Faculty

merced theatres art kamangar center photo

Solar Panels Over Canals Can Save Money, Energy and Water, Study Shows

Covering the 4,000 miles of California’s water canals could save billions of gallons of water and generate renewable power for the state every year, according to a new study.

Lip-reading Software Helps Users of All Abilities to Send Secure Messages

A computer science lab focused on making human-computer interaction easier for people of all abilities has developed a digital lip-reader complete with its own repair system so the software can continue learning from its user.

With Kleckner’s Award, Physics Department Nabs its Third CAREER Grant This Year

Physics Professor Dustin Kleckner has received a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award for his research — the third in his department this year. He studies how optical and acoustic binding controls interactions between/among particles and how it manipulates them into self-organizing structures.

In the long term, this research aims to enable fundamentally new types of materials for industrial, defense and consumer applications.

Mechanical Engineering Student Named the Campus’s First Rhodes Scholar

UC Merced master’s student Selina Brinkmann has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for study at Oxford University — a first for the campus.

Active Matter Organization Earns Beller a CAREER Award

Physics Professor Daniel Beller has received a CAREER award for his research into how complex organization arises from simple physical interactions for biological cells or polymers assembled in large numbers.

He is the 26th researcher from UC Merced and the sixth from the Department of Physics — and the second this year — to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Female Faculty to Know on International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is more than a day to celebrate the fantastic females around us. It is a day to reflect on the contributions women have made both socially and politically around the world. Women across the globe have used their gifts and talents to help others in myriad ways, and UC Merced is proud of the female faculty as leaders on its campus. Read on for just a handful of the intelligent and inclusive women who make UC Merced the special campus it is.

Mercury Control and Mitigation Research Earns Professor and Student Honors

Professor Marc Beutel and his graduate student Mark Seelos have been recognized for papers and a presentation on toxic mercury mitigation by the North American Lake Management Society.

Beutel, an environmental engineer, co-wrote two of a group of three papers named Best Paper of the Year at the 2020 North American Lake Management Society annual conference.

Bilingual Shakespeare Sets the Stage for Future Productions 

Shakespeare can feel stuffy and difficult to understand. Native English speakers often struggle with decoding the Bard’s works, so imagine how difficult it would be to appreciate Shakespeare if you spoke another language.

This is the challenge UC Merced’s students and faculty took on with their bilingual production of “Ricardo El Segundo,” or “Richard II.”

New Researcher Revealing Important Processes Within Cells

A brand-new faculty member is shaking up the way researchers understand cellular systems.

Computational biology Professor Bercem Dutagaci, who started at UC Merced in January, developed simulations of bacterial cells as a new way of looking at how RNA and proteins self-organize inside the cells. Her most recent work demonstrates that the insides of cells are organized at complex levels of order, instead of a chaotic stew of molecules.

Climate Change and Suppression Tactics are Critical Factors in Increasing Fires, Study Shows

The millions of people affected by 2020’s record-breaking and deadly fire season can attest to the fact that wildfire hazards are increasing across western North America.

Both climate change and forest management have been blamed, but the relative influence of these drivers is still heavily debated. The results of a recent study show that in some ecosystems, human-caused climate change is the predominant factor; in other places, the trend can be attributed mainly to a century of fire suppression that has produced dense, unhealthy forests.