News

Campus Wastewater Testing Offers COVID-19 Early Warning System, Establishes Protocols for the Future

July 8, 2021

COVID-19 upended life as we know it, especially among the science community. While some scientists rushed to develop a vaccine, others sought a better understanding of the virus, hoping to predict where the next outbreak might be in order to better contain it. At UC Merced, this included testing...

Engineering Professor Awarded $1 Million NSF Award to Study Protein Folding

June 16, 2021

Proteins operate like biological machines, regulating nearly every major function and organ in our bodies through a still-mysterious shape-shifting process. Bioengineering graduate group chair Professor Victor Muñoz has a new $1,082,356 award from the National Science Foundation to unlock those...

UC Merced Professors on TV to Inspire Girls to Consider STEM Careers

May 13, 2021

UC Merced takes pride in encouraging the younger generation to learn more about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers by counting on some of the top educators in the fields. To help expand the knowledge and encourage young girls to think about careers within STEM,...

Engineering Ag Tech Solutions Just One Element of Annual Innovate to Grow Expo

May 12, 2021

You can’t avoid seeing grazing cattle in California’s Central Valley, where UC Merced has its own pastured cows on campus. Now imagine if those cows were kept secluded without the use of a fence, or at least not one visible to the eye. This is just one of the experimental projects teams of...

$2.2M NIH Grant Designed to Produce Highly Trained, Diverse Ph.D. Workforce

April 28, 2021

A five-year, $2.2 million training grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will assist UC Merced with the development of diverse cohorts of doctoral students in interdisciplinary biomedical disciplines. Twelve trainees each academic year will benefit from NIH’s longstanding Graduate...

Collaboration Furthers Understanding of Immune Cell Development

April 12, 2021

Immunology Professor Jennifer Manilay and bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer are using a new grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand a project they’ve been working on for the past two years — delving into the immune systems of living mice to see how B-cells develop under...

Five Years in, CCBM Looking to Expand Research and Student Opportunities

April 7, 2021

From graduate student Jose Zamora’s perspective, the CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM) has been a spectacular success. “There is so much value to being part of the CCBM,” said Zamora, who began as an undergrad Scholar when the center opened and is now a graduate Fellow...

Energize UC Merced 2021 Offers Students, Community Inspiration on Renewable Energy

April 2, 2021

The campus community and its partners can learn more about the importance of renewable energy at this year’s Energize Merced conference, an annual event hosted by UC Merced’s Solar Energy Association (SEA). The association is a student-led group, overseen by Professor Sarah Kurtz, that puts...

MACES Focuses on Tiny Particles, Broad Horizons

June 29, 2016

Researchers at UC Merced are making a big deal out of a piece of equipment that lets them look at really tiny things. And they should — the new Zeiss Gemini SEM 500 scanning electron microscope is first of its kind installed in the United States. “It’s the latest model in...

UC Merced Receives $5 Million for Interdisciplinary Research Center

April 26, 2016

Researchers at the University of California, Merced, won a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how biological matter like proteins or cells come together to perform specific tasks, effectively behaving as machines. UC Merced professors Ajay Gopinathan,...