Brenda Ortiz

Students Awarded Prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

June 4, 2025

Two UC Merced graduate students wearing blue

Two UC Merced graduate students and an alum from the School of Natural Sciences were recently awarded fellowships from the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. This year, NSF awarded 1,000 GRFP fellowships compared to about 2,000 in previous years...

Staff member Cassie Gunter was named "Woman of the Year" candidate by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Gunter Set on Making a Difference for Cancer Research

Twelve years ago, Cassie Gunter was fighting for her life. Now she wants to give back to the group that helped her survive. At age 22, she went to the emergency room with what she thought was...

When she’s not designing the next engineering solution, alumna Janna Rodriguez enjoys mountain climbing around the world.

I Am a UC Engineer: Alumna Janna Rodriguez

Janna’s Rodriguez’s achievements exemplify the entrepreneurial spirit and drive shared by many UC graduates. Rodriguez not only launched a successful business in her hometown of Merced as...

EECS Ph.D. Student Wins Facebook Fellowship

UC Merced Electrical Engineering and Computer Science graduate student Yijun Li was recently selected as a 2019 Facebook Fellowship winner. The Facebook Fellowship program is designed to support...

Pellissier Lecture: Spreading Excellence on a Larger Scale

Bestselling author and Stanford University Professor Robert Sutton will share principles and examples of “Scaling Up Excellence,” the title of his presentation as this year’s Vital...

Graduate student Warren Nanney was awarded a three-year NASA fellowship to continue his research engineering portable biosensors for health monitoring in space.

NASA Fellowship Lifts Grad Student’s Cardiac Biosensor Research

Warren Nanney, who’s pursuing a Ph.D. in Chemistry and Chemical Biology, received a three-year NASA fellowship that’s creating a unique opportunity for him to develop biosensors that...

Alumna Tessa Provins's time at UC Merced not only informed but inspired her passion to always keep growing in the political science field.

Merced Native and Ph.D. Grad Lands Faculty Position at Pitt

For Merced native Tessa Provins, the opportunity to attend UC Merced for her graduate education was a chance to come home again — but it wasn’t simply the familiar location that drew her...

Six graduate students landed spots at Idaho National Laboratory through the National GEM Consortium (From left: Jordan Galloway, Denise Owusu, Stephanie Jones, Diana Perales, Terrence Buck (program manager), Malik Hayes, Jorge Ramirez.) Photo courtesy of Idaho National Laboratory.

Graduate Student Spends Summer as GEM Fellow at Idaho National Lab

As a graduate student at UC Merced, Jordan Galloway looks for ways to push himself forward and lead by example. The third-year Chemistry and Chemical Biology student forged a new path...

Partner institutions will embark on a joint training program that incorporates UC and CSU teaching experience, mentorship, networking opportunities and career preparation for UC Ph.D. trainees.

NSF Grant Unites Four Hispanic-Serving Institutions to Help Diversify STEM Faculty

UC Merced is partnering with UC Santa Barbara and two California State University campuses — Fresno and Channel Islands — on a project to create a more diverse STEM faculty at colleges...

$10M Grant Will Help Increase Hispanics in Computing

UC Merced is part of a consortium of more than 40 institutions and organizations from the public and private sectors at the forefront of a national effort to increase the number of Hispanic students...