Patty Guerra

Multinational Effort to Map South Africa’s Biodiversity from the Air Earns NASA Award

October 15, 2025

BioSCape, a multinational research project co-led by UC Merced, the University at Buffalo and the University of Cape Town, which monitored Earth’s biodiversity from the air, has received a Group Achievement Award as part of the 2024-25 NASA Honor Awards. A new documentary also showcases...

Students Compete Against Thousands in 24-Hour Hackathon

UC Merced computer science and engineering teams are again taking part in the IEEExtreme Hack-a-Thon, a 24-hour challenge in which teams respond to one or more prompts to solve a problem by...

Free Discussion, Reception at UC Merced Centers on Climate Change Messaging

Climate change is a very real - and very scary - threat. Climate change and its underlying primary cause - burning fossil fuels - are arguably the world's leading causes of preventable death...

Scientists collect vegetation data from the Cape Of Good Hope, Western Cape, South Africa. Photo by Adam M. Wilson

NASA-funded Biodiversity Research Project Launches in South Africa

Understanding and conserving biodiversity, or the variety of life in ecosystems, is key to sustaining life on Earth. A research project funded by NASA that is launching this week in South Africa,...

Mark Arax and Ellen Hank discuss water at UC Merced.

Future of Water in California - Bleak or Promising? A Discussion

Water is the most valuable resource in the world. And it's a particularly important commodity in the Central Valley, historically a desert but also home to some of the richest agricultural soil...

Anne Zanzucchi leads a discussion of rhetoric in a writing class at UC Merced.

UC Merced Launches First Writing Studies Major Cohort

Writing is still the most important, and most-used, form of communication in the world. "Writing is crucial in that it's both a product and a process. It's in the fabric of what we do...

Retired NASA astronaut Jose Hernández speaks to media ahead of a screening of "A Million Miles Away" at UC Merced.

Regent/Astronaut Shows UC Merced Students Their Dreams Aren't 'A Million Miles Away'

The new feature film "A Million Miles Away" is a universally relatable story of resilience and achievement, depicting Jose Hernández's journey from working the fields of the San Joaquin...

UC Merced's Experimental Smart Farm is shown.

Grants Fund Wide Variety of Climate Change Research Projects

UC Merced researchers will tackle climate changes in multiple ways through more than $4 million in grants recently awarded from within the university. The Office of Research and Economic...

Professors Briana Ballis, Shijia Pan and Xuan Zhang are pictured.

Three Hellman Fellows Awarded at UC Merced

Three UC Merced researchers have recently received the prestigious Hellman Fellowship. Computer science and engineering Professor Shijia Pan, economics Professor Briana Ballis and life...

Second Year of College Corps Expands Service Opportunities for Students

Dozens of UC Merced students took their oaths as members of the College Corps recently. The program, which provides stipends to students in exchange for working with community partners, is in its...