School of Natural Sciences

Every Tuesday and Thursday during the school year, elementary, middle and high school students from around the region travel to a special lab at UC Merced designed just for them.

It’s the CalTeach Learning Lab, and in just one year more than 2,200 students from the community have experienced hands-on lessons there in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), including chemistry, coding and robotics and spectro analysis.

New students or those who have not yet chosen their majors will have an array of options before them.

Five new majors and several new emphases, ranging across all three schools, are all coming online in 2024 and are recruiting students now.

New bachelor’s of science degrees:

• chemical engineering
• data science and computing
• public health

New bachelor’s of arts degrees:

• data science and analytics
• environmental humanities

New emphases:

In the mechanical engineering major:

Christi Turner will represent UC Merced and join Nobel laureates from around the world at the 2023 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, June 25-30 in Germany.

Turner, a Quantitative and Systems Biology Ph.D. student from Orange County, was nominated and selected as part of the fourth class of the University of California President’s Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Fellows. The meeting, a one-of-a-kind scholarly summit now in its 72nd year, will focus on physiology and medicine.

Each year, faculty members are specially recognized by their peers in the Academic Senate for a variety of accomplishments.

This year’s Academic Senate awards honor faculty from across the three schools for their outstanding teaching, research, impacts on their fields and mentorship, as well as their dedication to diversity and scholarly public service in the 2022-23 academic year.

A sea of blue and gold regalia filled Recreation Field as hundreds of UC Merced Bobcats crossed the stage during commencement weekend. Almost 1,500 students took part in three distinct ceremonies celebrating the Graduate Division, School of Engineering (SoE), School of Natural Sciences (SNS) and School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA).

UC Merced students Brianna Aguilar-Solis, Diane-Marie Brache-Smith, Sierra Lema and Sarif Morningstar, and alumni Diana Cruz Garcia and Anna Maria Calderon were awarded fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).

The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support inclusive of an annual stipend of $37,000, as well as access to opportunities for professional development.

Chemistry Professor Aurora Pribram-Jones is looking for undergrads to help her get the lead out — out of drinking-water pipes.

Professor Sora Kim has received a CAREER award for her project that bridges concepts between modern and ancient marine ecosystems by integrating geochemical and modeling approaches with paleobiology.

Kim is the 34th researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

A teacher who has touched the stars and a professor who was the first star in the UC Merced doctoral firmament will serve as keynote speakers at the university’s spring Commencement ceremonies May 12-14.

After a three-year hiatus, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Student Chapter from UC Merced held its fifth annual Central Valley regional conference on campus.

The UC Merced SIAM Student Chapter hosted the mid-April conference in the Dr. Vikram and Priya Lakireddy Grand Ballroom, where undergraduate and graduate students from universities in the Central Valley and the central coast gathered with faculty. Attending schools included UCs Davis and Santa Cruz, California State universities Fresno and Stanislaus and the Naval Postgraduate School.