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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...

From Earth to Space and Back Again: Solar Samples Show Surprising Results

June 17, 2021
When physics graduate student William Delmas made samples of solar energy harvesting perovskite films two years ago, he had no idea that this summer, he’d be analyzing those same samples after they made a round trip to the International Space Station (ISS). “It’s really cool to see this come full...

Staff Members’ Daughter Raises $1,000 to Plant New Trees

June 10, 2021
A core tenet of UC Merced’s mission is public service, something staffers Tom and Esmeralda Martinez know all about thanks to their daughter. On June 5, Merced natives the Martinezes and their 7-year-old daughter, Adison, worked alongside community members and city leaders to clean up Rahilly Park...

Improved Molecular Tool Deepens Study of Gene-Cell Interaction

May 26, 2021
A group of researchers harnessing the power of light to control gene expression has dramatically improved its method, optimizing speed and precision, and opening new research avenues for scientists who employ optogenetics — the use of light and genetic engineering to control cells. A new paper in...

Science Must Dig Deeper to Understand Climate Change’s Full Impact, Study Shows

May 17, 2021
Scientists often study the relationship of global warming and topsoil because soil is an important mediator of climate change. A newly released study indicates it’s critical to consider subsoil in climate-change research, too. A new paper in the prestigious journal Nature Communications by...

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