Student & Alumni Success

Cognitive and Information Sciences (CIS) Ph.D. student Ben Nguyen spent last summer working as a data analyst at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

After transferring from a Sacramento community college to UC Merced in 2007, Maxine Umeh-Garcia was unsure of her future career. She admits she hadn’t looked at the majors the newest UC offered before applying and imagined she’d teach high school math.

She met with her academic advisor and learned the campus offered an applied mathematics major, not pure mathematics. They discussed other options and came to a stalemate.

The Department of Applied Mathematics, the Applied Mathematics Graduate Program and the student chapter of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) celebrated their many successful alumni recently by holding their inaugural Distinguished Alumni event and giving the Outstanding Graduate Alumni Award to Nitesh Kumar, who graduated with his Ph.D. in 2013.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has given Professor Stephanie Woo the CAREER award to help her delve into congenital birth defects by looking at the embryonic cells of zebrafish.

Woo is the 32^nd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award.

A company started by UC Merced founding faculty member Roland Winston - and staffed by alumni - is looking for partners for some exciting solar projects. And the government could cover the costs.

Winston Cone Optics seeks to develop pilot projects that use solar energy to heat water, evaporate waste and remove salt from wastewater.

Innovate to Grow is a twice-yearly celebration of student ingenuity hosted by the School of Engineering (SoE). In a way, it's a science fair for college students to help solve problems that businesses and nonprofit organizations face, and potentially gain partnerships to see their projects utilized in real-world applications.

UC Merced alumni gave back to their alma mater in several big ways in 2022. From endowed scholarships to events, Bobcats are ensuring that current and future students have access to the best opportunities as they pave their own journeys at UC Merced.

Bobcats at Dodger Stadium

For the first time, UC Merced made its way to Chavez Ravine for the Bobcats at Dodger Stadium alumni event on Sept. 6. Alums from several classes had the chance to catch the Los Angeles Dodgers take on the San Francisco Giants. In the end, the Boys in Blue were victorious, 6-3.

UC Merced students came away from a national engineering conference with some big wins — including a first-place finish in a famous design competition and job offers from some of the most prestigious companies in the United States.

Adding even a small amount of biochar — a charcoal-like material produced by burning organic matter — to a dairy’s manure-composting process reduces methane emissions by 84%, a recent study by UC Merced researchers shows.

The dairy industry is one of the main sources of methane in California, making up 50% of the state’s methane emissions. Reducing these emissions is a critical part of state and federal efforts to address climate change.