Health

Professor Suzanne Sindi found her calling in seventh grade, while reading “Jurassic Park.”

“I liked the idea that math is a tool for understanding the whole world,” she said.

People don’t often think of deformation as a good thing.

A collaboration between a dean and a professor and a grant from the National Science Foundation have made UC Merced part of a national nanotechnology-biology hub that will expand both knowledge and opportunities for students in Merced.

Researchers at the university in your backyard are delving into issues of great importance to the San Joaquin Valley, the state, the nation and the world.

You can learn more about their work at the eighth annual UC Merced Research Week, from March 4 through 8, on campus and in downtown Merced.

Research at UC Merced encompasses cancer; diabetes; climate change; water, soil and air quality; water availability; nanotechnology and robotics; history; mapping; archaeology; human genes; and much, much more.

The small-scale, cutting-edge work of graduate student Eric Josephs and chemistry Professor Tao Ye is providing an up-close look at the behavior of biomolecules.

Staph, e-coli, meningitis, MRSA and botulism are just a few of the thousands of bacterial infections that plague people all over the world.

For example, almost 23,300 people in the United States were sickened by food-borne bacterial illnesses in 2008, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Six students, all with ties to the San Joaquin Valley, have been admitted to the UC Merced San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (PRIME). The students have begun their first year of medical school with a two-day orientation at UC Merced and the UCSF Fresno Center for Medical Education and Research.

The second UC Merced San Joaquin Valley-PRIME cohort includes:

California's Central Valley environment is getting healthier, but not fast enough. Its air quality is still among the worst in the nation, according to a report released today. 

The Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of California, Merced, and The Great Valley Center jointly produced "The State of the Great Central Valley: Assessing the Region Via Indicators — The Environment 2006-2011."

The report tracks a variety of environmental indicators within the Central Valley and shows mixed results.

http://www.ucmerced.edu/sites/www/files/news/images/sjv_prime_inaugural_..." style="width: 200px; height: 250px; " title="The students in the inaugural class in the UC Merced San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education are spending the summer furthering their training by participating in internships and other opportunities. From left, Christina Thabit, Agustin Morales, Kelly Fujikawa, Randell Rueda and Sidra Ayub.

Professor Fred Wolf's research brings new meaning to the term barfly.