UC Merced Research

research of dna strands

As it is at all University of California campuses, research is the cornerstone of UC Merced. Innovative faculty members conduct interdisciplinary, groundbreaking research that will solve complex problems affecting the San Joaquin Valley, California and the world. Students — as early as their first years — have opportunities to work right alongside them, sometimes even publishing in journals and presenting at conferences.

Top Articles

Flames, the beach and the ocean are depicted in a scene from the January 2025 Palisades fire.

Researchers Look Ahead to Fire Season 2025

Pictures accompanying Professor John Abatzoglou's presentation on the 2025 fire season were blurry. That was intentional, he said, because so much about wildfire is unpredictable. "There's a lot that we know, and a lot we don't know," he said....
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Depicted are two electric vehicle charging stations at UC Merced.

Researchers Make the Case for Charging Cars During the Day

Many people with electric vehicles drive them to work during the day and then charge them overnight after returning home. But a simple reversal of that schedule could make it cheaper and easier to charge your electric car. That was the conclusion...
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Research isn’t limited to labs with beakers and microscopes, though there are plenty of those here.

The list of UC Merced’s research strengths is long and includes climate change and ecology; solar and renewable energy; water quality and resources; artificial intelligence; cognitive science; stem-cell, diabetes and cancer research; air quality; big-data analysis; computer science; mechanical, environmental and materials engineering; political science; and much, much more.

The campus also has interdisciplinary research institutes with which faculty members affiliate themselves to conduct even more in-depth investigations into a variety of scientific topics.

Recent Articles

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Breast Milk Shows Promise for Treating COVID-19 and Protecting Babies

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 against the...
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Physicist Liu Receives NSF CAREER Award to Create ‘Bacteria Treadmill’

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 studies of...
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Pandemic Inspires Chemist to Open New Avenues of Research

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 in a new...
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Researcher Examining CBD Effects on Metabolic Syndrome

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 syndrome,...
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Connection Between COVID-19 and Loss of Smell Uncovered by Research Team

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, a Ph.D. student...
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Sliding on Waves of Atoms: Lab Is First to Observe Ripples and Friction on 2D Materials

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 2D materials in 2004,...
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