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Writer-in-Residence Mark Arax Chronicles California's Lifeblood: Water

September 18, 2025

Mark Arax
UC Merced has debuted a writer-in-residence program with one of California’s premier chroniclers of its history, especially the titanic power plays for land and water that have shaped the state’s growth and loom over its future. Mark Arax, a Fresno native, author and former Los...
UC Merced arts season silkroad train station trios

UC Merced Arts Opens Season with LitFest, Musical Tribute to Railroads

A celebration of stories and a concert highlighting the history of San Joaquin Valley’s railroads are the opening acts of the 2024-25 UC Merced Arts season . Merced LitFest and Train...
UC Merced new Bobcat Bound Leslie Aquino

Bakersfield Student Ready to Go the Distance at UC Merced

This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2024 semester. A high school distance runner from Bakersfield is striding into new territory, becoming the...
Carlos Diaz Alvarenga and his wife, Rocio Medrano Calderon, are pictured.

UC Merced Graduate Ends Exciting Year with Professorship at Cal Poly

It is a serious understatement to say Carlos Diaz Alvarenga had a big year: He graduated from UC Merced, successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis and landed a position as an assistant professor at Cal...

Physics Grad Student Receives Competitive UC Fellowship

Ph.D. student Micah Oeur has been awarded a 2024-2025 UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship to support her physics research and boost her goal to be a professor. PPPF’s goal is...
Author fair organized by UC Merced Center for Humanities

Mellon Grant Launches ‘Interwoven Futures’ Community Partnership Project

UC Merced has received a $750,000 boost to its mission to invest in the San Joaquin Valley’s unique cultural, creative and linguistic wealth by working with the region’s people to...

UC Merced Ranked No. 1 in the Nation for Social Mobility, No. 18 Overall

When it comes to changing the lives of its students, UC Merced is second to none. In the latest Wall Street Journal America's Best Colleges rankings, UC Merced was the No. 1 university in...
Lab members Zabir Mahmud and Farzan ZareAfifi are pictured on either side of electrical engineering Professor Sarah Kurtz.

As California Develops More Clean Energy, Researchers Delve Into How to Store it

As California lawmakers consider a package of bills aimed at increasing the production of clean energy, a major question arises: How would we store all this new power? Storage is a vital...
Cognitive science robot experiment

Study: People Facing Life-or-Death Choice Put Too Much Trust in AI

In simulated life-or-death decisions, about two-thirds of people in a UC Merced study allowed a robot to change their minds when it disagreed with them -- an alarming display of excessive trust in...
From left, Professor Fred Wolf, Sammy Villa and Vishva Dixit in the lab.

Researchers Discover Mechanism that Could Control Longevity, Cancer Cell Production

Researchers at UC Merced used fruit flies to uncover a cellular process common to many organisms that could dramatically impact the understanding of cancer and aging. Department of Molecular and...

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