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...

Team Project Protect is developing a mobile app that translates and correctly pronounces medical words to assist younger people in helping their elders communicate better with health-care providers.

Team to Demonstrate Healthy New App at Fall Innovate to Grow Event

It’s a situation familiar to many UC Merced students: Having to translate for parents and other, older relatives who speak little or no English. It can be especially challenging when what...

Researchers Aim to Solve the Unsolvable to Predict the Unseeable

A pair of UC Merced researchers are combining computational chemistry and machine learning principles to solve what seems to be an intractable problem at the heart of quantum mechanics: predicting...

Star Student and NASA Standout Preparing for a Stellar Future

Like many young women, Calista Lum absorbed the message that she was not as capable as her male peers when it came to science, technology, engineering and math. Teachers in her Fairfield high...

Researchers Look to Wetlands to Increase Delta Water Quality

UC Merced Professor Peggy O’Day hopes to improve water quality in the California Delta by studying local wetlands. O’Day is leading a new three-year study of Merced County wetlands...

Lab Works to Understand Molecular Motors and Cholesterol’s Relation to Alzheimer’s

Professor Jing Xu and her students study extremely tiny motor proteins, but their work could make a huge contribution to the growing body of knowledge about Alzheimer’s and other diseases that...

Physicist Found His Path to the Future at UC Merced

When Denzal Martin started his undergraduate work at UC Merced, he wasn’t thinking about a career in physics, interning with NASA or attending graduate school. The Los Angeles native was...

Water Yield from Forest Thinning Depends on How, Where and How Much

Even a little forest management significantly increases water runoff in the Central Sierra Nevada and other semi-arid regions, while drier forests need more extensive treatments, according to a new...

Berhe Named to Endowed Chair in Recognition of Her Work in Soil Sciences

Soil biogeochemistry Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe has been named the Ted and Jan Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology. “The Falasco family is engaged in construction and...

Biodiversity Study Indicates Large and Small Organisms React Similarly to Environment

Bacteria and starfish have more in common than people might think. A new study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences shows that both single-celled (...