BRAIN AWARENESS WEEK: Note to brain: March 10-16 is Brain Awareness Week, an international effort to advance public awareness about the progress and benefits of brain research.

Toward that end, George R. Mangun, UC Davis professor and director of the Center for Mind and Brain, plans a March 11 lecture, free and open to the public, on the topic "How the Brain Creates Human Experience" -- about the brain's role in helping us to understand the world around us. The lecture is scheduled from 6 to 7 p.m. in the University Club Lounge.

Sponsors are the Center for Mind and Brain, the UC Davis Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience and the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience.

CHARLEY RICK SYMPOSIUM: The Plant Genomics Program has organized its 2008 Charley Rick Symposium around the topic Plant Responses to Biotic and Abiotic Stress. The biennial event is named after a longtime UC Davis professor, considered a legend in tomato genetics, who died in 2002.

The two-day symposium is set to begin March 13 with a reception at 5 p.m., introductions at 5:30 and the keynote address at 5:45 by Paul Schulze-Lefert, director of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research.

The symposium continues in the same place, the AGR Room at the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 14. UC Davis professors Eduardo Blumwald and Gitta Coaker are listed among the speakers.

Registration and more information: conferences.ucdavis.edu/charleyrick. Or contact Jeleana T. Johnson, (530) 754-2252 or jtejohnson@ucdavis.edu.

All seminars and colloquia: calendar.ucdavis.edu