Research Excellence

Physiology Professor Rudy M. Ortiz has been named this year's winner of the A. Clifford Barger Underrepresented Minority Mentorship Award by the American Physiological Society.

The UC Merced professor was recognized for his leadership, guidance and mentorship of underrepresented minority and diverse groups of students in the physiological sciences.

UC Merced researchers are taking part in a comprehensive, multi-agency effort aimed at efficiently measuring and mitigating methane emissions.

IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory are leading the effort, which earned a $20 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy in December.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Roland Winston, a pioneer in solar energy, engineering and physics, died Feb. 8 at the age of 88 at his home in Merced.

A founding faculty member in the schools of Natural Sciences and Engineering at UC Merced, Winston also founded and directed the intercampus collaborative Advanced Solar Technologies Institute, known as UC Solar.

His research and teaching focused on concentrating solar energy systems. Winston published hundreds of articles in scientific journals, co-wrote several books and held more than 50 patents.

UC Merced has assumed its place in the top echelon of research institutions in the nation by earning R1 status from Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The announcement was made Thursday morning by the American Council on Education and comes less than 20 years after the university opened its doors.

Faculty members at UC Merced are taking the lead on four Multicampus Research Program Initiatives (MRPI), working with colleagues around the University of California system to address challenges around labor and agriculture, active matter, Indigenous health and fusion energy.

Measurements and data collected from space can be used to better understand life on Earth.

Lockdowns. Social distancing. Shuttered schools and businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic and its sweeping disruptions set off a stampede of “what it’s doing to us” research, focused largely on schoolchildren. How were students’ academics affected? Their mental health? Their social development?

Left unexamined was whether the pandemic impacted the social cognition of preschool children — kids younger than 6 — whose social norms were upended by day care closures and families sheltered at home.

Cancer is vicious. In 2025, it is expected to cause more than 618,000 U.S. deaths — nearly twice the combined populations of Merced and Modesto. Each year, almost half of this nation, young and old, is touched by the disease through personal diagnosis or an afflicted loved one.

Jeff Yoshimi joined the 50% when his wife, Sandy, learned she had breast cancer. The blighted cells had spread to some lymph nodes.

Young people whose parents or caregivers aren’t acclimated to their community’s dominant language and culture play a valuable role in bridging communication gaps, including unspoken misunderstandings triggered by a gesture or facial expression.

These interpreters, who range from pre-schoolers to young adults, can extract pride from the role, defining it as an important family duty or a way to pay back their elders for years of love and sacrifice. However, negative feelings such as resentment or embarrassment can seep into the process, increasing the risk of depressive symptoms.

A lot happened in 2024. Thankfully, we have some very talented photographers to document it all! Enjoy this look back at some of the images of the past year.