Federal and state government officials journeyed to the western corner of Merced County on Thursday to announce a new project to place solar panels on the water in the Delta-Mendota Canal.

The project is part of a $19 million investment through President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act announced by the Department of the Interior to install panels over irrigation canals in California, Oregon and Utah, with the aims of decreasing evaporation of critical water supplies and advancing clean energy goals.

Who will UC Merced’s Grad Slam champion be?

Cheer on the finalists on April 8 and find out.

Graduate students from UC Merced’s three schools will take the stage to compete in the Graduate Division’s 10th Grad Slam finals.

It was a terrible trifecta: a busted tilt skillet, an obsolete replacement part and thousands of hungry students restarting classes in six days.

For a UC Merced Dining Services team facing a logistical kitchen nightmare, the solution was a savory mix of collaboration and outside-the-pizza-box thinking. And it happened barely 12 giant steps from the broken cooker in the Pavilion dining center.

Glancing at Mike Futrell’s resume, one might ask, “What hasn’t he done?”

He is a retired United States Navy captain with two submarine tours under his belt and 26 years of service; a former member of the Louisiana House of Representatives; a former senior staff member in the U.S. Senate; and he practiced corporate law for over a decade and is still licensed in Hawaii and Louisiana. Futrell has served as a California city manager for more than a decade.

He is also a graduate student at UC Merced.

Water is among the most precious resources on the planet. Some areas don't get enough; some get too much. And climate change is driving both of those circumstances to ever-growing extremes.

It was a terrible trifecta: a busted tilt skillet, an obsolete replacement part and thousands of hungry students restarting classes in six days.

For a UC Merced Dining Services team facing a logistical kitchen nightmare, the solution was a savory mix of collaboration and outside-the-pizza-box thinking. And it happened barely 12 giant steps from the broken cooker in the Pavilion dining center.

University of California researchers from the USDA-funded Secure Water Future project recently found that increases in crop water demand explain half of the cumulative deficits of the agricultural water balance since 1980, exacerbating water reliance on depleting groundwater supplies and fluctuating surface water imports.

Professor Hyeran Jeon has received a CAREER award for her research into computer efficiency.

She is the 40th researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

A UC Merced undergraduate student's work at NASA helped ensure the space agency will have cost-effective and efficient communications.

Tejas Bhartiya, who recently graduated from the university after only 2.5 years, also last month concluded an internship with NASA's Goddard Space Center.

The Goddard Space Flight Center, based in Greenbelt, Md., is home to the nation's largest organization of scientists, engineers and technologists who build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study Earth, the sun, the solar system and the universe, according to its website.

Editor's note: In honor of Black History Month, the UC Merced newsroom is highlighting some of the organizations, services and people who serve or represent the Black community on campus.

We all need heroes.

Perhaps that was on Roy Wilkins’ mind as he faced the sea of humanity – 250,000 strong – on a warm August afternoon in 1963. At the podium on the Lincoln Memorial, the executive secretary of the NAACP stood to inspire the throng gathered for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.