The Vital and Alice Pellissier Family Distinguished Speaker Series

Crowning UC Merced’s first annual Research Day, the Vital and Alice Pellissier Family Distinguished Speaker Series will bring its first guest to campus – Nobel Prize-winning soil chemist Sherwood Rowland, who was honored in 1995 for his work helping to document Earth’s ozone hole.

Rowland is a founding faculty member from UC Irvine, so he’s familiar with the benefits and challenges of a startup research university like UC Merced. His talk at 4:00 p.m. will be free and open to the public.

The new distinguished speaker series is another important tradition associated with Research Day. The Pellissier family, longtime residents of Merced County, have funded  the series with a generous endowment donation to the university. The family recently sold the ranch on the west side of Merced where their grandparents Vital and Alice established themselves and decided to use part of the proceeds to establish a legacy at UC Merced.

“Because we are losing the physical location and buildings that my grandparents left, we especially wanted to do something to remember them by,” said Dennis Pellissier. “UC Merced presented the idea of a distinguished speaker series, and we could see that it was an immediate need and also an opportunity for the community, including our family, to visit the campus.”

UC Merced plans for the speaker series to continue annually in association with Research Day.