ViVita Technologies, a team comprising a UCD veterinarian and three biomedical engineering doctoral students, took home a total of $12,000 in the  $10,000 for first place, decided by a team of judges, and $2,000 for the People’s Choice award, decided by a vote of the approximately 150 people who attended the awards ceremony Thursday at the UCD Conference Center.

MBA students in the Graduate School of Management run the competition.

ViVita Technologies was driven to create its product to address the current shortage of organs. “But unlike with current heart valve transplants, the patient would be free from a lifetime of (anti-rejection) drugs,” said Maelene Wong, chief executive officer of the nascent company.

The ViVita process removes substances that trigger patients’ immune response while preserving the structural integrity and functional properties of the replacement valve tissue. The method has been successfully tested on small animals, they said.

The proprietary process allows the patient’s own cells to join and grow with the transplant tissue — a process that the team says could eventually be used for any organ transplant. It would also allow for better transplant methods for children, who often need new transplants, and additional surgeries, when their bodies grow, Wong said.

She and two fellow biomedical engineers teamed with Leigh Griffiths, an assistant professor of cardiology and cardiac surgeon in the School of Veterinary Medicine, to develop the technology. Last summer, they honed their business development skills through the Biomedical Engineering Entrepreneur Academy at UCD’s Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Second prize of $5,000 went to Davis Chem, a team of part-time MBA students that is working to commercialize a sustainable method of producing isobutryaldehyde: a common base chemical used in everything from paint to cosmetics, with genetically modified E. coli bacteria rather than with the petroleum products currently used in production.

The patent is held by Shota Atsumi, an assistant professor of chemistry.

— UC Davis News Service

That gives UCD five facilities that have attained the top Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating — the most in the 10-campus UC system.

“The project met the high standards of the LEED Platinum designation without using rare or complex technologies — just smart, thoughtful design using the best practices of today,” campus architect Clayton Halliday said in a news release. “But taken together, they make a big impact on the building’s overall sustainability.”

Designed and built by MFDB Architects of Sacramento and Flintco Pacific Construction of Roseville, with assistance from BAR Architects of San Francisco, the Student Community Center is 32 percent more energy-efficient than state building codes require. Its drought-tolerant landscaping is expected to use half as much water as a lawn would.

Among the $22 million building’s other green features are natural ventilation, low-flow water fixtures and “hydration stations” intended to reduce plastic bottle use, skylights and high-efficiency lighting fixtures that minimize artificial lighting unless needed.

The Associated Students of UC Davis manages the CoHo South café, which composts and recycles food and food packaging, and has set up a composting program for the building.

Even scrap materials generated during the center’s construction were donated to the student-run Aggie ReUse Store, which sells used and re-purposed goods. More than 96 percent of construction waste was diverted from landfills.

Though the center lacks its own solar panels, a portion of the energy generated by parking lot solar panels is earmarked for the 44,000-square-foot building.

The center also houses study areas, a media lab and student-life organizations that include the Cross Cultural Center and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center.

UCD requires that its new building be at least 25 percent more energy-efficient than the state code requires. UC’s systemwide requirement is 20 percent more efficient than code.

UCD’s other LEED platinum buildings are the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science; Gladys Valley Hall, a veterinary medicine instructional facility; Gallagher Hall, the home of the Graduate School of Management; and the Tahoe Environmental Research Center in Incline, Nev.

T(ea) is for Teachers is an appreciation tea to honor teachers and support Tech Trek, a summer camp to introduce junior high school girls to math and science careers.

The fundraiser is planned from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday, May 30, at Monticello Seasonal Cuisine, 630 G St. in downtown Davis. For $10, you can invite a special teacher — or multiple teachers! — to “high tea” jointly sponsored by AAUW-Davis, Monticello Seasonal Cuisine and Prytanean Women’s Honor Society.

All honored teachers will receive a thank you note prepared by AAUW-Davis on behalf of all their supporters, and a letter of acknowledgement will be sent to their school principal.

Invitations may be purchased online at www.aauwdavis.org. To ensure that your honored teacher can plan for this event, make your invitation by Wednesday, May 22.

For more information, visit www.aauwdavis.org or email Tea4Teachers@gmail.com.

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Dear Annie: Another Mother’s Day is here, and I dread it. I dislike spending any time with my mother, but I do it anyway because I feel it is the right thing to do.

My father was an alcoholic, and Mom was abusive, both emotionally and physically. Many times, my siblings and I had to sit in the car outside the bars while my parents were inside drinking. She also beat us with the wire end of a fly swatter. One of her favorite things was to slap me across the face. But what hurt the most were the cruel and cutting things she said about how I looked and dressed.

Growing up, I had to wait on her hand and foot, getting her cigarettes, beer, coffee or anything else. I also was expected to do a lot of the housework and cooking. Ironically, I don’t resent that as much because I learned skills I might not have otherwise developed. Her abuse also taught me to be a better parent, because I knew how I did not want to raise my children.

I know Mom was unhappy, and I am sure she felt trapped, but so did my father. She is now a widow, cries a lot and wants attention and sympathy. When I was diagnosed with cancer, it was all about what she was going through. She never once asked me how I was doing. After 63 years of this, I am tired of her excuses for the way she treated me. She has never said she was sorry. It was always someone else’s fault. Am I a bad daughter for not wanting to be around her?

