Four UC Merced graduate students can focus fully on their research and academic studies this year thanks to a generous gift from the Northern California Chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation.

ARCS, a national organization established and operated entirely by women, is committed to the advancement of science in the United States by financially supporting distinguished graduate students in science, technology, engineering and medical research disciplines at its partner institutions.

Understanding and conserving biodiversity, or the variety of life in ecosystems, is key to sustaining life on Earth.

A research project funded by NASA that is launching this week in South Africa, co-led by UC Merced environmental engineering Professor Erin Hestir, is aimed at better understanding the biodiversity of the region and providing new mapping tools that could be used on a global scale.

Three UC Merced researchers have recently received the prestigious Hellman Fellowship.

Computer science and engineering Professor Shijia Pan, economics Professor Briana Ballis and life and environmental sciences Professor Xuan Zhang have all been named Hellman Fellows.

Professor Martha Conklin started her career at UC Merced at the Castle Research Facility, and it began with a frightening surprise.

“I had a baby rattlesnake in my office,” she said. “The whole building was snake-infested before UC Merced moved in. But it's a small thing — there were a lot of things to work out back then.”

Incoming Bobcat Benji Thier already knows what he wants to do with his college degree: Save the planet.

“I am planning to study Environmental Systems Science because I did some environmental work in high school and I think it is a very important and relevant field,” he said. “I believe we need more people in this field because we need to save our planet.”

Thier, a Tiburon native and graduate of Redwood High School, visited the campus on Bobcat Day and was impressed with how much environmentally related research is being conducted.

UC Merced students Brianna Aguilar-Solis, Diane-Marie Brache-Smith, Sierra Lema and Sarif Morningstar, and alumni Diana Cruz Garcia and Anna Maria Calderon were awarded fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).

The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support inclusive of an annual stipend of $37,000, as well as access to opportunities for professional development.

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.

The new UC Merced Farms Food Future innovation initiative is investing in 10 graduate researchers to solve climate and community challenges. Their work is the start of a concerted focus in climate-smart agriculture for the campus.

When three buses rolled onto campus on one chilly winter morning, UC Merced gave the occupants a warm Bobcat welcome.

More than 100 undergraduate students and faculty members from Universidad Autónoma Chapingo — an agricultural institution in Texcoco, Mexico — visited the UC Merced campus on March 1 to learn about research programs and graduate studies.

As agriculture, California's most important industry, becomes increasingly technical, the workforce needed to sustain it will have to have different skills than those of a generation ago.

A UC Merced researcher has been awarded a grant aimed at sparking interest and knowledge among disadvantaged young students who could grow up to take those jobs as the current workforce ages out.