Aneelman Brar wants to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The Chemistry and Chemical Biology Ph.D. student’s three-minute talk entitled “From Pollutant to Fuel and New Products: Recycling Carbon Dioxide” earned her bragging rights as UC Merced's Grad Slam champion and a $5,000 prize, plus the opportunity to represent the campus at the UC systemwide finals on May 5.
UC Merced continues to be recognized nationally, with some programs leaping forward, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2023-2024 edition of Best Graduate Schools released on April 25.
After transferring from a Sacramento community college to UC Merced in 2007, Maxine Umeh-Garcia was unsure of her future career. She admits she hadn’t looked at the majors the newest UC offered before applying and imagined she’d teach high school math.
She met with her academic advisor and learned the campus offered an applied mathematics major, not pure mathematics. They discussed other options and came to a stalemate.
Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Economic Development Gillian Wilson has been named a 2023 American Astronomical Society (AAS) Fellow — the preeminent organization of professional astronomers in North America.
Graduate Division’s Competitive Edge Summer Bridge program for incoming Ph.D. students was identified as a Program to Watch by Excelencia in Education, a national effort to identify evidence-based programs that improve Latino student success in higher education.
UC Merced Professor Clarissa J. Nobile has been named a 2022 Innovation Fund investigator by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Nobile and University of Missouri Professor David G. Mendoza-Cózatl have formed one of six interdisciplinary teams chosen for the prestigious award.
The duo is combining expertise from Nobile’s research in microbial communities and Mendoza-Cózatl’s work in plant biology to study how plants and microbes interact in the context of iron uptake and utilization.
UC Merced has received a $12.5 million grant funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop the Biology Integration Institute (BII): INSITE — the INstitute for Symbiotic Interactions, Training and Education — a research collaborative that aims to expand the fundamental knowledge of symbioses and inform immediate and long-term conservation strategies
UC Merced has awarded its second cohort of Chancellor’s Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence to four incoming Ph.D. students from the schools of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Natural Sciences and Engineering. Their studies will contribute to the representation of Black scholars in academia and beyond.
July was a transition month for UC Merced’s Graduate Division as interim Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Chris Kello passed the baton to Professor Hrant P. Hratchian — an Armenian name pronounced Her-ahnt Heratch-yahn — who now leads the division.
“Dr. Hratchian’s appointment is another signifier of our momentum in research excellence,” said Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz. “He will be an essential leader and contributor as we accelerate our drive toward R1 status.”
Starting this fall, undergraduates interested in the biomedical sciences will have an opportunity to take part in a new and innovative training program that will give them strong foundations in computational biology, systems biology and big data analytics.
