Students

Health psychology Professor Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook and incoming grad student Jessica Marino have a new study suggesting that the breastmilk of mothers who have recovered from COVID-19 contains strong antibodies to the virus.

After a lengthy and rigorous review by independent auditors, UC Merced can proudly announce it is the first public research university in the country to achieve carbon neutrality, two years ahead of its goal.

“UC Merced has been on the cutting edge of sustainability in higher education since its inception. We are proud of our many achievements in reducing our impact on the environment, and this recognition of our carbon neutrality stands among the most meaningful we have yet received,” Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz said.

About 70 percent of people with COVID-19 suddenly lose their sense of smell, although fewer of them seem to realize it, according to a new “living analysis” by a research team that includes a UC Merced graduate student.

Being a university student is stressful on its own. Students who have an uncertain immigration status have an additional layer of worry.

The nearly 600 UC Merced students with undocumented status are finding support not only from the university, but from one another.

One of the biggest challenges in managing crops, especially in large fields, is knowing how much water each section of a field needs. Determining that accurately is a cumbersome process that requires people to hand-pluck individual leaves from plants, put them in pressure chambers and apply air pressure to see when water begins to leak from the leaf stems.

That kind of testing is time consuming and means that farmers can only reach so many areas of a field each day and cannot test as frequently as they should.

Biophysical chemistry Professor Shahar Sukenik and the graduate students in his lab are trying to make sense out of what might seem to some to be chaos. They aim to better understand how a series of floppy, malleable proteins function — or malfunction — inside cells.

The work has earned Sukenik a $1.86 million, five-year Outstanding Investigator award from the National Institutes for Health (NIH).

Students and faculty worked with a record number of schoolchildren from Merced, the Bay Area and southern California all the way to Washington, D.C., enriching their learning and increasing their interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

UC Merced’s national reputation for sustainability continues to grow, with the Sierra Club naming the university No. 5 on its 2020 “Cool Schools” list and The Princeton Review placing it on its Green College Honor Roll.

UC Merced rose into the top 100 of the U.S. News & World Report rankings of National Universities earlier this month, and the university already has another milestone to celebrate.

According to numbers released today (Sept. 24), UC Merced’s total student enrollment has surpassed 9,000 for the first time. The 9,018 students enrolled for the Fall 2020 semester — which is being administered through remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic — include more than 8,276 undergraduate students and 742 graduate students.

Physics Professor Lin Tian looks to tiny quantum objects to answer very big questions.

Her research group is pursuing quantum computing and technology project that are helping to expand her department’s concentration of quantum research and education.