Graduate Students

Each year, the Office of Research and Economic Development sponsors Research Week. Researchers from all corners of campus are encouraged to display their work and show visitors the important work they do.

Research Week always features student research-poster competitions, and, for the past couple of years, the 90-Second Video Challenge. A winner is chosen from each school in the poster competitions, and the campus community chooses the video winner, voting online after reviewing the submissions.

Those who win receive cash prizes. Congratulations to this year’s winners!

Members of the campus and community are invited to learn more about UC Merced research — including work on sustainability, psychology and antibiotic resistance — during the university’s eighth annual Research Week, presented by the Office of Research and Economic Development.

The 18th annual Ma Kelley Memorial Shoot-Out and the fifth annual Building Future Champions Dinner, presented by Merced Honda in October at the Stevinson Ranch Golf Course, netted more than $56,000 for UC Merced Athletics.

As part of the University of California Global Food Initiative, 54 students — including six from UC Merced—have been awarded fellowships to fund projects that will address issues ranging from community gardens and food pantries to urban agriculture and food waste.

The odds were stacked against Ruben Rodriguez. When the 27-year-old UC Merced student was still in high school, he was confronted with a sobering statistic that Hispanics receive only 5 percent of all doctorates awarded.

From understanding how groups of atoms behave at ultra-low temperatures to modeling how flocks of birds organize, UC Merced's Physics group is helping solve many of the world's mysteries and using the knowledge to improve technology, ranging from computing to solar energy conversion.

With psychiatrists in short supply throughout the community, UC Merced is leveraging modern technology to expand that service to students.

How patients perceive and talk about their illnesses can have an impact on how they recover and heal, according to a growing area of health research being furthered by UC Merced health psychology Professor Jitske Tiemensma.

"It should be a team effort to treat a patient. Medical doctors often have no idea about the psychological consequences of disease," she said. "It's really important for them to have close ties to health psychologists."