School of Natural Sciences

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Biologists Attend Prestigious Summer Teaching Institutes

UC Merced Professor Marcos Garcia-Ojeda and lecturer Kamal Dulai have received Macmillan Travel Awards to learn how to bring more effective teaching into the STEM classroom. The $500 awards cover lodging and travel to one of the Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching’s multi-day regional teaching

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Researcher Continues Progress Toward Effective HIV Inhibitor

Patricia LiWang was at an impasse. It was 2011 and the UC Merced professor’s research group had figured out how to make some of the most potent HIV inhibitors even more powerful. LiWang was thrilled by these findings; funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) weren’t. “Our

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Blum Center Announces 2017 Seed Grant Recipients

UC Merced’s branch of the Blum Center for Developing Economies rebooted this spring with a faculty-led effort to spend two years working on becoming the hub for all food-security-related research and outreach on and off campus. Part of that effort includes seed grants for UC Merced researchers. The

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Campus Marks Largest Class, Year of Growth With 2017 Commencement

More than 1,200 undergraduate and graduate students are expected to participate in the University of California, Merced’s 12th commencement ceremonies this weekend — its largest class since opening in September 2005 — bringing the university’s alumni total to nearly 8,000. “This year's commencement

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Student Speakers Share Desire to Make a Difference

Jocelyne Fadiga and Havilliah “Jake” Malsbury traveled from different worlds to study at UC Merced. The youngest sister of 13 children, Fadiga grew up in Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) in West Africa before immigrating to the United States about eight years ago. Malsbury came to UC Merced from

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NSF Grant Brings Powerful New Microscope to Campus

UC Merced added a powerful new tool to the campus’s Imaging and Microscopy Facility. The newly acquired Zeiss LSM 880 is a state-of-the-art laser scanning confocal microscope that represents a huge leap forward for the university’s imaging capabilities. “Within UC Merced, this is by far the most

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MACES Hosts Big Bash to Highlight Tiny Technology

MACES, the Merced nAnomaterials Center for Energy and Sensing, held its second annual open house on April 19, showcasing student research and highlighting the center’s connection to NASA. The daylong event kicked off with remarks from MACES Director and Professor Jennifer Lu, who shared her vision

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Community Members Aid Cutting-Edge Research in ‘BioBlitz’ Project

When scientists at UC Merced seek to better understand California’s biodiversity, they turn to cutting-edge genomics. They also turn to their neighbors. On a sunny Saturday in April, scientists joined forces with members of the local community to take part in UC Merced’s inaugural eDNA BioBlitz

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Applied Math Conference Highlights Student Research

The UC Merced student chapter of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) hosted the second annual Central Valley Regional SIAM Student Chapter Conference on April 7. In only its second year, the conference attracted 85 participants from universities around Northern and Central

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Grad Students Pitch Their Research in GradSlam! Contest

After a fierce round of competition during the GradSlam! finals on April 13, environmental systems student Byran Fuhrmann emerged as UC Merced’s new GradSlam! campus champion. For winning the competition — in which graduate students give 3-minute TED-style presentations of their research — Fuhrmann