Graduate Division

Fall Commencement Graduates Urged to Write Their Own Story

December 22, 2025

Student speaker at 2024 UC Merced Fall Commencement

A beaming Jesus Cevon-Gonzalez stood on Merced’s Main Street, surrounded by his mom and dad, grandparents, sister and other loved ones. He clutched the proof of a freshly bestowed bachelor’s degree in computer science. “I’m just trying to make my parents proud,...

Grad Student Receives Prestigious Defense Fellowship

Thomas “Teddy” Adams has been awarded the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. The three-year fellowship...

Ph.D. candidate Arabi Seshappan will spend 10 months at a satellite campus of the Université Paris-Saclay in France after being selected for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

Fulbright Award Sends Physics Grad Student to France for Quantum Research

Persistence has paid off for UC Merced doctoral candidate Arabi Seshappan. The graduate student from Fremont, about to start her sixth year, was selected for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program...

Training Ph.D. Candidates for Peer Support Roles

As a young institution in the University of California system, UC Merced has placed a strong emphasis on serving students who are the first in their families to pursue graduate education. With its...

A graphic depicts UC Merced's ranking of 109 among top graduate schools, according to U.S. News & World Report.

UC Merced Engineering School, Programs Rise in U.S. News Grad Rankings

The vision of the School of Engineering at UC Merced is to be a leader in research, education and innovation. Based on U.S. News & World Report's 2024-2025 edition of Best Graduate Schools...

author Jorge Cham speaks to a group of graduate students during a visit to UC Merced.

Author Jorge Cham Simplifies Science in an Entertaining Way

“Raise your hands if you want to know a secret,” acclaimed author and cartoonist Jorge Cham instructed a crowd of young children. Hundreds of tiny arms shot up in unison toward the...

Ph.D. candidate Ambarish Varadan will compete in the UC Grad Slam finale livestreamed starting at 10:30 a.m. Friday, May 3.

Campus Grad Slam Winner Examines ‘Gut Viruses: Friends or Foes?’

Earlier this month, Ambarish Varadan competed in UC Merced’s Grad Slam finals and seized the title of Campus Champion. This was the second time the Quantitative and Systems Biology (QSB) Ph....

Preparing Ph.D. Students for the Qualifying Exam

Navigating Ph.D. programs is notoriously challenging, and the qualifying exam stands as a major milestone all students must achieve. To support Ph.D. students in this critical checkpoint, the...

UC Merced's Professor Valerie Leppert at Bobcat Day

Thousands Enjoy a Big ‘Welcome’ at Bobcat Day

Fernando Malagon and his mom stood at the head of a line for guided tours of the university he plans to attend this fall. The informational stroll around UC Merced would be more for her than for him...

Students, Alums Awarded Prestigious NSF Graduate Fellowships

Three UC Merced graduate students and two undergraduate alumni were recently offered fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). “I am...