Engineering

California is known for its beautiful coastline, where the Pacific Ocean meets sandy beaches and rugged cliffs. While many scientists have studied the land or the ocean independently, less is known about the nexus of the two.

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 the campus’s wastewater.

UC Merced’s campus has many buildings, but just one pipe through which wastewater leaves the campus. This turned out to be helpful to discern whether there would be forthcoming positive COVID-19 test results.

In July, Joseph Bello will present his findings for the prestigious Donald A. Strauss Foundation scholarship to United Spinal, the longstanding nonprofit dedicated to overcoming the stigma of disability and increasing inclusivity for wheelchair users. It has taken months of work to prepare, but Joseph is no stranger to persistence.

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 mysteries.

With COVID-19 protections lifting, many people are eager to travel again. Among them is graduate student Elena Bischak, who is planning multiple trips to Haiti in the coming months to study improving sanitation and human waste processing in the Caribbean country.

Half a world away from California’s Central Valley is a place with similar climate but an unparalleled diversity of plants, marine animals and ecosystems. From deserts to shrubland to montane forests, the diversity of life in South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) is the subject of NASA’s first biodiversity campaign led by UC Merced Professor Erin Hestir.

The Western U.S. appears headed for another dangerous fire season, and a new study shows that even high mountain areas once considered too wet to burn are at increasing risk as the climate warms.

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.

Applied Mathematics graduate student Shayna Bennett will represent UC Merced at the University of California Grad Slam finals on May 7.

A half-dozen UC Merced students and alumni are recipients of significant fellowships to help support their graduate education.

“We’re extremely proud of our undergraduate and graduate students and alumni who have earned prestigious fellowships,” Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Chris Kello said. “These awards will allow scholars to embark on or continue their graduate-level research opportunities.”

(Select the link below to learn more about the recipients.)