— Over It

Dear Over: No. We think you’ve put up with a great deal over the years. Whatever you give back to your mother now is a selfless act of pure kindness.

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Dear Annie: This is in response to “N.Y., N.Y.,” the 34-year-old who is reluctant to visit her elderly grandmother. The writer stated that the grandmother doesn’t know who she is half the time. That means she does know who she is the other half.

I understand that some people have a hard time visiting hospitals and nursing homes or seeing a loved one change. But this grandmother is a living, breathing person with feelings, memories and needs. It is inexcusable to turn your back on a loved one because it makes you uncomfortable.

There are many other ways to support someone who is homebound or living in a facility. Cards, letters, pictures and phone calls can delight someone who may not be able to communicate in other ways. For the last two years of her life, I sent my aunt postcards on a weekly basis, even though she had dementia. When she died, we found them in her bedside table. Her caretaker said my aunt carried them around with her. They helped her feel connected to me, even though we lived 3,000 miles apart.

It is also important to support the primary caregivers. I was my own mother’s primary support. Mom didn’t call me by name for the last eight years of her life, but I could tell by the way she looked at me, even to her last day, that she knew who I was and loved me with everything she had.

”N.Y.” is old enough to understand what being part of a family really means. I hope she gets it before her precious grandmother is gone.

— Part of a Family in N.H.

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Annie’s Mailbox is written by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, longtime editors of the Ann Landers column. Email your questions to anniesmailbox@comcast.net, or write to: Annie’s Mailbox, c/o Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. To find out more about Annie’s Mailbox and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

— Creators Syndicate Inc.

She was my Sicilian great-grandmother, called Mamma Pepina, and I recently found a photograph of her taken when she was very old, perhaps in her 90s. Petite, scrawny and dark-skinned, she wears a homemade dress with long skirt and a wide collar. I look nothing like her now, and I won’t even at 90.

And yet, if I am a good grandma — and I think I am — and if my sense of how to be a good grandma comes from previous generations — and I think it does — it comes primarily from her.

In an era when children were seen and not heard, Mamma Pepina listened.

That listening, the gentle bending down to child level or sitting together over “tea” or playing with blocks on the floor, the sweet physical closeness of grandparenthood, I learned from my mother, Rose, when I watched her be a grandparent to my young children.

When I asked her about it, she said, “I learned from Mamma Pepina.”

Mamma Pepina came to America to raise Rose, the youngest of three, because the family needed help. She arrived just before World War I speaking only Italian. I imagine she had to learn to negotiate her new world very quickly.

I wish I had asked my mother more about this tiny lady she loved so well. All I have now are two short stories that my mother wrote in her 40s when she took a writing class.

This week, thinking of Mother’s Day, I pull them out.

I first read a description that Rose wrote of Mamma Pepina long after she died. I notice how much more complete my mother’s description is than the one I wrote above. She’s writing about a real person in her life, not just drawing ideas from a photograph.

Rose writes, “Mamma Pepina was in her early 60s. She was slight of stature. Her hair was all white with some yellow shading. It had a natural wave. She parted it in the middle, made long braids, and then entwined them in a bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a fringed black shawl and several layers of skirts as was the custom in her Italy. One of her legs was shorter than the other as a result of a fall from a mule when she was a child and, although she wore a built-up heel, she did have a barely perceptible limp.”

The story goes on to tell about a day at an outdoor New York market when Rose, age 5, begged for a doll and Mamma Pepina finally gave in, only to have a 12-year-old ruffian snatch it away. Mamma Pepina cried out, ran, and tried to get the doll back, but the boy disappeared in the crowd. Her words afterwards to her granddaughter carried great import because Rose never forgot them.

Rose writes, “After explaining to a few people gathered round us just what had happened and accepting their sympathetic mutterings, Mamma Pepina shifted the weight of the shopping basket from one arm to the other and with her free hand grimly grasped my tremulous one and said, ‘I guess it wasn’t meant for you.’ ”

If that quotation makes Mamma Pepina sound harsh, remember that despite having little money, she gave in on buying the doll. In a second story, Mamma Pepina nurses Rose, age 6, through a terrifying month of typhoid fever and rejoices when she becomes naughty, a sign of recovery.

The love in this second story is palpable. Rose writes, “Mamma Pepina was always there to blow away the hurts, to soothe, to play, and best of all to tell funny stories about when she was a child in Italy.

“Somehow, Mamma Pepina always made things come out all right.”

Although these two stories give me a strong sense of Mamma Pepina, her teachings reached me primarily through my own mother, Rose, who lived them out with me and with my children, until she died in 1987.

Today I am “Grandma” to two young boys who are the great-great-great grandchildren of Mamma Pepina.

Last Christmas, I watched my younger grandson, age 1½, struggle to put a letter in a mailbox, slowing figuring out that it has to go in lengthwise and won’t fit any other way. As we stood there for a long time putting more letters in the box, and I was more patient than I am in any other part of my life, I knew I come from the tradition of Mamma Pepina.

Perhaps, many decades from now at Mother’s Day, my grandsons will compare notes on what they remember about me, just as I contacted my brother and my cousins this week to ask about Mamma Pepina.

If my grandsons lose me early, as my children lost Grandma Rose, they won’t remember a lot of detail. But already I am passing on the essence of my mother, as she passed on the essence of Mamma Pepina in a line that is not unbroken but is surprisingly strong.

— Marion Franck lives in Davis with her family. Reach her at marionf2@gmail.com