Environmental Engineering

From Soil to Climate Solutions: Berhe Leads Sierra Nevada Research Institute into its Next Chapter

September 11, 2025

When Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe arrived at UC Merced in 2009, she and her husband, Professor Teamrat Ghezzehei, were leaving major research institutions to join a brand-new campus in California’s Central Valley. It was a leap of faith — one made easier by the Sierra Nevada Research...

Students from Universidad Autónoma Chapingo in Texcoco, Mexico, visited UC Merced in March.

Campus Visit Broadens Mexican Research Collaborations

When three buses rolled onto campus on one chilly winter morning, UC Merced gave the occupants a warm Bobcat welcome. More than 100 undergraduate students and faculty members from Universidad...

Ph.D. Student Named an American Farmland Trust Research Fellow

Fourth year Environmental Systems Ph.D. student Elena Bischak has been named a research fellow by the American Farmland Trust (AFT). The AFT Research Fellows Program aims to “empower the...

UC Merced researcher Reza Ehsani leads a team that will host day camps for students who will take on research and other agricultural projects.

Grant Will Fund Development of New, Technically Advanced Agriculture Workforce

As agriculture, California's most important industry, becomes increasingly technical, the workforce needed to sustain it will have to have different skills than those of a generation...

Graduate Summer Bridge Program Recognized as a ‘Program to Watch’

Graduate Division’s Competitive Edge Summer Bridge program for incoming Ph.D. students was identified as a Program to Watch by Excelencia in Education, a national effort to identify evidence-...

Professor Jeanette Cobian-Iñiguez, front, and her students study heat transfer in fire in her lab.

Experts Recommend a New, More Innovative Approach to Wildfire Research

Fire scientists typically respond to agency opportunities and conduct research in response to past wildfires. But it is time they take more proactive, integrative, predictive approaches toward...

Professors Joshua Viers, left, and Tom Harmon share oversight of the new smart farm being constructed next to campus. The farm will be UC Merced's AES site.

UC Merced Gains Prestigious UC Agricultural Experiment Station Designation

UCs Merced and Santa Cruz became the newest campuses in the system to be named an agricultural experiment stations (AES), UC President Michael Drake announced at today’s Regents’...

Researchers Take New Approach to Quantify Water Use

Like many other researchers, environmental engineering professors Erin Hestir and Joshua Viers are trying to quantify water use in California’s Central Valley. The difference is, they are...

Sociology Ph.D. student Jullanar Williams Chancellor’s Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence

Four Ph.D. Students Awarded Chancellor’s Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence

UC Merced has awarded its second cohort of Chancellor’s Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence to four incoming Ph.D. students from the schools of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Natural...

Members of the Fresno-Merced Future of Food Innovation (F3) Coalition pose for a photo on Sept. 2, 2022.

F3 Coalition Awarded $65 Million in Build Back Better Funds

The White House announced today (Sept. 2) a $65.1 million award — the largest federal grant ever awarded to the Central Valley — to the Fresno-Merced Future of Food Innovation (...