Students

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Research Week Highlights Solutions to Urgent Environmental Issues

It's time for the campus and the community to celebrate UC Merced’s high-level research during Research Week, March 6 through 10.

The annual research showcase, hosted by the Office of Research and Economic Development, kicks off with a Health Sciences Research Institute (HSRI) event titled “Climate, Environment and Health: Impacting the San Joaquin Valley and Beyond.”

Record Number of Students Apply to UC Merced

UC Merced once again broke a record for the number of first-year applications the university received, continuing to show impressive growth even as the national trend shows a decline in the number of students enrolling in higher education.

More than 26,000 prospective first-year, or freshmen, students applied for admission to the university. And nearly 4,000 students applied to transfer to UC Merced. Most of the applicants are from California.

Alumnus Shares His UC Merced Experiences to Guide Youth to College

While growing up in the Sacramento area, Donald Carter ('21) said he didn't see many people who looked like him pursuing higher education. As the oldest of four boys in a single-parent household, he spent most of his time setting examples instead of learning from them.

But after graduating from John F. Kennedy High School and deciding to attend UC Merced, Carter realized he could use his experiences to guide other students who may have had similar upbringings.

Alumni Success Celebrated at Inaugural Math Event

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.

Award Supports Study of Fish Embryos to Understand Process that Affects Birth Defects

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 32nd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award.

Findlater First at UC Merced to Join DOE-funded Energy Frontier Research Center

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that is contributing to irreversible climate change. Scientists know how to capture CO2, and they know how to transform it into useful molecules and materials.

But that transformation is neither energy nor cost-effective.

Through a prestigious grant from the Department of Energy (DOE), a diverse group of scientists, including a chemist from UC Merced, plan to address that problem by coupling two chemistries which are known to work independently, but don't work well together.

UC Merced Leading Effort to Boost Number of Early Childhood Teachers with $1.8 Million

To ensure the youngest students are ready for the K-12 education system, UC Merced is leading a joint effort to attract and prepare more transitional kindergarten (TK) teachers to serve in classrooms in the Central Valley and across California.

Give to UC Merced 2022 Breaks Fundraising Record

UC Merced's annual month-long fundraising campaign, Give to UC Merced, wrapped up on Dec. 31, 2022, as the most successful in the initiative's history. The effort eclipsed the original goal of $150,000 to raise $952,000 in financial support for students, faculty, research, programs, departments and schools throughout the university.

UC Awards $16.4 Million in Grants to Address Climate, Energy and Health

For the first time, UC Merced faculty members from each of the campus’s three schools have been chosen as principal investigators on some of the 21 exciting new projects that are being funded through UC’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI).

In addition, UC Merced researchers are collaborating on 10 of the other projects.

Innovate to Grow Expands to Include, Inspire First-Year Students

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.