Three professors are joining UC Merced’s Agricultural Experiment Station this fall, bringing more expertise and resources to the 3-year-old research center.

This is the final entry of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2025 semester.

Adriana Ponce Mata spent the last two summers working in one of the largest and oldest companies in the Bay Area. This fall, she joins UC Merced to begin her next chapter. Through Project SEED, she gained hands-on research experience testing fuels in an oil refinery, sparking her passion for science and helping others.

A daughter of San Joaquin Valley immigrant farmworkers has earned the opportunity to study alongside a nationally prominent health researcher and energize her mission to improve the well-being of agricultural laborers.

Department of Molecular and Cell Biology Professor Chris Amemiya, former interim director of the Health Sciences Research Institute, has been honored by the Pan American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology (PASEDB) with the Service Award.

More than 100 million land mines remain buried around the world, posing a threat in approximately 70 countries and territories, and killing or injuring about 5,000 people, most of them civilians, every year. 

As the world’s geopolitical landscape shifts, nine scientists studying different aspects of warfare ecology from seven countries — Poland, Ukraine, Norway, Spain, the United States, Finland and Croatia — are warning against the growing deployment of land mines as countries bordering Russia withdraw from global conventions restricting their use.

Mass deportation of California's undocumented residents would open a $275 billion hole in the state's economy, cripple industries ranging from agriculture to hospitality, disrupt countless small businesses, and lead to $23 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

UC Merced’s graduating Class of 2025 recently celebrated its achievement at the campus’s spring commencement, joined by family members, close friends and loved ones.

For two graduates, Jahaira Morales and Bryan Gutierrez, the ceremony also was an opportunity to meet with a couple of other individuals who have been invested in their higher-education journey at UC Merced – their scholarship benefactors, Dar Chen and Cheryl Matsubara.

In California’s Kern County, nearly 925,000 people live in oppressive heat 125 days per year.

Several types of relief are offered. Residents can get breaks on energy bills bloated by air conditioning costs. Triple-digit temperatures trigger the opening of public buildings labeled “cooling centers.” Schools and businesses get tips about preventing heat-related illness.

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.

California’s Central Valley, famous for producing much of the food Americans eat, is also infamous for its inferior air quality and its high rates of poverty, housing insecurity and at-risk workers.

Increasing epidemiological evidence has shown a correlation between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and the incidence of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD).

Areas with severe PM2.5 pollution — including the Central Valley — are often inhabited by low-income residents who are disproportionately affected by these environmental hazards.