Lorena Anderson

From Soil to Climate Solutions: Berhe Leads Sierra Nevada Research Institute into its Next Chapter

September 11, 2025

When Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe arrived at UC Merced in 2009, she and her husband, Professor Teamrat Ghezzehei, were leaving major research institutions to join a brand-new campus in California’s Central Valley. It was a leap of faith — one made easier by the Sierra Nevada Research...

New Tech Will Change How People Use Mobile Devices

Two projects from a UC Merced engineering lab are making interactions with mobile devices easier and quicker, especially for blind people. Computer science Professor Ahmed Arif and his students...

Researchers Forge a New Weapon to Fight Parasites and Other Infections

Breakthrough collaborative science by an interdisciplinary team of researchers brought together by computational biology Professor David Ardell promises a new approach for treating all types of...

Researchers Discover Mechanism Proteins Use To Find And Control Genes

Bioengineering Professor Victor Muñoz has answered a long-standing genetic mystery, and his research suggests that someday, bioengineers could devise ways to control gene activity — manually...

‘E-Week’ Shines Spotlight on Engineering Field, Students

Competitions, showcases, career success stories and more highlight the work of the School of Engineering and its students at UC Merced’s annual celebration of National Engineers Week, Feb. 18...

National Academy of Engineering Elects Kurtz Into Its Ranks

Professor Sarah Kurtz has become the first UC Merced faculty member to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in recognition of her contributions to the development of gallium...

Breakthrough in Stem Cell Research: First Image of Niche Environment

Professor Joel Spencer was a rising star in college soccer and now he is an emerging scientist in the world of biomedical engineering, capturing — for the first time — an image of a...

UC Merced Alumna Represents Valley at State of the Union

One of UC Merced’s original students, Enid Picart — soon to graduate from the UCSF San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (SJV PRIME) — represented the San Joaquin Valley...

Professor Sarah Kurtz's research in comparing the efficiency of different solar-cell technologies when installed on car roofs could advance efforts to use solar panels on electric cars to recharge their batteries.

Potential of Electric Vehicles Tied to Solar Research

Not spending money on gas, oil changes, and tune-ups and not producing harmful greenhouse gas emissions is enough to sell many people on plug-in electric cars. But many consumers won’t bite...

A thin layer of compost is applied to grasslands in the Altamont Hills. This practice of carbon farming has been identified by the state as a pillar of its approach to fighting climate change.

Research Partnership Uses Compost to Tackle Climate Change

A thin layer of compost applied to grasslands could help fight climate change by capturing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil, recent research shows. UC Merced Professor...