News

Professor’s Documentary Film about Refugee Family Honored at Vienna International Festival

May 7, 2020

“Songs that Never End,” Professor Yehuda Sharim’s intimate film about a family transitioning from Iran to life in Texas, is a finalist contender in the International Documentary Film Festival Vienna and will stream on the festival’s site for one week starting Thursday. The feature-length...

At the Intersection of Math and Biology, Sindi Lab Sees a Breakthrough in Prion Disease

May 4, 2020

A UC Merced researcher and her lab have unlocked one of the mysteries that could lead to treatments — or even cures — for prion diseases in mammals. Prion diseases are a family of rare, progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect both humans — such as with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or fatal...

First-Generation Student Pursues Anti-Racism Research, Joins Cal-Poly Pomona this Fall

April 27, 2020

Kathryn “Katie” Daniels was a teen when she attended the celebration of the opening of UC Merced. As a child growing up in Merced, Daniels had heard her parents stress the importance of education. “My mom always talked about the University of California coming to Merced and how that was going to...

Q&A with Economist Greg Wright: COVID-19’s Impact on the Economy

April 23, 2020

Since the onset of many governors’ stay-at-home orders, there are fewer cars on the road as fewer people are driving to work. While some people can work from home, sadly, some are not working at all. The global pandemic has caused record unemployment in the United States and the future of the...

Senior Becomes Fourth Bobcat to Win Prestigious Scholarship

April 23, 2020

Sam Schroeder, a fourth-year undergraduate student working with Professor Valerie Leppert in materials sciences, has been awarded a highly competitive Materials Engineering Scholarship — one of only two given annually. He is the fourth UC Merced student to achieve this honor. The scholarship was...

How 'Bout Them Apples? Engineers Correlate Friction to Texture

April 20, 2020

Think about biting into a fresh apple. What do you perceive? Is it juicy? Sweet? Tart? Crisp? Now remember how unpleasant it is to bite into mealy apple flesh. Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, a horticulture science and technology enterprise in Canada, is trying to prevent that...

Grad Students Take on Big Roles to Promote Campus Diversity

April 17, 2020

Dania Matos has been at UC Merced for less than a year but is making a big impact as the university’s first chief diversity officer. Now two graduate students with small-town roots are helping Matos amplify her message of equity and justice — a message made more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic....

Earth Day Talk Focuses on Ag Land and Water Regulations, Solutions

April 17, 2020

The Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and UC Merced’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Graduate Group present an online talk for the golden anniversary of Earth Day. Joel Kimmelshue, Ph.D., a founding partner and the principal soil and agriculture...

Babies Forage for Sounds That Contribute to Language Acquisition, Study Shows

April 16, 2020

Most people wouldn’t think physics has anything to do with baby babble and human language development. But most people aren’t Ritwika Vallomparambath PanikkasserySugasree. The graduate student, who prefers to go by her first name, specializes in computational biophysics but likes to think of...

Grad Student Aids Campus’s Move to Remote Teaching

April 15, 2020

When UC Merced began transitioning to emergency remote instruction in late March, hoping to lessen the spread of COVID-19, Jackie Shay didn’t waste any time jumping in to help her fellow teaching assistants (TA) make the shift. Teaching remotely isn’t new for Shay, a Quantitative and Systems...