Students

Southern California Edison has been selected as this year’s recipient of the UC Merced School of Engineering Vanguard Margin of Excellence Award.

“Southern California Energy’s partnership with UC Merced has created countless opportunities for engineering students to positively impact their communities,” School of Engineering Dean Dan Hirleman wrote to the company, calling it a model partner for the university.

The Vanguard Award was created to honor corporate partners that have had a transformational effect on the educational experience of School of Engineering students.

Climate change is creating two problems. One is understanding and addressing its impact on the world. The other is convincing large swaths of the public that it is, in fact, a reality.

In an effort to spur people to take action to prevent ecological disaster, researchers with the new UC Merced Center for Climate Communications are studying the best ways to spread the message.

MERCED, Calif. — From disposable drones mapping wildfire perimeters to increasing the number of young students interested in science, technology, engineering and math studies, this year’s engineering capstone and Innovate to Grow teams have real, impactful work to show off.

The annual Innovate to Grow competition and expo at UC Merced takes place Friday, May 16, across campus, with a variety of events including demonstrations of each team’s work, plus blue-ribbon panels and cash prizes. The events are free and open to the public.

The National Science Foundation is honoring UC Merced Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe with a Faculty Early Career Development Award to support her examination of how soil helps regulate the climate.

The awards are given to junior faculty members who “who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations,” the NSF said.

Improvements for a ubiquitous device that cools high-powered electronics aboard military aircraft could do more than just earn a group of engineering students their senior capstone design credits.

It could also win a competition funded and hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

The environment affects the way genetic populations move, and similar environments likely play a bigger role in how a species develops than does geographic distance.

Those are just two of the discoveries Professor Jason Sexton has made while studying the monkey flower, a California native that is practically in his back yard, now that he has joined UC Merced.

UC Merced artists will showcase their talent during the campus’s annual Bobcat Art Show, which starts its month-long run Monday in the UC Merced Art Gallery and Kolligian Library.

UC Merced Professor Kara McCloskey was recently awarded a highly competitive $500,000 grant to continue tackling significant, unresolved issues in human stem cell biology, as part of an effort to enhance stem-cell research in California.

This past month, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), and its governing board, approved more than $27 million for Basic Biology V Awards, of which McCloskey’s grant is included. The leads for this center include Stanford University and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

California’s drought is a major topic, including on the UC Merced campus.  

It will be among the subjects explored during this year’s Research Week, from March 10 through 14. The annual event includes a brunch kickoff, a poster competition, live research demonstrations, a smoking symposium presented by the Health Sciences Research Institute, a psychology symposium, a geospatial summit, lectures and a symposium on the drought presented by the Sierra Nevada Research Institute.

People’s attitudes could affect the amount of information they share, said UC Merced researchers who studied a massive chunk of Yelp business review data.