Student & Alumni Success

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.

One of the major challenges of this century is democratically engaging institutions and large numbers of people with strategies to mitigate global warming by minimizing greenhouse gas emissions.

Distinguished rankings, new academic offerings, world-class research and campus expansions were among the highlights of the UC Merced State of the University address delivered by Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz.

"The state of this 20-year-old institution is unparalleled in the history of American higher education," said Muñoz. "And now I would like to invite you to join me in imagining an even more impactful future for our campus, faculty, staff and students."

You could almost say Edwin Shen was destined to become a bioengineer. His mother, a medical doctor, practices pathology in Northern California, and his father retired from a career as a mechanical engineer for medical device companies.

“I guess what I do is right in the middle of my parents’ occupations,” he said. “Bioengineering was something my dad recommended I try. I thought research might be something that aligned well with my personality. It turned out to be a perfect fit.”

UC Merced is among the top 10 U.S. universities for driving economic mobility for its graduates, according to a new study by think tank Third Way.

In its second annual national assessment of the impact of higher education on students and families, the Economic Mobility Index, Third Way ranked UC Merced No. 7 among all U.S. universities based on metrics linking students' initial financial status and their post-graduation economic success.

Big-wave surfing is a thing these days, but hardly anyone is riding a wave as big as the one Biviana Oseguera is on.

The physics major is studying the 9,000-light-year long Radcliffe Wave, a structure made of clouds of dust and young stars that form a wave-like structure through the Milky Way.

So far, it is the largest structure of interacting nebulae described.

The rising senior recently won the Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Award, one of only two awarded to undergraduates at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

For UC Merced students working to maintain the campus's Experimental Smart Farm this summer, the day's tasks can range from the high-tech to the grubby.

Kat Corti and Austin Mercado, both fourth-year students come fall, are spending their summer tending the farm and preparing it for what's next. Also working at the farm this summer is Adam Mercado, Austin's twin brother.

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 students will present research conducted over the summer at the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center (UROC) annual Undergraduate Research Symposium.

The research presentations mark the end of the Summer Undergraduate Research Institute (SURI), a nine-week program conducted and hosted by UROC. This summer, over 160 undergraduate students worked alongside UC Merced faculty and graduate students to conduct research in every discipline offered on campus.

After taking part in the UC Merced Center for Analytic Political Engagement 's inaugural legislative boot camp, students say they are better prepared to take on the first internships of their careers.

The week-long session in Sacramento was led by former Assemblymember Adam Gray and political science Professor Nate Monroe and gave a cohort of nine students a look behind the curtain at how policymaking happens at the state Capitol.