Bioengineering

UC Merced’s School of Engineering and its programs continue to be recognized by U.S. News & World Report as demonstrated in the release today of its 2025 Best Graduate Schools rankings.

The R1 school advanced three spots in the latest Best Overall Engineering Schools rankings, inching closer to the nation’s top 100.

“We will continue to strive for even greater heights and to make impactful contributions to the field,” School of Engineering Dean Rakesh Goel said.

A multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund research at UC Merced that could help cancer patients and others live longer, healthier lives.

The $3.5 million, five-year grant will fund bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer's lab, which is investigating the thymus, a key organ in the human immune system.

A diverse group of students participated in a stem cell training pilot program at UC Merced this summer.

It was the second summer for the Training Undergrads in Stem Cell Engineering and Biology (TUSCEB) program, funded through the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). It's a collaborative effort between the schools of Natural Sciences and Engineering led by professors Kara McCloskey and Jennifer Manilay and serviced through the university's Health Sciences Research Institute (HSRI).

The National Science Foundation awarded a team, led by principal investigators Professor Ajay Gopinathan and Carrie Kouadio, funding to establish a summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at UC Merced.

This new program seeks to increase the diversity of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research community.

Who will UC Merced’s Grad Slam champion be?

Cheer on the finalists on April 8 and find out.

Graduate students from UC Merced’s three schools will take the stage to compete in the Graduate Division’s 10th Grad Slam finals.

It was a terrible trifecta: a busted tilt skillet, an obsolete replacement part and thousands of hungry students restarting classes in six days.

For a UC Merced Dining Services team facing a logistical kitchen nightmare, the solution was a savory mix of collaboration and outside-the-pizza-box thinking. And it happened barely 12 giant steps from the broken cooker in the Pavilion dining center.

It was a terrible trifecta: a busted tilt skillet, an obsolete replacement part and thousands of hungry students restarting classes in six days.

For a UC Merced Dining Services team facing a logistical kitchen nightmare, the solution was a savory mix of collaboration and outside-the-pizza-box thinking. And it happened barely 12 giant steps from the broken cooker in the Pavilion dining center.

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.”

Professor Roberto Andresen Eguiluz has received a CAREER award for his research into the underlying cause of arthritis.

He is the 33rd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

UC Merced continues to be recognized nationally, with some programs leaping forward, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2023-2024 edition of Best Graduate Schools released on April 25.