News

New Grant Helps Assess Benefits of Satellites for Determining Water Quality

June 24, 2020

Summertime means fun in the water, but as temperatures increase, algal blooms can grow in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Some algae are natural and life-giving, while others are the result of life out of balance and can have harmful effects. Consisting of bacteria and tiny plankton, they arise...

New Bridge Program Involves Incoming Students in the Future of Agriculture

June 22, 2020

Incoming first-year and transfer students will have a new resource for success and an introduction to research starting next summer, thanks to a four-year, $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Civil and environmental engineering Professor Colleen Naughton is heading up the USDA...

Prestigious Award Recognizes Wang’s Work in Materials Science

June 17, 2020

UC Merced Professor Yue “Jessica” Wang has been named one of 10 winners of the 2020 Beckman Young Investigator Award, which recognizes promising researchers in chemical and life sciences. The awardees — who come from such institutions as Yale University, University of Chicago and UC Berkeley...

Paper Microscopes Enable Materials Science and Engineering Project to Move Forward

June 17, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has upended everything, including UC Merced’s classes and research. But materials science and engineering Professor Christopher Viney and recent graduate and independent study student Jasmine Nava are working on a microscopy project, even without access to their usual lab...

Whirlwind Tour Introduces Filipino Students to Functional Entrepreneurship

June 16, 2020

What started as one talk turned into 20 days of traveling through the Philippines for UC Merced management Professor Russ McBride. In December, McBride headed to southeast Asia to connect with colleagues interested in expanding human consciousness and potential. As the director of the Social...

Study Reveals How Chemicals in Flame Retardants Interfere with Brain Development

June 15, 2020

Many of the items people use in their everyday lives, from baby clothes and Halloween costumes to furniture, are doused with chemical flame retardants designed to make the items safer. But a new study from Cellular and Molecular Biology Professor Ramendra Saha and his former Ph.D. student Robert...

What Will We Keep from Our Dive into Remote Technology?

June 15, 2020

It was, depending on who’s talking, a tumble into the deep end. A triage driven by exhaustive planning and exhausting, sleep-deprived days. A severing from the face-to-face culture that energizes teachers and learners. In just over three weeks, more than 10,000 UC Merced students, faculty and staff...

Researcher Offers Guide to Coping with COVID-related Stress, Part II

June 10, 2020

Professor Matthew Zawadzki is with the Department of Psychological Sciences in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. His research examines social psychological processes as applied to health. This is the second of two parts. These are unusual times. In the midst of a pandemic that has...

Bacteria Use the Physics of Twist to Measure Their Own Size and Shape

June 9, 2020

Theoretical physics Professor Ajay Gopinathan has been working over the past decade to model a submicroscopic mystery. Now, he and a team of colleagues have verified an important piece of the puzzle of how tiny, intrinsically twisted protein filaments responsible for repairing and growing cells...

Grad Students, Alums Receive NSF Research Fellowships

June 3, 2020

Two UC Merced Ph.D. students, a recent undergraduate and an alumna have each been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP). The fellowship provides multiyear support to predoctoral students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The...