News

‘Diverse’ Magazine Names Groundbreaking Professor an Emerging Scholar

January 26, 2017

The magazine Diverse: Issues in Higher Education has named UC Merced Professor Ala Qattawi an Emerging Scholar of the Year in its first issue of 2017. Qattawi, with the School of Engineering, is the first woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in automotive engineering, and the only automotive...

Bird Researcher Expands Knowledge About Reserve’s Kestrels

January 23, 2017

Kestrels are a fixture among the birds on the Merced Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve adjacent to campus. Though they are not endangered, the small falcons’ population has declined by 60 percent in California over the past half-century because of changes in land usage. Nesting-box programs like...

Campus Provides ‘Inclusive Excellence’ Dialogue, Activities

January 19, 2017

Social Justice Initiatives and the Office of Campus Climate will host “Talking Circles,” a space to create dialogue about inclusive opportunities at UC Merced, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Jan. 20. The space is open to the campus community for reflection, quiet contemplation, crafting and individual ...

Artist-in-Residence Brings Theories of Flight to Classroom, Community

January 19, 2017

Spanish artist Olga Diego blends the concepts of art and engineering into the magic of flight. This semester, Diego is bringing her creativity and expertise to UC Merced as the campus’s newest artist-in-residence and lecturer. Diego, known partly for her playful and often-oversized inflatable...

Genetic Changes Made Native Americans Susceptible to Smallpox, Study Shows

January 18, 2017

A new study identifies genetic changes in Native Americans that came about when Europeans settled in the Pacific Northwest and might have played a major role in why so many natives died of infectious disease. In a new paper in Nature Communications, “A Time Transect of Exomes from a Native American...

Cognitive Scientist Earns Early Career Impact Award

January 13, 2017

UC Merced Professor Rick Dale is a recipient of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences (FABBS) Early Career Impact Award from the Society for Computers in Psychology. Dale, a cognitive scientist in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, studies how our bodies...

Students Building Living Machines Out of Engineered Tissues

January 11, 2017

There are many labs at UC Merced where visitors can see students huddled over microscopes and petri dishes, using tweezers to extract and examine different items. But no one at UC Merced has ever seen the likes of what’s going on in Professor Kara McCloskey’s class. The graduate and undergraduate...

History Professor to Give Talk in Turlock on the Graphic Novel

January 11, 2017

UC Merced history Professor Mario Sifuentez will present a lecture, “Histories and the Graphic Novel,” at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15. Sifuentez will discuss how the medium of the graphic novel has shaped history and how history has shaped the medium. The talk will...

Study: Early High-Altitude Settlers Were Hunter-Gatherers, Not Farmers

January 5, 2017

A new paper by UC Merced Professor Mark Aldenderfer begins to settle a longstanding debate over when people began permanently occupying higher elevations of the Tibetan Plateau, and shows communities did not have to be based around agriculture and domesticated animals to be permanent. “Permanent...

Scientists Build Synthetic Cell-Sized Membranes Out of Paper

January 4, 2017

Scientists have been synthesizing lipid membranes from a variety of materials, making them as lifelike as possible to learn more about how cells work and how they can be manipulated. UC Merced Professor Anand Subramaniam and his students have come up with a novel, portable and startlingly simple...