NSF

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted many facets of life, including health care, schools and the work environment.

A new study by UC Merced researchers shows evidence that the pandemic also fueled an elevated number of wildfires in the United States that year.

How?

Cosmology Professor Anna Nierenberg has received a CAREER award for a project that will vastly improve the study of the nature of dark matter in the universe.

She is the 42nd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species.

They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by combining data on 9,239 species published in nearly 300 studies between 1990 and 2024 and additional curated data on another 1,000 species. The resulting database can easily be shared and updated as additional studies are published.

The Biology Integration Institute (BII): The Institute for Symbiotic Interactions, Training and Education in the Face of a Changing Climate, or INSITE, stands out because it is supported by $12.5 million from the National Science Foundation, one of the largest NSF grants UC Merced has ever received.

Lockdowns. Social distancing. Shuttered schools and businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic and its sweeping disruptions set off a stampede of “what it’s doing to us” research, focused largely on schoolchildren. How were students’ academics affected? Their mental health? Their social development?

Left unexamined was whether the pandemic impacted the social cognition of preschool children — kids younger than 6 — whose social norms were upended by day care closures and families sheltered at home.

When regents selected Merced for the newest University of California campus in 1995, the choice brought promise for the entire region: of an improved workforce, advanced technology, economic impact and groundbreaking research.

Nearly 30 years later, a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation is helping UC Merced fulfill part of that promise in a big way. The Central Valley Advanced Research Computing (CENVAL-ARC) project is aimed at transforming computer research throughout the Central Valley.

Natural rubber is used in a wide range of products used throughout the globe. Lab-produced rubber works for many applications but is insufficient for vital items like airplane tires and specialty medical products.

Natural rubber also is a precious resource; 90% of the plants that serve as its source for are grown in a tiny area of Southeast Asia.

A group of faculty members at UC Merced has been awarded a $1 million seed grant from the National Science Foundation to form a research collaborative to expand participation and access to materials, research-focused facilities, education, training and careers.

Black and Hispanic faculty members seeking promotion at research universities face career-damaging biases, with their scholarly production judged more harshly than that of their peers, according to a groundbreaking initiative co-led by UC Merced that aims to uncover the roots of these biases and develop strategies for change.

A groundbreaking database that tracks 13 decades of annual changes in U.S. home sales and rental prices provides a clearer picture of economic shifts through the 20th century and will be a valuable resource for homebuyers, housing policymakers and the real estate industry, a UC Merced researcher said.