First. Further. Forward

May 17, 2026

Blue and gold streamers fly over the heads of graduates at UC Merced's Graduate Division commencement ceremony.
Smiling even as she cried, Nancy Rodas De Leon stood in UC Merced's University Plaza, accepting hugs, flowers, stuffed animals and cards from extended family. "These are happy tears," said Rodas De Leon, who previously earned both her undergraduate and master's degrees...
Photo depicts UC Merced graduate Adamaris Alvarez in a black hat on a blue and gold graphic background.
Growing up in Watsonville, a vibrant agricultural community on California's Central Coast, Adamaris Alvarez always knew she wanted to work in agriculture. She worked on her family's berry...
Image depicts UC Merced mechanical engineering Professor Ricardo Pinto de Castro talking to students near a small robot.
Mechanical engineering Professor Ricardo Pinto de Castro has turned a penchant for systems-level thinking and a longtime love of cars into a climate-resilient research mission. From electric...
Stock image depicts an electronic flight board with multiple delays at an unnamed airport.
Last July, a glitch in a software upgrade by a cybersecurity company impacted 8.5 million computers, resulting in the cancellation of 2,800 flights and delays for 11,000 more. In an increasingly...
Photo depicts students describing their product, an irrigation sensor, at the Innovate to Grow event at UC Merced.
Imagine you're a farmer who uses a drip irrigation system on your crops. On watering day, you open the valve from the canal, then go to your orchard, maybe a few acres away, and wait. Once enough...
Photo depicts the blue and gold UCM art installation and professors Chih-Chun Chien, left, and Xiaoyi Lu
A new program led by UC Merced in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory aims to train graduate and undergraduate students to work in the rapidly growing industry of quantum...
Instructor Kristen Hogue works with a class of high school students in New York City.
Recently, more than 150 students at 10 high schools in Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C. completed Climate Justice, a UC Merced course , through a unique partnership between the...
A student holds a copy of the Merced Sun-Star, with a large headline proclaiming "It's Ours!"
On May 18, 1995, the University of California Board of Regents voted to select Merced as the site for its ninth undergraduate campus. To get to that point, Merced had to beat out what started as a...
Photo depicts a firefighter and flames from the 2020 Apple fire in California.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted many facets of life, including health care, schools and the work environment. A new study by UC Merced researchers shows evidence that the pandemic...
An avocet
Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by...

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