Faculty

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...

Founding Professor Named Associate Dean of Natural Sciences

The School of Natural Sciences has a new associate dean for Academic Programs, founding faculty member Professor Michael Colvin. “With his experience as a researcher and administrator,...

Zanzucchi Appointed Associate Dean for Student Services and Academics

Anne Zanzucchi has worn many different hats in her 14 years at UC Merced and now she is preparing to enter her newest role as associate dean for Student Services and Academics for the School of...

Biochemistry Researcher Named to NIH Review Board

Professor Andy LiWang has accepted an appointment to the National Institutes of Health’s Macromolecular Structure and Function B (MSFB) Study Section Center for Scientific Review. Over his...

Public Health Ph.D. Student Earns Fellowship to Study Health Equity

Fourth-year Public Health doctoral student Tashelle Wright won UC Merced’s first Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship to examine tobacco use and oral health...

Professor Strubbe stands in front of a research poster.

Physicist Researching Materials Chemistry to Build Better Solar Cells

Durable, reliable, affordable solar power is the future of energy, and UC Merced computational physicist Professor David Strubbe is diving into a new area of science to answer the call. Strubbe...

Stands of brown, dead trees throughout Sierra Nevada forests

Multiyear Drought Caused Massive Forest Die-off in Sierra Nevada

The most extreme drought event in hundreds of years caused a catastrophic die-off of the Sierra Nevada’s mature trees in 2015-2016. A study published today in Nature Geoscience details how...

Movements Can Lead to Lasting Change, New Sociology Book Demonstrates

A social movement’s cause can be as diverse as the people who spur it in the first place —examples abound, from community organizations initiating struggles for neighborhood sidewalks and...

Three Ph.D. Students Receive 2019 NSF Fellowships

UC Merced doctoral student Melissa Spence and incoming graduate students Caleb Larnerd and Cristian Sarabia were awarded Graduate Research fellowships (GRFP) from the National Science Foundation....

Sierra Seedlings Illustrate Effects of Climate Change on Next Generation of Forests

Climate change is bad news for forests, and a new study by UC Merced Professor Emily Moran demonstrates one aspect of that news. Higher summer temperatures hurt tree seedlings’ growth and...