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Wastewater methane reclamation for the City of Merced. Odor abatement in BART Plazas. Solar collection for oxygen generation on Mars. UC Merced campus drone tour. Skin test analyzer for Valley Fever patients.

This might sound like a list of cutting-edge, high-tech inventions, which they are, but they are also a sampling of the projects featured at UC Merced’s Innovate to Grow event — I2G — held earlier this month by the School of Engineering.

Parents don’t have to venture to San Francisco to give their children a taste of opera. With UC Merced’s Children’s Opera, little ones can have a unique cultural experience without straying outside city limits.

The Children’s Opera is geared toward children ages 3 and older. Just like the audience members, the performance is mini in size — just 45-minutes long — and features classical music coupled with an engaging story.

The University of California Board of Regents today (May 16) voted to approve President Janet Napolitano’s appointment of systemwide Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom as interim chancellor of UC Merced.

Brostrom will succeed Chancellor Dorothy Leland, who earlier this week announced her intention to step down effective Aug. 15. He will serve until a nationwide search for a permanent successor is completed.

The undergraduate engineering curriculum at UC Merced offers students professional experience by participating in the senior capstone project, the Innovation Design Clinic (IDC). The IDC culminates in the Innovate to Grow event on Friday, May 17, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in an annual showcase of student talent and ingenuity, highlighting the culture of entrepreneurship in UC Merced’s School of Engineering .

Dorothy Leland announced today (May 13) her intention to step down as chancellor of the University of California, Merced, effective Aug. 15, 2019.

“These have been the most gratifying eight years of my long professional career,” said Leland, who was appointed by the Board of Regents in 2011 to serve as the third Chancellor of the then 6-year-old campus. “The decision to step down is not easy, but the moment is right, both for the campus and for me.”

In what world are Shakespeare and hip-hop related? Ask Devon Glover.

Glover is The Sonnet Man, a Shakespeare-loving rapper who sets The Bard’s famous sonnets to hip-hop instrumentals. Using iambic pentameter to his advantage, Glover turns 16^th century English writings into 21^st century educational material for students.

Success under the most intense pressure has always come naturally for Margaret “Margie” Dingeldein.

A water polo standout at Merced High School, Dingeldein helped the U.S. win a bronze medal at the Summer Olympics in Athens in 2004. Thriving in a high-stress environment didn’t end when she left the pool — she is now an anesthesiologist at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View.

Dingeldein is the keynote speaker for the ninth annual Building Future Champions Dinner and Auction and 22^nd annual Ma Kelley Memorial Golf Tournament on April 25 and 26.

Just days after visiting the nation’s capital, Chancellor Dorothy Leland trekked to the state capital to advocate for the campus and the UC system as part of UC Merced Day.

With nearly a third of all food worldwide being wasted and millions of people going hungry every day, preventing food from going to waste is a crucial operation.

The Bobcat Eats Food Waste Awareness and Prevention Program may have a long name, but in a short amount of time it is playing a major role in curtailing food waste in Merced County by rescuing food that would otherwise go to waste.

The explorer mentality, public health Professor Stephen Wooding said, is what sets the students of UC Merced apart from anywhere else. A willingness to try something new, to go somewhere they’d never thought possible, is a part of the Bobcat DNA.

For three students, the time they spent traveling up and down the Amazon River over winter break fully embodies this desire to explore.