Environmental Research

Adapting technology that has become the standard in the automotive, aerospace and air-conditioning industries, Professor Gerardo Diaz has designed and is testing the next generation of solar-collecting units at UC Merced.

As the Rim Fire continues to burn in and around Yosemite National Park, a former UC Merced student’s work related to the fire burned up the Internet this week.

Paul Doherty, the first Yosemite park ranger to complete a doctoral degree at UC Merced, graduated in the spring and now works as a public safety technology specialist for Esri, a company that provides GIS mapping for a variety of applications.

Just because it’s summertime doesn’t mean research at UC Merced comes to a halt.

Just the opposite.

This summer, professors and students at all levels are conducting a variety of research projects on campus, off campus, in the oceans and forests and around the world.

Up in Yosemite National Park, for example, nine undergraduate students are getting a summer experience to last them a lifetime, conducting research with faculty researchers from UC Merced, scientists from the U.S. Geologic Survey and from the park.

In a move that will save the campus money, improve campus safety and help save the environment, Professor Jason Hein set up a new solvent purification system.

This project is similar to his previous efforts to reduce hazardous waste generated by his lab by capturing and recycling acetone.

A five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation is helping Professor Alberto Cerpa develop the next big breakthrough in wireless sensor networks – an autonomous, self-learning system that uses its own energy wisely.

Working to map every square inch, UC Merced master’s student Andrew Zumkehr found there are 111 million acres of abandoned farmland in the United States.

That’s a lot of space for growing biofuels that could replace between 5 percent and 30 percent of the United States' primary energy or liquid fuel demands, he said.

Using some of the tiniest fossils in the world to help clarify how climate change is modeled has earned Professor Jessica Blois a big honor – publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

From the microbes in the guts of living things to the idea of life elsewhere in the universe, Professor Marilyn Fogel is pondering some of life’s deepest questions.

When and how did life originate on Earth? What does the future hold for our planet? Are we alone in the universe?

“When you go back through time, there are bits and scraps of life everywhere,” Fogel said. “It’s ubiquitous.”