Fellowships

Quantitative Systems Biology Graduate Program alumni Kinsey Brock and Robert Boria were awarded Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Boria and Brock — both former members of paleoecology Professor Jessica Blois’ research group — graduated in May with doctoral degrees and are headed to top universities to continue their important research.

As part of its commitment to inclusive excellence in graduate research and education, UC Merced has awarded its new Chancellor’s Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence to four incoming Ph.D. students from the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts whose studies will contribute to the representation of Black scholars in academia and beyond.

From graduate student Jose Zamora’s perspective, the CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM) has been a spectacular success.

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.

During December, the Give to UC Merced 2020 initiative tripled the campus’s goal of raising $50,000. The final tally: $163,000 raised for a variety of campus initiatives and programs.

The fundraising initiative has traditionally been held on a single day, but in 2020 it was expanded to one month with an online focus and social media-driven effort because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Public Health doctoral student Sarah Alnahari was awarded a UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship to continue her community-driven research examining tobacco use among Arab Americans in the San Joaquin Valley.

The TRDRP is an initiative created through tobacco taxes and administered by the Research Grants Program Office at the UC Office of the President.

High school and college students’ lives have changed in unpredictable ways this year. They’ve missed out on many of the traditions that mark the beginnings and ends of some of life’s most formative chapters and the social interactions that are crucial to adolescent development. They have also been forced to transition into makeshift online learning environments that, in many ways, collide with their home environments.

UC Merced’s Graduate Division provides many programs throughout the year to ensure students succeed academically, including faculty and peer mentoring programs, free tutoring, and social and well-being activities to help foster a sense of belonging and community.

Kathryn “Katie” Daniels was a teen when she attended the celebration of the opening of UC Merced. As a child growing up in Merced, Daniels had heard her parents stress the importance of education.

“My mom always talked about the University of California coming to Merced and how that was going to help us,” she said.

Daniels is the first member of her family to have earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Soon, she’ll add her doctorate in Sociology.

Arturo Arias, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation professor in the Humanities at UC Merced, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his ground-breaking study of contemporary indigenous novels from Guatemala and Mexico.

Arias was one of 173 American and Canadian fellows announced Wednesday by the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.