Faculty

A pair of UC Merced researchers are combining computational chemistry and machine learning principles to solve what seems to be an intractable problem at the heart of quantum mechanics: predicting the movement of electrons, also known as electron dynamics.

Like many young women, Calista Lum absorbed the message that she was not as capable as her male peers when it came to science, technology, engineering and math.

Teachers in her Fairfield high school engineering classes often asked if male classmates had done her work for her.

“I just assumed the boys were so much better at it than me,” she said.

UC Merced Professor Peggy O’Day hopes to improve water quality in the California Delta by studying local wetlands.

O’Day is leading a new three-year study of Merced County wetlands that drain into the San Joaquin River and eventually the Delta.

Professor Jing Xu and her students study extremely tiny motor proteins, but their work could make a huge contribution to the growing body of knowledge about Alzheimer’s and other diseases that progressively destroy brain tissue.

When Denzal Martin started his undergraduate work at UC Merced, he wasn’t thinking about a career in physics, interning with NASA or attending graduate school.

The Los Angeles native was studying computer science and engineering. One day, though, he decided to attend a materials science and engineering lecture by visiting NASA scientist Cheol Park.

“It was a very obscure subject to me, but I was interested to learn more,” Martin (’18) said. “The pictures he showed — it seemed like magic how they were fabricating these materials.”

Even a little forest management significantly increases water runoff in the Central Sierra Nevada and other semi-arid regions, while drier forests need more extensive treatments, according to a new study published recently in the journal Ecohydrology.

“The result is more runoff to downstream water users,” said UC Merced Professor Martha Conklin , who led the study.

A new supplemental health insurance option and a realignment of prescription medications covered under PPOs are among the featured changes in benefits for UC Merced staff and faculty members as the one-month period of Open Enrollment begins at 8 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 31.

During Open Enrollment, every benefits-eligible employee can evaluate current coverage provided by the University of California and explore a range of options for the 2020 calendar year before the enrollment period ends at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 26.

As a child, Kevin Dawson traveled from California to visit his grandmother in Harlem, where he recalls playing in Jackie Robinson Park. Dawson, an avid swimmer and surfer, would peer through a fence with his cousins to check out the park’s large swimming pool.

“I remember thinking how fun it’d be to go in the pool. But there was never any water,” he said. “It was a disadvantaged and underfunded community.”

Soil biogeochemistry Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe has been named the Ted and Jan Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology.

“The Falasco family is engaged in construction and development, so they have an intimate connection with and an understanding of the earth beneath our feet,” Berhe said. “Not only are they generous with their hard-earned resources, they are investing in a worthy cause for the Valley. They appreciate how invested we all should be in the land and the Earth.”

The Class of 2009 were pioneers of the Bobcat spirit, overcoming obstacles and defying the odds. Ten years later, we look back at UC Merced’s formative beginnings from the perspectives of those who lived the journey. 

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