Research

The first four faculty members named to UC Merced's Agricultural Experiment Station look to make a big impact on farming in the San Joaquin Valley and beyond.

Sugar pines are the tallest pine species in the world, and they only grow along the West Coast of North America. They are a valued source of timber with cones as large as an adult’s forearm. But they face several problems that a new paper argues should be quickly addressed.

The sugar pine population has been declining because of changing fire patterns, drought, bark beetle mortality, a disease called white pine blister rust – and now the impacts of climate change.

As one of UC Merced’s first students, Josue “Josh” Franco seized the chance to help shape student government for future scholars on campus; now he has grasped a new opportunity on Capitol Hill.

The three-time alumnus (B.A. ’09, M.A. ’16, Ph.D. ’18) has been awarded the American Political Science Association’s Congressional Fellowship for 2024-25.

Research on cell development has led not only to a more efficient way to map proteins in living cells but also tapped into the research capabilities of UC Merced undergraduate students and brought about a new learning opportunity that could shape their futures.

Researchers know a protein’s function is intimately tied to its location in a cell. By mapping its location, they can better understand how its function — and the cell’s biology — changes over time.

A group of faculty members at UC Merced has been awarded a $1 million seed grant from the National Science Foundation to form a research collaborative to expand participation and access to materials, research-focused facilities, education, training and careers.

A group of researchers at UC Merced has found that climate change means it takes about three months longer for California to recover from drought, and probably longer.

“Climate change has fundamentally changed the odds of getting out of drought. It has weighted the dice,” said Emily Williams, a postdoctoral scholar with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. “This is happening because of warming in summer months, and a good portion of it is because of human-caused climate change.”

Stem cells hold vast potential to help people live healthier lives. UC Merced researchers have delved into expanded uses of these cells, which can be used to create any cell in the body, to replace damaged cardiac tissue and grow new blood vessels, among other uses.

A $5.4 million grant from one of the world's largest institutions dedicated to regenerative medicine will fund a new facility to support research in vascular models and human stem cells.

A memorandum of understanding signed between University of California, Merced, and the Los Angeles Community College District this week will extend access for transfer students through the Merced Promise Pathway Program.

In simulated life-or-death decisions, about two-thirds of people in a UC Merced study allowed a robot to change their minds when it disagreed with them -- an alarming display of excessive trust in artificial intelligence, researchers said.

Human subjects allowed robots to sway their judgment despite being told the AI machines had limited capabilities and were giving advice that could be wrong. In reality, the advice was random.

Researchers at UC Merced used fruit flies to uncover a cellular process common to many organisms that could dramatically impact the understanding of cancer and aging.