It’s a startling statistic: Nearly 30 percent of UC Merced students who start their college careers in the School of Natural Sciences (SNS) switch to majors outside the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields by their second year.
The idea for a year-end event showcasing School of Engineering students’ original designs started as a scribble on the back of a cocktail napkin and culminated in the exhibition of 12 teams’ work.
Now, six years later, Innovate to Grow (I2G) has become a premier event on campus highlighting dozens of projects and drawing audiences from across campus and throughout the community to UC Merced.
Innovate to Grow (I2G), the School of Engineering’s showcase for senior capstone projects and student ingenuity in engineering and entrepreneurship, is emerging as a twice-a-year event, thanks in large part to a $50,000 donation from Wells Fargo.
National security and a beautifully resonant violin have found a surprising link — a classic experiment in acoustics, recently replicated at the quantum scale as part of a collaborative project on quantum-enhanced motion sensing.
Zach Petrek, a second-year doctoral student in chemistry and chemical biology, can usually be found running experiments in the laboratory of his advisor, Professor Tao Ye. But this summer, he did something different — he went to NASA.
Is it still possible to build a better mouse trap? Engineering students at UC Merced think so.
