Staff & Faculty News

UC Merced 's resident expert on the nightmarishly massive megalodon will play a role in Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, a celebration of the toothy creatures at the top of the oceanic food chain.

Professor Sora Kim will be featured in a show called “Jaws vs. The Meg,” in which she and other experts discuss and compare two of the largest predators to ever roam the oceans.

When Associate Director for Educational Equity and Access for the Calvin E. Bright Success Center Alejandro Delgadillo announced his plans for retirement earlier this year in a social media post, there was an outpouring of felicitations and appreciation from current and former students he has mentored.

• “Your dedication and sincerity are what will keep UC Merced a hub for first-generation students seeking higher education. We are forever indebted to you!”

Megalodon was the biggest shark in the world — 50 feet long or more — and one of the largest fish ever to exist. It roamed most of the world’s oceans from 23 million to 3.6 million years ago.

A new study by paleoecology Professor Sora Kim and colleagues shows the shark’s body temperature was considerably higher than previously thought and provides clues to the species’ demise.

Global Arts Studies Professor Yehuda Sharim has published a new photo essay, “A Map of Light,” on the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI)’s digital platform Foundry.

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:

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.

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).

The Circular Bioeconomy Innovation Collaborative (CBIO Collaborative) has been awarded $1 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines program for "Advancing Circular Bioeconomy Technologies in North San Joaquin Valley."

The CBIO Collaborative is among the more than 40 unique teams to receive one of the first NSF Engines Development Awards, which aim to help partners collaborate economic, societal and technological opportunities for their regions.

At the end of May, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Gregg Camfield will step down after five years in the role and nearly a decade in executive leadership at UC Merced. He intends to take a year’s sabbatical then return in the role he held when he arrived on campus in 2007 – professor of 19^th century literature with an ardent curiosity about Mark Twain, storytelling and the power of untethered creativity.