Biological Sciences

UC Merced Scientists Among Global Elite Shaping AI, Climate and Health

January 26, 2026

UC Merced continues to demonstrate its growing influence on the global stage. Several faculty members landed on Clarivate’s 2025 list of the world’s most‑cited researchers. The honor is reserved for the top 1% of scholars whose work has shaped their fields over the last 10 years....

Campus Getting Greener with New Research Growing Spaces

Everyone knows UC Merced is growing, but pretty soon, the campus will be growing lots of plant specimens for research, too. The School of Natural Sciences is buying a pair of greenhouses that will be...

Study Links Cancer Cell Growth to Nervous System

Cancer cells divide with more frequency and are more resilient when they are closer to the brain, indicating a potential link between cell growth and the nervous system, according to new research...

New Supercomputing Cluster to Expand Campus Capabilities

A proposal to conduct high-performance computing across science and engineering disciplines has won UC Merced and Professor Christine Isborn a research computing cluster that will be used for a...

NIH Funds Research Into Stem Cells, Bone Disease

A new study from UC Merced Professor Jennifer O. Manilay promises to shed new light on how bone diseases can affect the maintenance of healthy blood and immune cell development throughout life....

UC Merced Receives $5 Million for Interdisciplinary Research Center

Researchers at the University of California, Merced, won a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how biological matter like proteins or cells come together to perform...

Internship Program Enhances Students’ Academic Experiences

Last fall, the Division of Student Affairs and the Office of Undergraduate Education launched an internship program with the goal of providing undergraduate students an opportunity to build...

Bad Break Left Alum With Questions; UC Merced Answered

Erik Olstad started down the path to becoming a veterinarian by accident. After high school, the now 32-year-old attended California State University, Fresno, to get a political science degree. But...

Oceanic ‘Dead Zone’ Research Earns Campus’s 13th CAREER Award

Professor Michael Beman, with the School of Natural Sciences, became the 13th faculty member to win a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award since the...

Study Shows How Plants Could Adapt to Changing Climate

If you want to understand how plant populations will respond as the climate changes, just examine the plants in different locations. That’s one of the conclusions drawn by UC Merced School of Natural...