Students

Creating vaccines to train the immune system against parasites is particularly challenging. They are also highly specialized masters of immune evasion.

Some parasites can secrete proteins that bind to immune cell molecules, manipulating them for their survival purposes. Some have complex and fast life cycles so by the time the immune system has learned to recognize one form, it has already shifted to another.

Professor Xuecai Ge, a developmental neurobiologist, has received a CAREER award for research to gain insight into the molecular mechanisms that direct brain formation, and how errors in cell signaling lead to developmental disorders.

Ge is the 31st number researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

As part of the 2021-22 Governor’s California Comeback Plan, UC Merced students will get the opportunity to serve their community while receiving financial support for college through the new program #CaliforniaForAll College Fellowship.

A team from UC Merced comprising eight undergraduate and graduate students has won the inaugural CITRIS Aviation Prize. For engineering the winning proposal, they will receive a $2,000 cash award, as well as a $25,000 budget to support a live demonstration of their flight in spring 2022.  

UC Merced will delay the start of in-person instruction in light of the highly contagious omicron coronavirus variant sweeping the nation, but otherwise is moving forward with plans for on-site courses and carefully coordinated campus operations for spring semester.

Resident students are scheduled to start returning to campus Jan. 14. Instruction for spring semester is set to begin Jan. 18, but courses will be delivered remotely until Jan. 31 to give students, faculty and staff more time to be tested for coronavirus and take appropriate steps depending on results.

UC Merced will briefly delay the start of in-person instruction in light of the highly contagious omicron coronavirus variant sweeping the nation, but otherwise is moving forward with plans for on-site courses and carefully coordinated campus operations for spring semester.

Resident students are scheduled to start returning to campus Jan. 14. Instruction for spring semester is set to begin Jan. 18, but the first week of courses will be delivered remotely to give students, faculty and staff more time to be tested for coronavirus and take appropriate steps depending on results.

A team of eight scientists from around the country is organizing a new project to foster belonging and participation among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students in the geosciences, supported by the National Science Foundation.

Paleoecology Professor Sora Kim is a member of the team that’s led by Professor Daniel Ibarra with Brown University’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Science, and Professor Kimberly Lau with Penn State’s Department of Geosciences.

More than 40 student teams from the School of Engineering will show off the projects they’ve been designing and assembling for community partners — from data analysis and food processing to autonomous mobile robots and water-treatment monitoring.

Even the tiniest organisms have a surprisingly huge effect on life in the oceans, eating up the last bits of oxygen in certain areas, preventing larger marine life from surviving there, a new study shows.

After a monthslong collaboration between dozens of UC Merced students, professional artists, National Park Service staff and Merced community members, Shakespeare in Yosemite's first feature-length film, "Imogen in the Wild," celebrated its premiere in November on YouTube.