News

Inspiring Alumni Return to Campus

October 27, 2025

This October, UC Merced proudly welcomed back two distinguished alumni: Rebecca Abney (Environmental Systems) and Drew Abney (Cognitive and Information Sciences). From their beginnings as Ph.D. students at UC Merced to their current roles as tenured faculty members at the University of Georgia,...

How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Fuel Record-Breaking Wildfires in 2020? New Study Explains

May 5, 2025

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted many facets of life, including health care, schools and the work environment. A new study by UC Merced researchers shows evidence that the pandemic also fueled an elevated number of wildfires in the United States that year. How? With schools and businesses...

NSF Award Supports Young Faculty Member’s Research into Building Blocks of the Universe

May 1, 2025

Cosmology Professor Anna Nierenberg has received a CAREER award for a project that will vastly improve the study of the nature of dark matter in the universe. She is the 42nd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). CAREER awards are among the...

Sociology Graduate Program Debuts Strongly in U.S. News Rankings

April 30, 2025

Only 10 years after it began, the Ph.D. program in UC Merced’s Department of Sociology made an impressive debut in U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings of graduate-level offerings. The Sociology graduate program tied for No. 64 nationally, sharing the position with UC Riverside, Temple...

For the First Time, All Avian Evolutionary Relationships Revealed Through Collaboration

April 29, 2025

Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by combining data on 9,239 species published in nearly 300 studies between 1990 and 2024 and additional...

UC Merced Student’s Photography Joins Exhibit of Young Valley Talent

April 29, 2025

Zachary Silva’s camera escorts us to extraordinary places. We see UC Merced from high above, the land around the campus warped by a fisheye lens. We look straight down a pole at a fluttering U.S. flag and two lonely tractors. These eye-popping points of view are among other photographs by Silva on...

Chemistry Ph.D. Student Wins Campus Grad Slam Top Prize, Advances to UC-wide Final

April 28, 2025

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...

Sociology Ph.D. Student Examines Why Workers Protest in El Salvador

April 25, 2025

UC Merced Sociology graduate student Luis Rubén González Márquez has a new first-authored article titled “The Glocal Foundations of Threat-Driven Labor Resistance to Authoritarian Capitalism,” published by UC Press in the Sociology of Development journal with his advisor, Professor Paul Almeida....

Team Advances In Aviation Prize Contest

April 25, 2025

A team of UC Merced students and their adviser has entered the second phase of the 2024-25 CITRIS Aviation Prize design contest. Students Yael Xavier Andujar, Monica Cruz Gaspar, Ana Hernandez, Kyra Ruiz, Randy Serrano and mechanical engineering Professor Francesco Danzi will compete against three...

Researchers Look Ahead to Fire Season 2025

April 22, 2025

Pictures accompanying Professor John Abatzoglou's presentation on the 2025 fire season were blurry. That was intentional, he said, because so much about wildfire is unpredictable. "There's a lot that we know, and a lot we don't know," he said. However, Abatzoglou said, some conclusions can be drawn...