Awards

Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Marie-Odile Fortier’s plan to make more accurate assessments of renewable energy systems’ carbon footprints has made her the fifth UC Merced recipient of the prestigious CAREER award this year.

The award comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which gives the grants to encourage early-career researchers.

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.

UC Merced master’s student Selina Brinkmann has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for study at Oxford University — a first for the campus.

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).

International Women’s Day is more than a day to celebrate the fantastic females around us. It is a day to reflect on the contributions women have made both socially and politically around the world. Women across the globe have used their gifts and talents to help others in myriad ways, and UC Merced is proud of the female faculty as leaders on its campus. Read on for just a handful of the intelligent and inclusive women who make UC Merced the special campus it is.

Professor Marc Beutel and his graduate student Mark Seelos have been recognized for papers and a presentation on toxic mercury mitigation by the North American Lake Management Society.

Beutel, an environmental engineer, co-wrote two of a group of three papers named Best Paper of the Year at the 2020 North American Lake Management Society annual conference.

Bioengineering Professor Arvind Gopinath received a CAREER award for his research that seeks to understand how living biological materials such as bacterial swarms and fungal biofilms colonize surfaces, respond to physical features of their environments and cause infection.

He is the 25th researcher from UC Merced to earn this recognition from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Vice Provost for Academic Personnel Teenie Matlock has been honored with the Athena Award for Academic Leadership by the Women in Technology Initiative at the University of California.

Professor Sora Kim has been named one of this year’s Emerging Scholars by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine.

Only 15 researchers, out of hundreds of nominees, have been selected.

There was an undeniable feeling of optimism and excitement in January 2020, as the calendar turned to a new year at the University of California, Merced. The university would be welcoming its fourth chancellor in the summer, and celebrating its 15th anniversary and the opening of a slew of shiny new buildings in the fall. By any measure, it was to be a momentous year for UC Merced.