Research Excellence

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.

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change warns that global health is at the mercy of fossil fuels. An accompanying policy brief states that an estimated 32,000 people in the U.S. died due to air pollution in 2020 alone; 37% of those deaths were directly related to fossil fuels.

Researchers and students in the departments of Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering working on quantum physics will have upgraded equipment soon, thanks to a grant from the Department of Defense.

Professor Jay Sharping is refurbishing two dilution refrigerators that are required to perform measurements on samples at temperatures as low as 10 millikelvins (mK) — near absolute zero.

UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz has been named to the Carnegie Classifications Institutional Roundtable, a panel of higher education leaders that will recommend potential revisions to the way institutions are classified, looking particularly at metrics describing students’ social and economic mobility.

“This is a historic measure by the Carnegie Foundation to re-envision how well universities help to build the lives and futures of our students,” said Muñoz. “It is an honor to be able to join colleagues from around the country in this important work.”

In the 2022 Sustainable Campus Index, UC Merced placed Top 10 in several categories including a tie for the No.1 spot in research. The annual report published by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) recognizes top-performing colleges and universities overall and in 17 sustainability impact areas.

UC Merced has received a $12.5 million grant funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop the Biology Integration Institute (BII): INSITE — the INstitute for Symbiotic Interactions, Training and Education — a research collaborative that aims to expand the fundamental knowledge of symbioses and inform immediate and long-term conservation strategies in the face of climate change.

Professor Maggie Sogin is one of 20 faculty members nationwide to receive the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) inaugural Building Research Capacity of New Faculty in Biology (BRC-BIO) award.

As one of the leaders for sustainability and equity, UC Merced hosted the first offsite meeting for the Governor’s Strategic Growth Council (SGC) last week.

The mission of the council is to coordinate and work collaboratively with public agencies, communities and stakeholders to achieve healthy, thriving and resilient communities for all Californians.

Starting this fall, undergraduates interested in the biomedical sciences will have an opportunity to take part in a new and innovative training program that will give them strong foundations in computational biology, systems biology and big data analytics.

Mechanical thinning of overstocked forests, prescribed burning and managed wildfire now being carried out to enhance fire protection of California's forests provide many benefits, or ecosystem services, that people depend on.