Research

UC Merced Aerial Picture
Breast Milk Shows Promise for Treating COVID-19 and Protecting Babies
December 14, 2020
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. In the fight... Read More
Physicist Liu Receives NSF CAREER Award to Create ‘Bacteria Treadmill’
December 10, 2020
Physics Professor Bin Liu has received a CAREER award for his research into a new micromanipulation technique to virtually hold freely moving microorganisms, essentially creating a “bacterial treadmill” to enable biological and medical... Read More
Q&A: How People Decide Whether to Comply with Public Health Orders
December 9, 2020
How do people decide whether to comply with public health directives around the COVID-19 pandemic, such as wearing masks, social distancing and staying at home? Whether to take such preventative measures is a personal decision based on... Read More
Fall Commencement: UC Merced a ‘Companion’ for Student Speaker
December 8, 2020
For Xiaolong “Harry” Chen, UC Merced is more than a university. “It is a friend and a companion,” he wrote in his application to be student speaker at Fall Commencement. Together, they experienced pre-dawn hours at Lantern Café, early... Read More
Pandemic Inspires Chemist to Open New Avenues of Research
December 1, 2020
Professor Michael Thompson doesn’t usually work in immunology or drug development. But his use of X-ray crystallography — research that visualizes the structures of protein molecules to better understand how they function — has taken him... Read More
Researcher Examining CBD Effects on Metabolic Syndrome
November 24, 2020
About 35 percent of Americans have metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that raises the risk of cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in the United States. If you have three of these five issues, you have metabolic... Read More
Connection Between COVID-19 and Loss of Smell Uncovered by Research Team
November 18, 2020
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. Vicente Ramirez,... Read More
Two MacArthur Foundation Chairs Awarded to Female SSHA Faculty
November 9, 2020
Two female faculty members of UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA) have been named the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation chairs, making four prestigious chairs in the campus’ 15-year history.... Read More
Sliding on Waves of Atoms: Lab Is First to Observe Ripples and Friction on 2D Materials
November 5, 2020
Mechanical Engineering Professor Mehmet Baykara’s latest discovery in two-dimensional (2D) materials will have implications for future space missions, as well as nanotechnology on Earth. Since the Nobel prize-winning discovery of... Read More
New Precision Ag Project Would Help Farmers Measure Plant Moisture
November 2, 2020
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... Read More