A half-dozen UC Merced students and alumni are recipients of significant fellowships to help support their graduate education.

“We’re extremely proud of our undergraduate and graduate students and alumni who have earned prestigious fellowships,” Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Chris Kello said. “These awards will allow scholars to embark on or continue their graduate-level research opportunities.”

(Select the link below to learn more about the recipients.)

From graduate student Jose Zamora’s perspective, the CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM) has been a spectacular success.

UC Merced occupies just one small corner of the world. But through the research, teaching, experience, and connections of two new Department of Physics faculty members, students can access and begin to understand the universe.

Physics Professor Dustin Kleckner has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award for his research — the third in his department this year. He studies how optical and acoustic binding controls interactions between/among particles and how it manipulates them into self-organizing structures.

In the long term, this research aims to enable fundamentally new types of materials for industrial, defense and consumer applications.

Physics Professor Daniel Beller has received a CAREER award for his research into how complex organization arises from simple physical interactions for biological cells or polymers assembled in large numbers.

He is the 26th researcher from UC Merced and the sixth from the Department of Physics — and the second this year — to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Two new projects designed and led by UC Merced researchers will address challenges facing many Californians — wildfire recovery and agricultural labor — but will also have global reach.

For Xiaolong “Harry” Chen, UC Merced is more than a university. “It is a friend and a companion,” he wrote in his application to be student speaker at Fall Commencement. Together, they experienced pre-dawn hours at Lantern Café, early evening discourses with friends, and 11 p.m. sprints to complete homework.

Physics Professor Bin Liu has received a CAREER award for his research into a new micromanipulation technique to virtually hold freely moving microorganisms, essentially creating a “bacterial treadmill” to enable biological and medical studies of microorganisms in their natural state.

He is the 24th researcher from UC Merced and the fifth from the Department of Physics to win this recognition from the National Science Foundation.

Molecular biology Professor Chris Amemiya and his former graduate student Molly Phillips have made a discovery that upends traditional ideas about a structural polysaccharide called chitin that is found in some fish.