Staff & Faculty News

Vice Provost for Academic Personnel Teenie Matlock has been honored with the Athena Award for Academic Leadership by the Women in Technology Initiative at the University of California.

Professor Sora Kim has been named one of this year’s Emerging Scholars by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine.

Only 15 researchers, out of hundreds of nominees, have been selected.

Professor Tao Ye and colleagues have received a $1.18 million grant from the Department of Energy to study how DNA molecules can arrange themselves into nanostructures that could form the basis of nanoelectronic circuits.

Health psychology Professor Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook and incoming grad student Jessica Marino have a new study suggesting that the breastmilk of mothers who have recovered from COVID-19 contains strong antibodies to the virus.

After a lengthy and rigorous review by independent auditors, UC Merced can proudly announce it is the first public research university in the country to achieve carbon neutrality, two years ahead of its goal.

“UC Merced has been on the cutting edge of sustainability in higher education since its inception. We are proud of our many achievements in reducing our impact on the environment, and this recognition of our carbon neutrality stands among the most meaningful we have yet received,” Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz said.

About 35 percent of Americans have metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that raises the risk of cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in the United States.

If you have three of these five issues, you have metabolic syndrome, according to the American Heart Association:

Mechanical Engineering Professor Mehmet Baykara’s latest discovery in two-dimensional (2D) materials will have implications for future space missions, as well as nanotechnology on Earth.

One of the biggest challenges in managing crops, especially in large fields, is knowing how much water each section of a field needs. Determining that accurately is a cumbersome process that requires people to hand-pluck individual leaves from plants, put them in pressure chambers and apply air pressure to see when water begins to leak from the leaf stems.

That kind of testing is time consuming and means that farmers can only reach so many areas of a field each day and cannot test as frequently as they should.

Molecular biology Professor Chris Amemiya and his former graduate student Molly Phillips have made a discovery that upends traditional ideas about a structural polysaccharide called chitin that is found in some fish.

The technology world is punctuated by startups, and UC Merced is “starting up” its own program to invigorate computer science education in the San Joaquin Valley.

The National Science Foundation awarded a $300,000, two-year grant to support START UP SJV, which stands for “STEM Teachers Alliance for Regional Tech thinking through Underrepresented Professional development in the San Joaquin Valley.”