News

Grad Students Take on Big Roles to Promote Campus Diversity

April 17, 2020

Dania Matos has been at UC Merced for less than a year but is making a big impact as the university’s first chief diversity officer. Now two graduate students with small-town roots are helping Matos amplify her message of equity and justice — a message made more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic....

Earth Day Talk Focuses on Ag Land and Water Regulations, Solutions

April 17, 2020

The Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and UC Merced’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Graduate Group present an online talk for the golden anniversary of Earth Day. Joel Kimmelshue, Ph.D., a founding partner and the principal soil and agriculture...

Babies Forage for Sounds That Contribute to Language Acquisition, Study Shows

April 16, 2020

Most people wouldn’t think physics has anything to do with baby babble and human language development. But most people aren’t Ritwika Vallomparambath PanikkasserySugasree. The graduate student, who prefers to go by her first name, specializes in computational biophysics but likes to think of...

Grad Student Aids Campus’s Move to Remote Teaching

April 15, 2020

When UC Merced began transitioning to emergency remote instruction in late March, hoping to lessen the spread of COVID-19, Jackie Shay didn’t waste any time jumping in to help her fellow teaching assistants (TA) make the shift. Teaching remotely isn’t new for Shay, a Quantitative and Systems...

UC Merced Professor Arias Wins Guggenheim Fellowship

April 10, 2020

Arturo Arias, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation professor in the Humanities at UC Merced, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his ground-breaking study of contemporary indigenous novels from Guatemala and Mexico. Arias was one of 173 American and Canadian fellows announced...

Top 10 Finalists Advance in UC Merced’s Grad Slam

April 6, 2020

Although COVID-19 has changed everyone’s plans this spring, Graduate Division staff members rallied to make sure the campus’s annual Grad Slam competition — showcasing graduate student research — continued as planned. This year’s qualifying round was different than previous years. Each of the...

COVID-19 More Likely to Impact Smokers and People Exposed to Secondhand Smoke, Report Finds

April 2, 2020

Smokers and former smokers are not only more susceptible to COVID-19, they are far more likely to see their conditions worsen over time and to require intensive respiratory assistance, according to a review released Thursday by the UC Merced Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center (NCPC). Furthermore...

CalTeach Program Helps Fill Teacher Shortage Gap

March 24, 2020

When you add UC Merced students majoring in math and science with a mentor teacher it equals real-life experience teaching in local schools. That’s one of the many goals of UC Merced’s CalTeach program, which aims to address the shortage of math and science teachers throughout the Central Valley...

Two Grad Students to Attend Nobel Laureate Meetings

March 19, 2020

UC Merced graduate students, Md. Mehdi Masud and Akshay Paropkari, will travel this summer to attend the prestigious 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, an invitation-only gathering in Lindau, Germany. They will join about 600 young scientists from 101 countries and attend lectures and small...

Six Graduate Programs Recognized by U.S. News Rankings

March 17, 2020

U.S. News & World Report has ranked six of UC Merced’s engineering graduate programs in its 2021 Best Graduate Schools rankings released today, a sign that the university’s reputation is continuing to build. “We’re particularly proud of this accomplishment given our campus is only 15 years old...