Students

Helping diplomats navigate new cultures, removing mircroplastics from stormwater and automating raisin processing: These are some of the projects awarded winning scores at UC Merced's fall Innovate to Grow event.

Innovate to Grow, or I2G as it's known on campus, is a twice-a-year showcase for UC Merced engineering and computer science students to demonstrate projects they have been developing.

Teams of students work to address challenges presented to them by clients, then present their results to judges who are experts from around California.

Give to UC Merced, the university’s annual year-end fundraising campaign, was the most successful of its 11-year history, garnering nearly $1.43 million from 647 donors. The tremendous show of generosity far exceeded the original goal of $250,000 from 500 donors.

Each year, the UC Merced campaign launches on Giving Tuesday, the worldwide day of charitable giving on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving. In 2020, the university’s fundraising effort was extended to encompass the month of December.

UC Merced will celebrate hundreds of graduates alongside their friends and families in the Art Kamangar Center at the Merced Theatre this weekend. There are 402 Bobcats set to participate in the fall commencement ceremonies in downtown Merced.

The festivities begin at 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 20, with the Graduate Division commencement ceremony.

Innovate to Grow, or I2G as it’s known on campus, is a twice-a-year showcase for UC Merced engineering and computer science students demonstrating projects they have been developing.

Students compete on teams that are judged by experts from around California. People can see the fall showcase Dec. 19, when teams display the results of their work.

These capstone projects are the culmination of students’ undergraduate careers, but the impacts are far more than academic: Teams work together to tackle real-world problems brought to them by clients.

Medical education at UC Merced is expanding at a rapid pace as part of the campus’ long-term goal to address the shortage of physicians and health care professionals in the Central Valley.

The significance of soccer in the San Joaquin Valley cannot be overstated. It’s a sport that connects communities, bridges borders and stretches across generations of fathers and mothers and daughters and sons.

So it is fitting that the Valley’s youngest university has already established a strong presence in collegiate soccer at a coast-to-coast level. Both of UC Merced’s intercollegiate soccer teams are making return trips to national championship tournaments after stellar regular seasons.

Sugar pines are the tallest pine species in the world, and they only grow along the West Coast of North America. They are a valued source of timber with cones as large as an adult’s forearm. But they face several problems that a new paper argues should be quickly addressed.

The sugar pine population has been declining because of changing fire patterns, drought, bark beetle mortality, a disease called white pine blister rust – and now the impacts of climate change.

UC Merced-led WE Will! Workforce and Education Collaborative has awarded an additional $4.2 million to education and healthcare partners in Merced, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.

A total of 21 health care and education projects focusing on "recovery with equity" initiatives received funding in the second round.

Research on cell development has led not only to a more efficient way to map proteins in living cells but also tapped into the research capabilities of UC Merced undergraduate students and brought about a new learning opportunity that could shape their futures.

Researchers know a protein’s function is intimately tied to its location in a cell. By mapping its location, they can better understand how its function — and the cell’s biology — changes over time.

Student employees in UC Merced’s dining centers got an up-close look at the sustainable techniques at a family almond farm and were challenged to create locally sourced dishes as part of a workshop inspired by an internationally famous chef. The workshop was presented by the Alice Waters Institute for Edible Education in collaboration with UC Merced Executive Chefs Anthony Pangelina and Mitchell Vanagten.