Cheer on Campus’s 10 Grad Slam Finalists April 10

By Brenda Ortiz, UC Merced

April 4, 2023

Ten finalists will compete in Grad Slam on April 10 on campus.

Ten graduate UC Merced students will take the stage on April 10 to compete in the Graduate Division’s Grad Slam finals.

Grad Slam is an annual University of California competition that aims to make research accessible to all by providing emerging scientists and scholars with the skills to engage the public in their work. Nearly 30 UC Merced graduate students competed in the qualifying round in March and the top 10 are advancing to the campus’s finals.

Each finalist receives a $250 award. The first-place winner of the campus’s Grad Slam final round will receive $5,000. The second-place winner receives $2,000 and third place will receive $1,000.

Finalists in alphabetical order:

Aneelman Brar, fifth-year Ph.D. student in Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Fakhrul Bhuiyan, fourth-year Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering
Mariela Colombo, first-year master’s student in Environmental Systems
Samuel Erickson, fourth-year Ph.D. student in Physics
Abhishek Kumar, third-year Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering
Dora Mendez, third-year Ph.D. student in Quantitative and Systems Biology
Edwin Rivas Meraz, fourth-year Ph.D. student in Environmental Systems
Muztoba Rabbani, second-year Ph.D. student in Materials and Biomaterials Science Engineering
Jeremiah Reagan, third-year Ph.D. student in Materials and Biomaterials Science Engineering
Ambarish Vardan, fifth-year Ph.D. student in Quantitative and Systems Biology

The campus finals will start at 2 p.m. on April 10 in the Dr. Vikram and Priya Lakireddy Grand Ballroom, inside the Conference Center, and all are welcome. Those who can’t attend in person may watch via Zoom from the link online the day of the event. There’s no need to pre-register.

The campus’s champion will compete in the UC systemwide Grad Slam event scheduled for Friday, May 5, at the LinkedIn headquarters in San Francisco and will be livestreamed. View past winners, including UC Merced alumna Shayna Bennet: https://gradslam.universityofcalifornia.edu/past-winners/.