A public symposium honoring UC Davis protein chemist and Antarctic adventurer Robert Feeney will be held Monday, June 3, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the UC Davis Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center.

Known to many colleagues as the "professor on the ice," Feeney made six trips to the Antarctic during the 1960s and an equal number to northern climates to study antifreeze proteins in fish blood and penguin eggs. Antifreeze proteins -- naturally occurring blood proteins that allow fish to survive in the icy polar seas -- continue to be an active area of research for Feeney, who is now retired, in collaboration with UC Davis cell biologist John Crowe.

Feeney mentored more than 42 graduate students and numerous postdoctoral researchers, who have gone on to careers around the world in medicine, chemistry, biochemistry and pharmacology. Returning to speak during the symposium will be former student Jackie Vandenheede, now a medical biochemistry professor in Belgium, who once shared a fishing shack on the Antarctic ice with Feeney. Former student Hiroshi Maeda, now a medical school professor at Japan's Kumamoto University, also will return to talk about the significance of protein modification for cancer therapeutics.

Davis mayor-elect Ruth Asmundson, a former graduate student in Feeney's lab, will introduce the speakers.

Feeney is a humorist known for his storytelling about his college days during the Great Depression. He is the author of the book "Polar Journeys," which chronicles the history of Antarctic exploration. A 3,970-foot mountain in the Queen Maude Range of the Antarctic is named in his honor.

The symposium is sponsored by the UC Davis Department of Food Science and Technology and the USDA-ARS Western Regional Research Laboratory. It is hosted by the California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research at UC Davis.