UC Santa Cruz Honors Three Alumni with 2026 Science Division Distinguished Awards
Right to left: Gregory Reyes, Larry De Ghetaldi, Nicholas Suntzeff.
The UC Santa Cruz Science Division has named three alumni as recipients of its 2026 Distinguished Alumni Awards, celebrating careers that have reshaped medicine, healthcare policy, and our understanding of the cosmos.
Gregory Reyes, Larry de Ghetaldi, and Nicholas Suntzeff were selected from a competitive pool of nominees. The honorees will be celebrated at a private ceremony at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn on May 28.
Reyes (Kresge '76) grew up as a first-generation college student and graduated summa cum laude with a biology degree before earning both an M.D. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins. Over a three-decade career in biotech and pharmaceutical research, he helped develop viral detection technologies, played a key role in identifying the hepatitis E virus, and contributed to antiviral treatments for hepatitis C and HIV. He holds 50 patents and nearly 100 publications to his name.
De Ghetaldi (Merrill '76), honored posthumously following his passing in August 2025, studied biology and chemistry at UCSC before completing medical training at Wayne State, USC, and Stanford. He spent decades as a family physician in Santa Cruz while rising to leadership roles at major California health organizations. On the national stage, he became a prominent voice for reforming Medicare's geographic reimbursement system, advocating for greater payment equity for California doctors.
Suntzeff earned his astronomy Ph.D. from UCSC in 1980 and went on to co-found two supernova research collaborations whose findings revealed that the universe's expansion is accelerating — groundbreaking work that contributed to the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Now a Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M, he has also received the Gruber Cosmology Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
"These alumni represent the very best of what UC Santa Cruz stands for," said Dean of Science Bryan Gaensler.
