Graduate Students

Although climate change is still a very real challenge, the past decades of efforts to reduce the effects of human activities on the atmosphere have been potent enough to have thrown off the models scientists use to understand and forecast the atmosphere’s chemical composition and cleansing capacity.

Downtown Merced will be covered in a sea of blue and gold over two days as hundreds of UC Merced Bobcats take part in fall commencement. Also, for the first time, graduate students will have their own ceremony to celebrate their achievements.

The pomp and circumstance kick off with the inaugural Graduate Division Commencement Ceremony at 6 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 16.

Adding even a small amount of biochar — a charcoal-like material produced by burning organic matter — to a dairy’s manure-composting process reduces methane emissions by 84%, a recent study by UC Merced researchers shows.

The dairy industry is one of the main sources of methane in California, making up 50% of the state’s methane emissions. Reducing these emissions is a critical part of state and federal efforts to address climate change.

UCs Merced and Santa Cruz became the newest campuses in the system to be named an agricultural experiment stations (AES), UC President Michael Drake announced at today’s Regents’ meeting.

They are the first campuses in more than 50 years to earn the designation.

Sociology Professor Charlie Eaton was a recent guest on the "Dr. Phil" talk show, where he discussed President Joe Biden's plan to cancel billions of dollars in federal student loans. Ultimately, Eaton believes it will be "transformative for more than 40 million people who are going to have their debt reduced."

Researchers and students in the departments of Physics, Mechanical Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering working on quantum physics will have upgraded equipment soon, thanks to a grant from the Department of Defense.

Professor Jay Sharping is refurbishing two dilution refrigerators that are required to perform measurements on samples at temperatures as low as 10 millikelvins (mK) — near absolute zero.

UC Merced has received a $12.5 million grant funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop the Biology Integration Institute (BII): INSITE — the INstitute for Symbiotic Interactions, Training and Education — a research collaborative that aims to expand the fundamental knowledge of symbioses and inform immediate and long-term conservation strategies in the face of climate change.

UC Merced has awarded its second cohort of Chancellor’s Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence to four incoming Ph.D. students from the schools of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Natural Sciences and Engineering. Their studies will contribute to the representation of Black scholars in academia and beyond.

Just seven years after it began offering graduate degrees, UC Merced’s Sociology Department has already begun shaping the future of the professoriate by placing 11 of its graduate alumni in tenure-track positions — five of those in the 2022-23 academic year.

July was a transition month for UC Merced’s Graduate Division as interim Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Chris Kello passed the baton to Professor Hrant P. Hratchian — an Armenian name pronounced Her-ahnt Heratch-yahn — who now leads the division.

“Dr. Hratchian’s appointment is another signifier of our momentum in research excellence,” said Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz. “He will be an essential leader and contributor as we accelerate our drive toward R1 status.”