Cognitive and Information Sciences (CIS) Ph.D. student Ben Nguyen spent last summer working as a data analyst at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

After transferring from a Sacramento community college to UC Merced in 2007, Maxine Umeh-Garcia was unsure of her future career. She admits she hadn’t looked at the majors the newest UC offered before applying and imagined she’d teach high school math.

She met with her academic advisor and learned the campus offered an applied mathematics major, not pure mathematics. They discussed other options and came to a stalemate.

Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Economic Development Gillian Wilson has been named a 2023 American Astronomical Society (AAS) Fellow — the preeminent organization of professional astronomers in North America.

Teenie Matlock, Cognitive and Information Sciences professor and the McClatchy Chair in Communications, has been awarded the fourth Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building — one of the highest honors in the Cognitive Science Society.

For Matlock, it’s a true honor to be selected for this prestigious international award.

Special Assistant to the Chancellor and sociology Professor Marjorie Zatz has been elected to the 2022 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), adding to the list of previous UC Merced recipients.

She is the first social scientist from UC Merced to be elected an AAAS fellow.

To ensure the youngest students are ready for the K-12 education system, UC Merced is leading a joint effort to attract and prepare more transitional kindergarten (TK) teachers to serve in classrooms in the Central Valley and across California.

Longtime UC Merced supporters Dr. Vikram and Priya Lakireddy were recently honored as part of an intimate event to mark the official dedication of the campus ballroom bearing their names.

Innovate to Grow is a twice-yearly celebration of student ingenuity hosted by the School of Engineering (SoE). In a way, it's a science fair for college students to help solve problems that businesses and nonprofit organizations face, and potentially gain partnerships to see their projects utilized in real-world applications.

"A family that works together, stays together" is not usually how the saying goes. But for one family at UC Merced, it describes their relationship perfectly.

Diana Maravilla has worked at the campus since 2011, her daughter Sharee Sok joined in 2015, and her granddaughter Korynn Maravilla recently graduated from UC Merced and is now a staff member as well, making three generations currently on UC Merced's staff.

But all good things must come to an end. Diana is set to retire in early January.

Graduate Division’s Competitive Edge Summer Bridge program for incoming Ph.D. students was identified as a Program to Watch by Excelencia in Education, a national effort to identify evidence-based programs that improve Latino student success in higher education.