Mechanical Engineering

It’s a scene familiar to many students: sitting at the kitchen table, utterly hopeless because they can’t solve that tricky math problem. Many people can identify with that feeling and if it’s not conquered, it can turn into what Chris Wright calls “math phobia” — something students at UC Merced are trying to help early learners avoid.

Many UC Merced students are first-generation college students, meaning they are the first in their families to pursue college degrees and the types of careers having a degree affords. UC Merced’s strong relationships with industry partners plays a key role in helping students navigate these career paths. A new partnership between the School of Engineering and OMRON Robotics and Safety Technologies will help students find opportunities in the robotics field.

Graduate students and a convergence of physics, engineering and environmental science could result in not only the next generation of solutions to pressing environmental challenges, but a new group of diverse and globally competitive nano-engineers, as well.

A nearly $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will train about 200 graduate students over the next five years as they learn and work to develop nano-sensors to better manage resources.

UC Merced’s NSF-CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM) has been awarded an additional $5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue its mission. In total, the NSF has invested $10 million in the center, an indicator of the importance of the Center’s work and its faculty, student and staff contributions.

Shortly before the fall semester kicked off in person, 11 students were wrapping up their first summer on campus as part of the FACTS summer bridge program.

FACTS stands for San Joaquin Valley Food and Agriculture Cyberinformatics Tools and Science. The six-week summer course, funded by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture, introduces students to the world of research in agricultural science and technology.

With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of agriculture’s biggest challenges related to water management, climate change and integration of new technology into farming.

In July, Joseph Bello will present his findings for the prestigious Donald A. Strauss Foundation scholarship to United Spinal, the longstanding nonprofit dedicated to overcoming the stigma of disability and increasing inclusivity for wheelchair users. It has taken months of work to prepare, but Joseph is no stranger to persistence.

You can’t avoid seeing grazing cattle in California’s Central Valley, where UC Merced has its own pastured cows on campus. Now imagine if those cows were kept secluded without the use of a fence, or at least not one visible to the eye.

Applied Mathematics graduate student Shayna Bennett will represent UC Merced at the University of California Grad Slam finals on May 7.

For the first time, UC Merced’s Political Science and Interdisciplinary Humanities (history discipline) graduate groups made national rankings.

US News & World Report’s annual rankings, released today, also highlighted the campus’s growing School of Engineering, as most of its programs climbed the charts.