Ten UC Merced graduate researchers are gearing up to deliver the most intense three minutes of their academic careers.
Each spring, master’s and Ph.D. students across the campus’s three schools are invited to participate in Grad Slam — a fast‑paced competition that challenges scholars to distill their cutting‑edge research into a crisp, engaging presentation for a general audience.
The ARCS Foundation Northern California awarded five UC Merced graduate students with 2025-26 fellowships. ARCS advances science and technology in the United States by providing financial awards to exceptional graduate-level scholars in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
In total, the ARCS Foundation Northern California has gifted more than $200,000 in fellowship support to UC Merced since 2022.
This year’s ARCS recipients:
Physics Ph.D. candidate Arabi Seshappan added two prestigious fellowships to her curriculum vitae: the Chateaubriand Fellowship in Science, Technology, Engineering Mathematics & Biology-Health and the UC President's Pre-Professoriate Fellowship.
UC Merced researchers are collaborating on a two-year research project to develop effective composting methods for cotton textiles.
The project explores manufacturing cotton waste scraps from clothing into compost to demonstrate efficient composting with the right recipe, and the compost’s ability to nourish soils without introducing pollutants, according to UC Merced’s project lead, Biyensa Dubiwak, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences.
Chemistry and Biochemistry Ph.D. student Abigail Gyamfi was recognized by the California Section of the American Chemical Society Summer Experiences for the Economically Disadvantaged (SEED) Program and the Women Chemists Committee (WCC).
“This is the first time a graduate student has been recognized by the California Section of the ACS, so Abigail is pretty unique,” WCC Co-chair and Project SEED Coordinator Elaine Yamaguchi said.
Two UC Merced graduate students and an alum from the School of Natural Sciences were recently awarded fellowships from the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
This year, NSF awarded 1,000 GRFP fellowships compared to about 2,000 in previous years.
Adekunle “Kunle” Adewole isn’t a stranger to the spotlight, having grown up singing at family functions and performing in theater productions. He also has fervently watched “The Voice,” a singing reality competition television series, envisioning himself performing on stage.
“’The Voice’ is part of my singing journey. I've always wanted to do it, and maybe at some point I'll get the chance to perform there,” he said. “I’d probably sing ‘Jealous’ by Labrinth, or ‘Get to You Again’ by Mac Ayres.”
Ph.D. student Micah Oeur has been awarded a 2024-2025 UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship to support her physics research and boost her goal to be a professor.
PPPF’s goal is to enhance faculty pathways for historically underrepresented groups, particularly Chicanx/Latinx, African Americans, American Indians/Native Americans, Filipinx and Pacific Islanders in all disciplines; women in STEM; and Asian Americans in the humanities and social sciences.
UC Merced was the site of the 22nd Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate computational chemistRY (MERCURY) Conference held in mid-July.
