Lorena Anderson

Professor and Environmental Champion Bales Retires, But Research and Advocacy Continue

November 10, 2025

Professors Roger Bales and Martha Conklin arrived in Merced in 2003, the first non-administrative faculty members at UC Merced. They came with a vision: to create a research university that would serve California’s future. Now, after more than 22 years of building institutions, mentoring...

CAREER Award Will Help Professor Advance Organic Chemistry Education

Chemistry and chemical biology Professor Ryan Baxter recently became the campus’s 22nd recipient of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) prestigious early CAREER awards for untenured...

Fundamental Fuel Cell Research Earns Engineer a CAREER Award

To further his fundamental research into solid oxide fuel cells and other high-temperature electrochemical energy systems, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Professor Min Hwan Lee its...

The Poetry of Science Sparks International Collaboration

Writing poetry can lead to increased innovation in science, according to a new article in BioScience that came about because of a Twitter connection between UC Merced and Swansea University in...

Emergence, Extinction of Massive Ancient Shark to be Explored with NSF Grant

Forty million years after dinosaurs went extinct, one of the largest predators that ever prowled Earth’s oceans emerged, feeding the imaginations of modern scientists and the nightmares of...

Professor’s Novel Mercury-Mapping Project Wins State Grant

Civil and environmental engineering Professor Erin Hestir’s proposal for a unique system of mapping mercury in the waters of the San Francisco Delta has won her and her team of collaborators...

Frustration and Compromise in Flocking Cells Produce New Migration Patterns

Even if some members of a goal-driven group don’t seem to work well with others — even if the whole group is extremely frustrated — the group can still compromise and find new ways...

UC Climate-Change Research is One Focus of Global Summit, New Reports

California aims to lead the nation — and the globe — in climate change research, policy and action — in large part through climate-focused research conducted at University of...

$2.5M Grant Will Help Professor to Build a Powerful Molecular Imaging Scanner

Bioengineering Professor Changqing Li was recently awarded a four-year, $2.5 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help develop a focused X-ray luminescence tomography (...

Two students in white lab coats work in a chemistry lab.

$1.5M Grant Will Transform Chemistry Curriculum, Improve Access to STEM Careers

It’s a startling statistic: Nearly 30 percent of UC Merced students who start their college careers in the School of Natural Sciences (SNS) switch to majors outside the science, technology,...