School of Natural Sciences

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UC Merced's Experimental Smart Farm is shown.

Grants Fund Wide Variety of Climate Change Research Projects

UC Merced researchers will tackle climate changes in multiple ways through more than $4 million in grants recently awarded from within the university. The Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED) issued nine awards totaling $4,096,197 for proposals that range from studying methane gas

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Professors Briana Ballis, Shijia Pan and Xuan Zhang are pictured.

Three Hellman Fellows Awarded at UC Merced

Three UC Merced researchers have recently received the prestigious Hellman Fellowship. Computer science and engineering Professor Shijia Pan, economics Professor Briana Ballis and life and environmental sciences Professor Xuan Zhang have all been named Hellman Fellows. The Hellman Fellows Program

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Miguel Chacón-Terán was presented with his award at Merck’s headquarters in Rahway, NJ.

Chemistry Postdoc Awarded Merck Research Award

Miguel Chacón-Terán was selected as one of 16 scientists from across the country to receive the 2023 Merck Research Award for Underrepresented Chemists of Color, intended to support rising chemists of color while also recognizing their resilience in pursuit of scientific excellence. “Being part of

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Most of the Universe Composed of Dark Energy, Researchers Show

A UC Merced researcher and her teammates around the world have succeeded in measuring the total amount of matter in the universe for the second time. A new paper in the Astrophysical Journal, titled “Constraining Cosmological Parameters using the Cluster Mass-Richness Relation,” shows that matter

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Department of Energy Awards $37 Million to Build Research Capacity

Five faculty members from the School of Natural Sciences received grants recently from the Department of Energy (DOE) under its Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research (FAIR) initiative. To support research at minority-serving institutions and emerging research institutions, the DOE announced

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Biviana Oseguera

Mega-Interstellar Structure Fuels Undergraduate’s Winning Research

Big-wave surfing is a thing these days, but hardly anyone is riding a wave as big as the one Biviana Oseguera is on. The physics major is studying the 9,000-light-year long Radcliffe Wave, a structure made of clouds of dust and young stars that form a wave-like structure through the Milky Way. So

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The UC Merced astrophysicists with the Keck Observatory behind them

Astrophysics Researchers Present their Work at Hawaiian Observatory

A delegation of dignitaries from the University of California Office of the President, UC Merced and UCLA were recently treated to a presentation that included the astrophysicists from UC Merced at the William M. Keck Observatory headquarters in Waimea, Hawaii. Professors Anna Nierenberg and Sarah

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Professor Adeyemi Adebiyi

Researcher Studies Effects of Dust on Climate Change

Being able to accurately predict how the climate will change in the future is one of the most important quests of our lifetimes. A key to better prediction is the fundamental understanding of how particles in the atmosphere are connected to climate and climate change. One way to do that is to better

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Data Science Challenge participants

Data Science Challenge offers Students Learning and Growth Opportunities

About 20 UC Merced students spent the past two weeks working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to see if they can solve a problem that could have a significant impact on cardiology. The annual Data Science Challenge (DSC), a two-week, full-time internship at LLNL, this year teamed