School of Natural Sciences

The National Science Foundation is honoring UC Merced Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe with a Faculty Early Career Development Award to support her examination of how soil helps regulate the climate.

The awards are given to junior faculty members who “who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations,” the NSF said.

The environment affects the way genetic populations move, and similar environments likely play a bigger role in how a species develops than does geographic distance.

Those are just two of the discoveries Professor Jason Sexton has made while studying the monkey flower, a California native that is practically in his back yard, now that he has joined UC Merced.

In a megadrought like the one California is experiencing, people tend to look at how much rainfall has come along.

But it also matters when the snowmelt releases its cache, because the snowpack is the state’s natural reservoir.

Large, naturally occurring low-oxygen zones in the Pacific appear to be expanding, and there is a sharp change in the number of bacteria that produce and consume different forms of toxic sulfur, according to a UC Merced researcher’s latest paper in Nature Communications.

These expanding deoxygenated zones could also contribute to climate change, which, in turn, appears to contribute to their growth.

TaNayiah Bryels didn’t get the lead role of Mary in her first-grade Christmas pageant, but it did spark a lifelong interest in theater.

Valley fever, described as a “silent epidemic” by the Centers for Disease Control, will be explored through a series of wide-ranging talks at the University of California, Merced.

Graduate school is a constant state of discovery, something UC Merced alumna Jackie Shay credits for her current passion: fungus.

Katherine Amrine knows a few things about data analysis.

The heat generated by smartphones and other electronic devices could be harnessed to also power them, according to compelling research out of the University of California, Merced.

Physics Professor Michael Scheibner’s latest work in the emerging field of phononics – the study of quasi-particles that produce heat – indicates phonons can be harnessed to produce energy.

“Usually, phonons dissipate, but using an electric field, we can keep them in place where they are generated, and make them useful,” he said.

You probably know that carbon monoxide can be lethal. But one UC Merced professor is working to harness its health benefits to treat people with sickle cell disease.