Research

UC Merced Aerial Picture
Chemical Biology Lab Creating DNA-based Nanomachines that can Self Assemble
December 21, 2020
Professor Tao Ye and colleagues have received a $1.18 million grant from the Department of Energy to study how DNA molecules can arrange themselves into nanostructures that could form the basis of nanoelectronic circuits. All living things... Read More
Fellowship Advances Student’s Research into Arab American Smoking Behaviors
December 17, 2020
Public Health doctoral student Sarah Alnahari was awarded a UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship to continue her community-driven research examining tobacco use among Arab Americans in the San Joaquin... Read More
Innovate to Grow Coming to a Zoom Room Near You
December 15, 2020
UC Merced’s premier experiential learning expo, Innovate to Grow (I2G), is providing students, faculty and staff with a new set of experiences to learn from this year, as the event continues in a virtual format to comply with pandemic... Read More
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