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Incoming Grad Students Get a Jump Start

August 19, 2021
While the campus remained quieter than usual this summer, a group of new graduate students began their UC Merced journey earlier than the rest of their cohort. On July 6, 19 incoming grad students began the six-week Competitive Edge Summer Bridge program to get a head start in acclimating to...

Antibiotic Resistance Found in Insecticides Commonly Used in California

August 18, 2021
The over the counter, “safe,” organic-compliant insecticides people purchase at home-improvement stores could be causing a problem that goes far beyond the vegetable garden or farm field — antibiotic resistance. A new study from evolutionary geneticist Professor Mark Sistrom, postdoctoral...

Edwards Eager to Expand Father of Evolution’s Work

August 16, 2021
It has been 186 years since Charles Darwin collected the samples of the Galapagos Islands species that led to his explanation of how the diversity of life on Earth has evolved and forever changed the way we understand the world. During his five-week stay on the islands, Darwin collected dozens of...

UC Merced Faculty Land Three UC-HBCU Grants, Most in System

August 10, 2021
The University of California Office of the President awarded three out of only seven UC-Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Initiative grants to UC Merced faculty members. The initiative has fostered faculty partnerships with HBCUs to support enhanced diversity and representation of...

Recent Ph.D. Grads Receive NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship

August 2, 2021
Quantitative Systems Biology Graduate Program alumni Kinsey Brock and Robert Boria were awarded Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Boria and Brock — both former members of paleoecology Professor Jessica Blois’ research group — graduated...

New AI Institute Expands UC Merced’s Smart, Sustainable Agriculture Effort

July 29, 2021
With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of agriculture’s biggest challenges related to water management, climate change and integration of new technology into...

Postdoc Earns Prestigious NIH Fellowship to Expand Prion Disease Research

July 20, 2021
Postdoctoral Scholar Mikahl Banwarth-Kuhn was awarded a $205,140 National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (NIH-F32) to be distributed over three years. The purpose of the fellowship is to enhance the research training of postdoctoral...

Professor’s Drive to Help the Community Gets Underway for 13th Year

July 15, 2021
Merced is a community with a lot of poverty, made worse with the Great Recession in 2009 and the COVID-19 pandemic. To help people in need, Professor Patti LiWang has been leading a diaper and toilet paper drive for the past 12 years. “When we moved here, the recession hit. It was hard for us, a...

Campus Wastewater Testing Offers COVID-19 Early Warning System, Establishes Protocols for the Future

July 8, 2021
COVID-19 upended life as we know it, especially among the science community. While some scientists rushed to develop a vaccine, others sought a better understanding of the virus, hoping to predict where the next outbreak might be in order to better contain it. At UC Merced, this included testing...

Ph.D. Student Named Underrepresented Chemist of Color by Merck

June 25, 2021
Chemistry and Chemical Biology graduate student Ali Abou Taka is one of 12 students to receive the inaugural Merck Research Award for Underrepresented Chemists of Color. Abou Taka, a Ph.D. student in Professor Hrant Hratchian’s lab, studies the transition of metal complexes that play a critical...

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