CITRIS

Many students don’t think about internships until later in college, but at UC Merced undergraduate students can take advantage of hands-on training with faculty before even starting regular classes. Through the FACTS Bridge Program, first-year and transfer students get a head start on research and much more.

Covering the 4,000 miles of California’s water canals could save billions of gallons of water and generate renewable power for the state every year, according to a new study.

Two new projects designed and led by UC Merced researchers will address challenges facing many Californians — wildfire recovery and agricultural labor — but will also have global reach.

One of the biggest challenges in managing crops, especially in large fields, is knowing how much water each section of a field needs. Determining that accurately is a cumbersome process that requires people to hand-pluck individual leaves from plants, put them in pressure chambers and apply air pressure to see when water begins to leak from the leaf stems.

That kind of testing is time consuming and means that farmers can only reach so many areas of a field each day and cannot test as frequently as they should.

Imagine pouring farm-fresh milk down the drain or crushing perfectly good eggs that could feed families. This has been the reality for farmers during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Bird species usually are counted twice a year by wildlife surveyors: once during the breeding season and again during the Christmas Bird Count .

New technology, however, is increasing the accuracy of bird population studies. A team of UC Merced researchers is developing a model to recognize bird calls.

Researchers at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute at the University of California have launched a new public-private pilot initiative to bring telehealth services to underserved rural residents in Merced County.

Everyone will have opportunities to learn about collaborative research at the intersections of COVID-19 and topics related to the environment, health and equity through a series of online conference sessions this fall.

By 2050, the U.S. population is estimated to grow to 400 million, and the world population to 9.1 billion, requiring a 70 percent increase in global food production.

UC Merced is one of four campuses across the country uniting to meet that challenge by harnessing the power of innovation and technology to develop precision agriculture for a sustainable future.

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 quickly and alter the ecosystem by consuming available oxygen, killing fish.