Dean H. Rao Unnava: April 2025

Dean H. Rao Unnava's April 2025 edition of the Big 3 features:

Alumni Couple to Receive 2025 UC Davis Medal, University’s Highest Honor

This year’s UC Davis Medal, the university’s highest honor, will be awarded to Mike and Renée Child—two visionary alumni whose leadership and generosity have made a lasting impact across campus, including here at the Graduate School of Management. Read more > 

UC Davis Graduate School of Management Recognized as Top 5 Military Friendly® School
"Reflecting a commitment to students and alumni in the U.S. military, the UC Davis GSM is ranked No. 4 among graduate schools for students and No. 5 for spouses, and the only University of California graduate school among the top 10 in Military Friendly's latest survey. Read more > 

MSBA Students Build AI Tools to Save Cities in Hackathon
Their hackathon challenge was daunting: Build a next-generation AI-Powered Crisis Intelligence System that becomes the thinking brain of a smart city during a multi-disaster scenario. Read more >

Video Transcript

• Two visionary alumni will be awarded UC Davis’ highest honor
• We’re among the top 5 graduate schools in the U.S. for military students
• Our Master of Science in Business Analytics students built AI-powered solutions in two-day hackathon

Welcome to the April 2025 edition of the Big 3 Video Newsletter.

Alumni Couple to Receive 2025 UC Davis Medal, University’s Highest Honor

This year’s UC Davis Medal, the university’s highest honor, will be awarded to Mike and Renée Child—two visionary alumni whose leadership and generosity have made a lasting impact across campus, including here at the Graduate School of Management.

The Childs met as undergraduates in the early 1970s, married and have been deeply engaged with UC Davis ever since.

Their $5.5 million gift in 2011 established the Mike and Renée Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Management. Their follow-on gift of $5.2 million in 2020 expanded that reach across the College of Engineering as well.

Thanks to their investments, the Institute has trained more than 3,000 students, faculty and researchers in entrepreneurship academies. And more than 7,500 participants have tested their ideas through the UC Davis Big Bang! Business Competition—launching over 160 startups that have raised $1.7 billion.

Mike’s leadership spans three decades in Silicon Valley private equity and university service. Renée, a former special education teacher, has also served in key campus volunteer leadership roles.

We toast their extraordinary legacy and enduring commitment to UC Davis.

Top 5 Military Friendly® Graduate School

For the fourth year in a row, we’ve been named a Gold Level Top-10 Military Friendly® Graduate School by VIQTORY’s MilitaryFriendly.com—this time rising to No. 4 in the nation for 2025–26.

Among the top 10, we’re the only University of California school—and the only graduate program in California.

We also earned the No. 5 spot for military spouse support, reflecting our campus-wide commitment to the well-being of their families as well.

Military Friendly® is the longest-running and most comprehensive review of higher education institutions serving military-affiliated students.

We’re proud of our student veterans and active-duty service members for their achievements inside and outside of the classroom.

We’re thankful they chose UC Davis to continue their graduate education.

MSBA Students Build AI Tools to Save Cities in Hackathon

Our Master of Science in Business Analytics students in San Francisco pushed their limits this month during Aggie Hacks—a 48-hour virtual data hackathon they organized themselves.

Teaming up with some MBA students, they tackled a dataset from Structured Labs, led by CEO and founder Amrutha Gujjar, who also served as a judge alongside our own Carrie Beam and Mehul Rangwala.

Their challenge was daunting: To build a next-generation AI-Powered Crisis Intelligence System that becomes the thinking brain of a smart city during a multi-disaster scenario. It boiled down to: “The City Has Gone Silent - Can You Be Its Brain?”

Students called the experience “amazing,” “fantastic,” and “exciting”—even as one said: “we didn’t sleep much!” One standout team even built a working web app using AI to model and solve the challenge.

This type of innovative thinking is just another reason our MSBA grads are in such high demand—and why our program is ranked No. 1 in the world for return on investment.

The event wrapped up with an Olympic-style awards ceremony in San Francisco, complete with medals and well-earned bragging rights.

We can’t wait to see what our students build next.

Thank you for watching this issue of the Big 3!