Mechanical Engineering

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New Partnership Offers Ph.D. Students a Path to Pedagogical Excellence

Graduate student Samuel Leventini comes from a long line of educators, and the tribology researcher thinks he might want to follow in those footsteps.

Thanks to a new supplemental grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Leventini will get the opportunity to find out if teaching is really the path for his life.

Grant Funds Research into Wildfire Behavior and Ecological Effects of Fuel Treatments

A grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will fund a project led by a UC Merced researcher looking into predicting behavior of wildfires.

Jeanette Cobian-Iñiguez is leading a team from UCs Merced and Irvine awarded $1,179,479 to predict the impact of forest fuel treatments on fire behavior, focusing on an improved understanding of the influence of surface-fuel attributes on fire behavior and severity, and ultimately, on forest carbon storage, according to a project summary.

UC Merced Team Picked for Federal EV Battery Competition

A team from UC Merced has been selected to participate in the Department of Energy (DOE) "BattChallenge," a three-year competition to develop a battery for an electric vehicle.

Grants Fund Wide Variety of Climate Change Research Projects

UC Merced researchers will tackle climate changes in multiple ways through more than $4 million in grants recently awarded from within the university.

The Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED) issued nine awards totaling $4,096,197 for proposals that range from studying methane gas emissions to making electronic vehicles more accessible to people.

Research into Electric Vehicles Earns Awards

Two of mechanical engineering Professor Ricardo de Castro 's Ph.D. students recently earned awards for their research on electric vehicles.

Dilawer Ali, whose work centers on the electrification of tractors, won the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) award for the best student poster presentation in California during the 2023 Agricultural Equipment Technology Conference (AETC23).

UC Merced Drone Team Soars to New Heights in Global Competition

After seven months of working for hours each weekend to design, build and fly a drone, it all came down to a nervous moment for UC Merced students taking part in a worldwide competition.

Their drone had to be suspended between two poles and held together while weight was placed inside it.

"We were a little bit nervous," said team member Alex Minton. "We didn't have the best luck with our prototypes."

But the team's drone held up, though there was some concerning creaking at one point, the team members said.

Campus Adds New Areas of Studies for Students to Choose From

New students or those who have not yet chosen their majors will have an array of options before them.

Five new majors and several new emphases, ranging across all three schools, are all coming online in 2024 and are recruiting students now.

New bachelor’s of science degrees:

  • chemical engineering
  • data science and computing
  • public health

New bachelor’s of arts degrees:

  • data science and analytics
  • environmental humanities

New emphases:

In the mechanical engineering major:

UC Merced’s Graduate Programs Rank Among Best in the Nation

UC Merced continues to be recognized nationally, with some programs leaping forward, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2023-2024 edition of Best Graduate Schools released on April 25.

A Day in the Life of a First-Year Student at UC Merced

First-year student Edwin Casillas found everything he was looking for in a university — and more — at UC Merced. Nearly a year after the Sonora native said he "felt at home" when visiting the campus, he is confident he made the right decision to become a Bobcat.

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.