Lorena Anderson

UC Merced is part of several new initiatives aimed at increasing the accessibility and inclusivity of data science studies and opening new opportunities for historically underserved students after graduation.

New grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE) and the California Learning Lab are funding collaborations with a sister campus and several community colleges as well as the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) to accomplish these goals.

Graduate student Samuel Leventini comes from a long line of educators, and the tribology researcher thinks he might want to follow in those footsteps.

Thanks to a new supplemental grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Leventini will get the opportunity to find out if teaching is really the path for his life.

Solar films developed by a graduate student in the Department of Physics at UC Merced while on an internship at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) not only survived 10 months in space with minimal degradation, but the little damage they did incur was more than 90 percent reversible.

Bioengineering Professor Victor Muñoz and his lab have created a new way to solve some of the mysteries among an increasingly important class of proteins that don’t appear to have any specific structures but serve very important functions, including the complex genetic processes that separate high-order organisms from single-cell bacteria.

They call it “molecular LEGO,” pulling the proteins apart and rebuilding them, segment by segment.

Professor Ajay Gopinathan has been elected the next vice-chair of the Division of Biological Physics (DBIO) of the American Physical Society (APS), the world's largest organization of physicists. He will serve as vice-chair in March 2023, then move into the positions of chair-elect, chair and past chair, each for one year.

UC Merced has earned the distinction of ranking No. 20 among the world's Rising Young Universities, according to the just-released Nature Index 2021 Young Universities — the only U.S. institution to place in the top 25.

Among the leading 150 Young Universities, UC Merced ranks No. 80, and for Leading 50 Young Universities in Life Sciences, it ranks No. 43. These rankings are a jump from 2019, when the campus placed No. 92 among Top 175 Young Universities.

Cartilaginous fishes such as sharks and skates have a sixth sense, but it’s not ESP — it’s electrosense. Such fishes use hundreds or thousands of specialized organs to sense prey and mates and to navigate the oceans.

A cross-disciplinary group of researchers at UC Merced is making new discoveries about the fundamental structure of the organs and how this structure may provide clues as to how this sixth sense works.

Daily cycles in virtually every aspect of our physiology are driven by biological clocks (also called circadian clocks) in our cells. The cyclical interactions of clock proteins keep the biological rhythms of life in tune with the daily cycle of night and day, and this happens not only in humans and other complex animals but even in simple, single-celled organisms such as cyanobacteria.

Dark matter and the life cycles of star clusters will come into focus as UC Merced’s astrophysicists get resources from the two space telescopes soon to be exploring the universe.