Undergraduate Students

Wastewater methane reclamation for the City of Merced. Odor abatement in BART Plazas. Solar collection for oxygen generation on Mars. UC Merced campus drone tour. Skin test analyzer for Valley Fever patients.

This might sound like a list of cutting-edge, high-tech inventions, which they are, but they are also a sampling of the projects featured at UC Merced’s Innovate to Grow event — I2G — held earlier this month by the School of Engineering.

Three big UC Solar projects are poised to be the next big breakthroughs in low-cost, accessible sustainable commercial and residential energy in California and far beyond.

Researchers are building working models of one project developed through a grant from the California Energy Commission for a solar unit that can provide electricity and heat to commercial and residential buildings.

A decade has passed since Sam Fong (’09) crossed the stage to get his diploma and walked through Beginnings for the first time as part of UC Merced’s inaugural graduating class, and a lot has changed.

For one, the student population has quadrupled to nearly 8,000. The campus is in the midst of a massive expansion. But the 2019 commencement ceremonies provided a pause and a perfect opportunity for Fong and other first graduates to reflect on the university’s early days.

Oscillatory traffic patterns, the dynamics of micro swimmers and the use of deep neural networks in image reconstruction were just a few of the topics at the fourth annual Central Valley Regional Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Student Chapter Conference held at UC Merced this spring.

Clouds loomed over the Carol Tomlinson-Keasey Quad last weekend, but nothing was going to rain on the parade of the more than 1,300 Bobcats who walked the stage at UC Merced’s commencement.

Graduating senior Araceli Perez was looking for a new environment when she moved from Hacienda Heights to attend UC Merced in 2015.

The shift from the high-intensity region of Los Angeles to the more relaxed atmosphere of Merced was more than a change of pace. In her four years at UC Merced, she always welcomed the chance to experience something new — whether that was cheerleading or back-packing for an archaeological project in the Sierra Nevada.

Undergraduates Victoria Arias and Cydney Caradonna entered UC Merced through different doors.

Arias was a freshman impressed with the campus and community. Caradonna was a transfer student and athlete sold on UC Merced’s championship women’s basketball team.

When Anna Ocegueda walks across the stage at UC Merced’s 2019 commencement, it will be not only a powerful moment for her, but for her family, too — and for the thousands of people who identify with her story.

Ocegueda is the daughter of migrant farm workers from Mexico and as one of five children, is the first in her family to graduate from a four-year university. This weekend, she receives her bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in Spanish.

The undergraduate engineering curriculum at UC Merced offers students professional experience by participating in the senior capstone project, the Innovation Design Clinic (IDC). The IDC culminates in the Innovate to Grow event on Friday, May 17, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in an annual showcase of student talent and ingenuity, highlighting the culture of entrepreneurship in UC Merced’s School of Engineering .

Asmaa Mohamed’s enthusiasm for research is contagious. Her passion not only radiates through her words, but it is also evident in the research career she has built in her undergraduate years at UC Merced.

Mohamed was born in Egypt. In 2013, her father accepted a position as a senior medical physicist in the Merced Cancer Center, prompting her family to move to Merced. About four months before immigrating, she began to learn common words to prepare for full English immersion.