Staff & Faculty News

Professor Sarah Kurtz has become the first UC Merced faculty member to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in recognition of her contributions to the development of gallium indium phosphide/gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells and for her leadership in solar-cell reliability and quality.

Psychology Professor Eric Walle found something interesting when he studied babies who were walking compared to those who were crawling: Babies who walk are not only more mobile, they have vocabularies that are significantly larger than those of the crawlers.

Bioengineering Professor Victor Muñoz has answered a long-standing genetic mystery, and his research suggests that someday, bioengineers could devise ways to control gene activity — manually switching off the genes that contribute to cancer, for instance.

“If this mechanism turns out to be as powerful as we anticipate, engineering it will be relatively straightforward,” Muñoz said. “Controlling the output of genes could be done in a targeted way by new genome editing technologies such as CRISPR.”

Professor Sarah Kurtz has become the first UC Merced faculty member to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in recognition of her contributions to the development of gallium indium phosphide/gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells and for her leadership in solar-cell reliability and quality.

Graduate students face a number of unique challenges as they embark on the life-changing journey of earning their master’s or Ph.D. Adjusting to graduate studies, achieving work-life balance and dealing with imposter syndrome are just a few.

At UC Merced, graduate students have a new ally in Maria Nishanian, who on Dec. 1 became the university’s first graduate academic counselor.

Many faculty members are experts in their fields, pioneering new ways to think about complex subject matter. But how does one communicate that research in a simple way, specifically when seeking funding to further their research? That’s where the Office of Research Development steps in.

Emergencies can come in many forms, from a burst pipe that causes a flood, to a major earthquake, to a threat of violence. No matter its character, Laura Rodriguez-Mascorro will make sure the campus is ready.

Rodriguez-Mascorro joined UC Merced in September as the campus’ first emergency manager, bringing with her years of experience with the police department at CSU Stanislaus.

Rodriguez-Mascorro’s skills and knowledge made her the ideal person to fill the new role, said UC Merced Chief of Police Chou Her.

Dr. Thelma Hurd’s journey in medicine has taken her from New Jersey to Nigeria, with stops in Texas and Buffalo. Along the way, she gathered experience as a clinician, public health researcher and translational scientist.

Her proficiency in these crucial areas has led Hurd to UC Merced, where she became the university’s director of medical education last month.

Nicole Pollack is happy to be home.

After a few years in the Bay Area, the longtime Turlock resident is back in the San Joaquin Valley and diving into her new role as UC Merced’s chief human resources officer and assistant vice chancellor of Human Resources.

Since starting the job Aug. 5, Pollack met with human resources staff members to get a feel for the department’s pulse. She embarked on a cross-campus listening tour to learn how the Department of Human Resources can partner with the campus to achieve common goals.

A pair of UC Merced researchers are combining computational chemistry and machine learning principles to solve what seems to be an intractable problem at the heart of quantum mechanics: predicting the movement of electrons, also known as electron dynamics.