculty member responsible for guiding a graduate student through final completion of the Ph.D.). Students are encouraged to seek opportunities that promote cross disciplinary training.
  • Mrak head sculptureThe program has a small number of highly qualified, highly committed students making the overall faculty-to-student ratio approximately 1:1. This means that students have excellent access to their mentors and that education is a high priority for the faculty.
  • There are both graduate student housing and family student housing available at reasonable monthly rates.
  • The City of Davis is an ideal place to live and is a great place to be a graduate student. Known for its small town atmosphere, Davis is situated 12 miles from Sacramento, 75 miles from San Francisco (and the ocean) and about two hour's drive to Lake Tahoe and world class skiing and hiking. Graduate students love the fact that compared with many California locations, Davis is affordable on a limited budget. Davis is also environmentally conscious. Recycling, waste minimization, solar generation of electricity and use of electric cars are all part of the culture of this small town and the University. Davis is a bike friendly community, and the majority of students and many faculty use this form of transportation. We have over 50 miles of dedicated bike paths (not just bike lanes in the street) throughout the city. For many of these reasons, Outside Magazine and Sunset magazine recently chose Davis as one of the Top 10 best towns in America.