News

Fellowship Advances Student’s Research into Arab American Smoking Behaviors

December 17, 2020

Public Health doctoral student Sarah Alnahari was awarded a UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship to continue her community-driven research examining tobacco use among Arab Americans in the San Joaquin Valley. The TRDRP is an initiative created through tobacco...

Innovate to Grow Coming to a Zoom Room Near You

December 15, 2020

UC Merced’s premier experiential learning expo, Innovate to Grow (I2G), is providing students, faculty and staff with a new set of experiences to learn from this year, as the event continues in a virtual format to comply with pandemic safety guidelines. “Our students, faculty and staff have adapted...

Breast Milk Shows Promise for Treating COVID-19 and Protecting Babies

December 14, 2020

Health psychology Professor Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook and incoming grad student Jessica Marino have a new study suggesting that the breastmilk of mothers who have recovered from COVID-19 contains strong antibodies to the virus. In the fight against the global pandemic, there is an urgent need to...

Physicist Liu Receives NSF CAREER Award to Create ‘Bacteria Treadmill’

December 10, 2020

Physics Professor Bin Liu has received a CAREER award for his research into a new micromanipulation technique to virtually hold freely moving microorganisms, essentially creating a “bacterial treadmill” to enable biological and medical studies of microorganisms in their natural state. He is the...

Q&A: How People Decide Whether to Comply with Public Health Orders

December 9, 2020

How do people decide whether to comply with public health directives around the COVID-19 pandemic, such as wearing masks, social distancing and staying at home? Whether to take such preventative measures is a personal decision based on many factors. According to previous research, it would be...

Fall Commencement: UC Merced a ‘Companion’ for Student Speaker

December 8, 2020

For Xiaolong “Harry” Chen, UC Merced is more than a university. “It is a friend and a companion,” he wrote in his application to be student speaker at Fall Commencement. Together, they experienced pre-dawn hours at Lantern Café, early evening discourses with friends, and 11 p.m. sprints to complete...

Pandemic Inspires Chemist to Open New Avenues of Research

December 1, 2020

Professor Michael Thompson doesn’t usually work in immunology or drug development. But his use of X-ray crystallography — research that visualizes the structures of protein molecules to better understand how they function — has taken him in a new direction. Thompson joined the Department of...

New Book Details Best Practices in Research Among Vulnerable Populations

November 30, 2020

Rosa D. Manzo, Ph.D., associate director of medical education and a project research scientist, has co-authored a new book on community-based and community-engaged research. “Cultura y Corazón” is for students, researchers and practitioners who want to work with vulnerable populations through a...

Researcher Examining CBD Effects on Metabolic Syndrome

November 24, 2020

About 35 percent of Americans have metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that raises the risk of cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in the United States. If you have three of these five issues, you have metabolic syndrome, according to the American Heart Association: High...

Connection Between COVID-19 and Loss of Smell Uncovered by Research Team

November 18, 2020

About 70 percent of people with COVID-19 suddenly lose their sense of smell, although fewer of them seem to realize it, according to a new “living analysis” by a research team that includes a UC Merced graduate student. Vicente Ramirez, a Ph.D. student in UC Merced’s Public Health program, and...