Faculty

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Findlater First at UC Merced to Join DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that is contributing to irreversible climate change. Scientists know how to capture CO2, and they know how to transform it into useful molecules and materials.

But that transformation is neither energy nor cost-effective.

Through a prestigious grant from the Department of Energy (DOE), a diverse group of scientists, including a chemist from UC Merced, plan to address that problem by coupling two chemistries which are known to work independently, but don't work well together.

UC Awards $16.4 Million in Grants to Address Climate, Energy and Health

For the first time, UC Merced faculty members from each of the campus’s three schools have been chosen as principal investigators on some of the 21 exciting new projects that are being funded through UC’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI).

In addition, UC Merced researchers are collaborating on 10 of the other projects.

Innovate to Grow Expands to Include, Inspire First-Year Students

Innovate to Grow is a twice-yearly celebration of student ingenuity hosted by the School of Engineering (SoE). In a way, it's a science fair for college students to help solve problems that businesses and nonprofit organizations face, and potentially gain partnerships to see their projects utilized in real-world applications.

UC Merced-led Research Predicts How Air Cleans Itself

Although climate change is still a very real challenge, the past decades of efforts to reduce the effects of human activities on the atmosphere have been potent enough to have thrown off the models scientists use to understand and forecast the atmosphere’s chemical composition and cleansing capacity.

Researchers Look at Tree Reproduction and Effects of Climate Change Across North America

Life and Environmental Sciences Professor Emily Moran and collaborators at several other universities are set to conduct a continental-scale analysis of climate change effects on tree reproduction.

Experts Recommend a New, More Innovative Approach to Wildfire Research

Fire scientists typically respond to agency opportunities and conduct research in response to past wildfires. But it is time they take more proactive, integrative, predictive approaches toward mitigating and adapting to this potentially devastating consequence of climate change, a group of scientists advocates.

Research Reveals an Easy Way Dairy Farmers Can Dramatically Reduce their Climate Impact

Adding even a small amount of biochar — a charcoal-like material produced by burning organic matter — to a dairy’s manure-composting process reduces methane emissions by 84%, a recent study by UC Merced researchers shows.

The dairy industry is one of the main sources of methane in California, making up 50% of the state’s methane emissions. Reducing these emissions is a critical part of state and federal efforts to address climate change.

Q&A with the new Dean of Engineering at UC Merced

Rakesh Goel developed an interest in earthquakes at an early age — and rather abruptly.

As a small boy in India, one of his first memories is of experiencing an earthquake.

"I must have been a few years old and there was a big earthquake," said Dr. Goel. "I clung to the window, thinking that it was a big freight train going by the house."

UC Merced Gains Prestigious UC Agricultural Experiment Station Designation

UCs Merced and Santa Cruz became the newest campuses in the system to be named an agricultural experiment stations (AES), UC President Michael Drake announced at today’s Regents’ meeting.

They are the first campuses in more than 50 years to earn the designation.

Nishiguchi Joins California Academy of Sciences, Recognized for Contributions to Microbiology

Molecular and Cellular Biology Professor Michele “Nish” Nishiguchi has been inducted as a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and was recently named president-elect for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB).

She is one of 11 distinguished scientists inducted at the California Academy of Sciences’ Annual Fellows Gathering this year.