Energy & Environment

UC Merced Aerial Picture
UC Merced Reaches for Stars with Solar Cells
September 18, 2019
Two UC Merced physics groups are totally spacing out this year. Professors Sayantani Ghosh and David Strubbe and their students in the Department of Physics are working on a NASA initiative to fabricate solar cells in space and turn... Read More
UC Merced Takes Another Giant Leap in U.S. News Rankings
September 6, 2019
The fastest-growing public research university in the nation is the fastest-rising university in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings. The University of California Merced, jumped 32 spots in the ranking of National... Read More
TED Audiences get the Dirt on Soil and Climate Change from Berhe
September 3, 2019
Soil is one of the foundations of life on Earth and could be an important part of the solution to climate change, if only we can stop treating it like dirt. That’s the message Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe shared with a global audience... Read More
Researchers Use Monkey Flower to Study Climate Change
August 20, 2019
California’s drought was hard not to notice — the dry lawns, fallowed fields and hot temperatures were evident across the state. To better understand how the drought affected the natural ecosystem in which we live, biology Professor Jason... Read More
UC Merced Unveils Second Phase of Merced 2020 Project, Says Thank You to Leland
August 19, 2019
Two simple words, “Leland Legacy,” captured the significance of Wednesday’s opening event for the second phase of the Merced 2020 Project, an event that doubled as a goodbye and thank you to outgoing Chancellor Dorothy Leland. The message... Read More
Media Creates False Balance on Climate Science, Study Shows
August 13, 2019
The American media lends too much weight to people who dismiss climate change, giving them legitimacy they haven’t earned, posing serious danger to efforts aimed at raising public awareness and motivating rapid action, a new study shows.... Read More
Humanities Grad Students Drive Community Engagement, Public Understanding Through Research
August 8, 2019
Since his undergraduate days in Environmental Studies at Humboldt State University, Ivan Soto has aspired to produce research with a positive impact on the public — not just to benefit the academic community. As a doctoral student in the... Read More
Campus Preparing to Launch Merced 2020 Project’s Second Phase
July 12, 2019
The growing UC Merced campus is nearly ready to debut the second phase of the innovative Merced 2020 Project, a multiyear plan to add 1.2 million gross square feet of classroom, office, research laboratory, dining, recreation, housing and... Read More
Physicist Researching Materials Chemistry to Build Better Solar Cells
July 9, 2019
Durable, reliable, affordable solar power is the future of energy, and UC Merced computational physicist Professor David Strubbe is diving into a new area of science to answer the call. Strubbe’s new project aims to understand why two... Read More
Multiyear Drought Caused Massive Forest Die-off in Sierra Nevada
July 1, 2019
The most extreme drought event in hundreds of years caused a catastrophic die-off of the Sierra Nevada’s mature trees in 2015-2016. A study published today in Nature Geoscience details how UC Merced Professor Roger Bales and his... Read More