Research

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.

MERCED, Calif. — Though UC Merced looked back this year to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the campus’s groundbreaking, signs of what the future will hold continue to come into focus.

Those signs include cutting-edge research moving forward in the San Joaquin Valley -- the state's fastest growing region -- and around the world, the growing campus, and the ever-strengthening bond between the campus and the community.

Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Tom Peterson assumed his leadership role at UC Merced on Dec. 3 and has been meeting with various campus groups to learn more about the university.

Professor Carolin Frank is concerned with the inner lives of trees.

She looks inside them to see whether microbes are part of – and perhaps even critical to – life functions such as growth.

Students with a variety of skills and perspectives make up a team that’s taking engineering principles into some of the area’s wildlands to further education and promote awareness about the environment.

Professor Christine Isborn is doing quantum chemistry at the speed of graphics.

The tougher a problem, the more creative a solution it needs, from the increasing power in orbiting satellites and saving tigers to saving state parks and catching thieves.

And when a problem seems absolutely impossible?

“That’s when you call me,” said Professor Erik Rolland. “I love modeling problems people haven’t been able to model or solve before.”

Counting the number of species that live in the Earth’s oceans sounds as impossible as counting the grains of sand on a beach.

But a global collaboration involving a UC Merced researcher and a graduate student is doing just that, and found that about a third of all the oceans’ species are still undescribed.

That doesn’t mean they cannot be counted, though.

The undergraduate students in Professor Linda Hirst’s new internship course are getting an advanced education in science c

Graduate student Kaitlin Lubetkin and several sure-footed assistants spent much of the summer in Yosemite National Park.