Research

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.

Like many other researchers, environmental engineering professors Erin Hestir and Joshua Viers are trying to quantify water use in California’s Central Valley.

The difference is, they are doing it from the sky.

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.

The White House announced today (Sept. 2) a $65.1 million award — the largest federal grant ever awarded to the Central Valley — to the Fresno-Merced Future of Food Innovation (F3) Coalition as part of its "Build Back Better" initiative to boost economic recovery after the pandemic.

Just seven years after it began offering graduate degrees, UC Merced’s Sociology Department has already begun shaping the future of the professoriate by placing 11 of its graduate alumni in tenure-track positions — five of those in the 2022-23 academic year.

July was a transition month for UC Merced’s Graduate Division as interim Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Chris Kello passed the baton to Professor Hrant P. Hratchian — an Armenian name pronounced Her-ahnt Heratch-yahn — who now leads the division.

“Dr. Hratchian’s appointment is another signifier of our momentum in research excellence,” said Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz. “He will be an essential leader and contributor as we accelerate our drive toward R1 status.”

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 engineering Professor Ashlie Martini has been awarded the Monya Lane and Robert Bryant Presidential Chair in Excellence in Engineering. She is one of two women to be appointed to endowed chairs in the School of Engineering this year.

Lane and Bryant, retired engineers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, established the endowment in 2019. Martini will serve as the inaugural chair holder.

Engineering Professor Sarah Kurtz has been awarded the Reno Ferrero Family Chair in Electrical Engineering, making her the second woman to hold an endowed chair in the School of Engineering.

"I am truly honored to have been chosen for this chair, not only because of the donor and his achievements, that because this is going to greatly further the electrical engineering program at UC Merced," Kurtz said.

UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow Hannah Palmer, Ph.D., was named as the 2022-23 Congressional Science Fellow by the Geological Society of America (GSA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and will spend a year in Washington, D.C., working for a member of Congress or a congressional committee beginning in September 2022.