Brenda Ortiz

UC Merced’s Graduate Division will host its Grad Slam competition on April 18 with graduate scholars presenting on topics ranging from Valley Fever immune response and antibiotic resistance to computer vision and mathematical methods for thermal collection. This year’s competition started in March with 30 graduate students in the qualifying round, from which the judges narrowed the field to the top 12.

The campus’s 2019 Grad Slam semi-finalists are:

The Interdisciplinary Humanities (IH) Graduate Group and UC Merced Graduate Division are co-hosting the sixth annual Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Student Conference (IH Grad Con) from April 4-6 at UC Merced.

The event provides space for graduate-level networking, student presentations, keynote speakers and exploring the humanities as both academic scholarship and social advocacy.

UC Merced’s Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Marjorie S. Zatz was selected as one of the Top 35 Women in Higher Education in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education’s eighth annual special report recognizing the contributions of women to higher education.

The edition, in honor of Women’s History Month, marks the publication’s 35th anniversary by highlighting 35 women who are tackling some of higher education’s toughest challenges, exhibiting extraordinary leadership skills and making a difference in their respective communities.

Two UC Merced Ph.D. students took to the State Capitol yesterday with representatives from the other UC campuses to advocate for the importance of the research being done across California.

Kisha McGuire has discovered an opportunity to do what she loves for an institution she’s grown to care deeply about.

McGuire graduated from UC Merced in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and soon started a full-time staff position in the Fiat Lux Scholars Program within the campus’s Calvin E. Bright Success Center.

UC Merced’s graduate programs in engineering had a strong showing in U.S. News & World Report’s 2020 edition of Best Graduate Schools, released today.

Overall, UC Merced’s School of Engineering is ranked No. 134 in the nation, after debuting at No. 140 in 2015.

It’s estimated that a leaf-cutter ant colony can strip an average tree of its foliage in a day, and that more than 17 percent of leaf production by plants surrounding a colony goes straight into their giant, fungus-growing nests.

It’s no wonder these ants are considered the smallest recyclers on the planet and are referred to as "ecosystem engineers" by scientists because of the effects they have on the environment around them.

Twelve years ago, Cassie Gunter was fighting for her life. Now she wants to give back to the group that helped her survive.

At age 22, she went to the emergency room with what she thought was bronchitis. She was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) — an uncommon blood cancer for her age — and rushed to Stanford Hospital.

Janna’s Rodriguez’s achievements exemplify the entrepreneurial spirit and drive shared by many UC graduates. Rodriguez not only launched a successful business in her hometown of Merced as an engineering student, she also excelled in the classroom.

Rodriguez credits the combination of unique programs, people, encouragement and small class-size for helping her get to where she is now.

UC Merced Electrical Engineering and Computer Science graduate student Yijun Li was recently selected as a 2019 Facebook Fellowship winner.

The Facebook Fellowship program is designed to support promising doctoral students engaged in innovative and relevant research in computer science and engineering. This year’s cohort’s research topics spanned research areas from applied statistics to security and privacy.

The fellowship begins in Fall 2019 and will support Li up to two years.