Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) in 1951, National Engineers Week is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers.

This year, Engineers Week runs from Feb. 20-26, and to celebrate the students, faculty, alumni, programs and accomplishments, all nine UC campuses that have engineering schools or programs collaborated to present some of the most interesting stories from the past year.

It’s a scene familiar to many students: sitting at the kitchen table, utterly hopeless because they can’t solve that tricky math problem. Many people can identify with that feeling and if it’s not conquered, it can turn into what Chris Wright calls “math phobia” — something students at UC Merced are trying to help early learners avoid.

UC Merced’s NSF-CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM) has been awarded an additional $5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue its mission. In total, the NSF has invested $10 million in the center, an indicator of the importance of the Center’s work and its faculty, student and staff contributions.

Not being able to communicate with loved ones is an unfortunate reality for some, such as recent stroke patients or mute individuals. Vocal imaging research performed by Professor Ahmed Sabbir Arif’s lab is contributing to a new form of communication that could help these afflicted populations communicate, even if they can’t audibly express themselves.

Shortly before the fall semester kicked off in person, 11 students were wrapping up their first summer on campus as part of the FACTS summer bridge program.

FACTS stands for San Joaquin Valley Food and Agriculture Cyberinformatics Tools and Science. The six-week summer course, funded by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture, introduces students to the world of research in agricultural science and technology.

Every time you surf the web, check your credit card balance, or even sign up for a class at UC Merced, you’re using a relational database.

Relational databases are basically the back end of operating software, aggregating information and culling results based on your search or query. Improving the speed of these results, known as query optimization, is the focus of computer science and engineering Professor Florin Rusu and his third-year graduate students Yesdaulet Izenov and Asoke Datta.

For the first time, UC Merced’s Political Science and Interdisciplinary Humanities (history discipline) graduate groups made national rankings.

US News & World Report’s annual rankings, released today, also highlighted the campus’s growing School of Engineering, as most of its programs climbed the charts.

A computer science lab focused on making human-computer interaction easier for people of all abilities has developed a digital lip-reader complete with its own repair system so the software can continue learning from its user.

Two new projects designed and led by UC Merced researchers will address challenges facing many Californians — wildfire recovery and agricultural labor — but will also have global reach.

UC Merced’s premier experiential learning expo, Innovate to Grow (I2G), is providing students, faculty and staff with a new set of experiences to learn from this year, as the event continues in a virtual format to comply with pandemic safety guidelines.