First. Further. Forward

Breyenne Pierce wasn't sure UC Merced was for her.

The Turlock High graduate had followed her passion for water polo to Sierra College in Rocklin. As she was concluding her community college experience, she started looking for a four-year university to complete her degree.

"Honestly, I didn't want to go back home," she said. "I enjoyed being at Sierra. Even though it was two hours away, it was far enough to really spread my wings."

Two UC Merced computer science and engineering professors will delve deep into artificial intelligence in projects with Amazon.

As technology advances and new problems present themselves, electrical engineers who can meet the needs of the modern world are in high demand, and adapting to electrical engineering education has become increasingly important. UC Merced's electrical engineering program, one of the university's newest, focuses on equipping students with the skills to solve complex engineering problems.

High-risk conditions for fires are increasingly happening across countries at the same time, making wildfires even more challenging to tackle, new research reveals.

Scientists from UC Merced and the University of East Anglia found this synchronized extreme fire weather — characterized by exceptionally warm, dry and often windy conditions — has increased strongly worldwide since 1979, becoming more widespread throughout regions, not just in single locations.

A semi-automated washing system for bins at a tomato-processing facility and a mobile app for hikers earned big wins at the Fall 2025 I2G, or Innovate to Grow, event at UC Merced.

I2G is a unique "experiential learning" program that engages external partner organizations with teams of students who design systems to solve real-world engineering and computer science problems.

The team "Let's Get Saucy" won the F3 Innovate Engineering Award for its project with Kagome, a Los Banos-based tomato processing and food manufacturing company.

High school students have an extraordinary opportunity to explore software development through a summer internship program at UC Merced.

Computer science and engineering Professor Ahmed Arif started the High School Internship program in the Inclusive Interaction Lab in 2018 to give young minds early exposure to research.

One of the biggest hurdles facing local farmers is the rising cost of doing business.

However, some innovative solutions are in the works, as highlighted at the Central Valley Rural Energy Systems Workshop at UC Merced in early December.

UC Merced, a beacon of academic achievement in the San Joaquin Valley, is also a powerful driver of economic growth and prosperity in the region it was created to serve. 

Kevin Arrieta got into robotics to avoid getting into trouble.

Arrieta said he joined the robotics club at Dominguez High School in Compton high school after Gloria Esiobu, the teacher who ran it, gave him an ultimatum.

"I had gotten in with the wrong crowd," he said. "I had a physics teacher who told me, 'Join my robotics club or I'm calling your mom.'"

In the club, Arrieta found he loved working with sensors and doing programming, and he was good at it.

"You have an engineering mind and you don't even know it," his teacher said.

The global climate crisis was entirely predictable and impacts nearly every facet of life. But we still can slow its progress and mitigate the effects we already see.

That was the message delivered earlier this month by climate scientist Michael Mann, who spoke at the first in a series of presentations at UC Merced planned for the university community and the public.

Mann said he and colleagues published research in the 1990s that showed the Earth's warming and the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the climate.