Staff & Faculty News

A research project conducted by a UC Merced graduate student is becoming a reality as the Turlock Irrigation District (TID) approved piloting the first-in-the-nation construction of solar panels over water canals.

Creating vaccines to train the immune system against parasites is particularly challenging. They are also highly specialized masters of immune evasion.

Some parasites can secrete proteins that bind to immune cell molecules, manipulating them for their survival purposes. Some have complex and fast life cycles so by the time the immune system has learned to recognize one form, it has already shifted to another.

Professor Xuecai Ge, a developmental neurobiologist, has received a CAREER award for research to gain insight into the molecular mechanisms that direct brain formation, and how errors in cell signaling lead to developmental disorders.

Ge is the 31st number researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

If tree growth and seed production can’t compensate for the impacts of climate change, California’s trees will face difficulty filling in gaps left by wildfire and reaching areas that are becoming climatically suitable, studies now show. 

California is the largest and the most diverse agricultural economy in the nation with revenue exceeding $50 billion — larger than the combined agricultural economies of the other 10 western states.  

Professor Ajay Gopinathan has been elected the next vice-chair of the Division of Biological Physics (DBIO) of the American Physical Society (APS), the world's largest organization of physicists. He will serve as vice-chair in March 2023, then move into the positions of chair-elect, chair and past chair, each for one year.

As a young child, Professor Michele Nishiguchi would dive off the couch and into the shag carpet reefs of her family home, mimicking the turns and leaps of intrepid explorer and environmentalist Jacques Cousteau. This love of the ocean would remain with Nishiguchi as she progressed through her academic career.

Human waste isn’t a topic most people want to talk about.

But environmental systems Professor Rebecca Ryals embraces the subject, especially when it comes to mitigating climate change, improving public health and creating sustainable food systems.

Graduate students and a convergence of physics, engineering and environmental science could result in not only the next generation of solutions to pressing environmental challenges, but a new group of diverse and globally competitive nano-engineers, as well.

A nearly $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will train about 200 graduate students over the next five years as they learn and work to develop nano-sensors to better manage resources.

A group of UC Merced researchers are working with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to find out how much greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced just through land-management strategies.