Materials & Matter

Professor Sarah Kurtz has become the first UC Merced faculty member to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in recognition of her contributions to the development of gallium indium phosphide/gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells and for her leadership in solar-cell reliability and quality.

Everyone has inflammation in their body at some point as it is a vital part of the immune system. It’s what happens when white blood cells flow to a wound, whether that is a bruise or a broken bone. Inflammation helps us heal properly and fight infections, but sometimes something in this process goes wrong and inflammation becomes chronic. This is another issue that can lead to serious diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, cancer, heart disease and many others.

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.”

Two UC Merced physics groups are totally spacing out this year.

Professors Sayantani Ghosh and David Strubbe and their students in the Department of Physics are working on a NASA initiative to fabricate solar cells in space and turn sunlight into electricity.

Durable, reliable, affordable solar power is the future of energy, and UC Merced computational physicist Professor David Strubbe is diving into a new area of science to answer the call.

Strubbe’s new project aims to understand why two organic materials — that are cheaper and easier to produce than the prevalent silicon-based products — don’t last as long, and explore how to improve them.

It sounds like an easy-to-follow recipe from the world of molecular gastronomy: Dissolve nanoparticles in liquid crystals and cool to form frothy nanofoams, tiny tubes and hollow microspheres.

Imagine a cell phone you can fold up and carry in your wallet. When you drop it, nothing cracks or breaks, or if it does, it repairs itself. And when it’s time for an upgrade, the old phone will biodegrade instead of taking up space in a landfill.

Maybe you’d rather wear your laptop or tablet in the fibers of your clothes, or wear a monitor that provides constant data about your health but feels no different than your own skin.

Imagine exploring the cores of stars to understand — and ultimately control — the type of fusion that’s taking place.

High-energy density (HED) science is the study of properties and behavior of matter and radiation in extreme temperatures and pressures common to the deep interiors of the largest planets. It’s also the foundation of understanding fusion energy and high-energy astrophysical phenomena, and it’s happening at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, just 75 miles from UC Merced.

It’s a startling statistic: Nearly 30 percent of UC Merced students who start their college careers in the School of Natural Sciences (SNS) switch to majors outside the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields by their second year.