Graduate Students

Students Awarded Prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

June 4, 2025

Two UC Merced graduate students wearing blue

Two UC Merced graduate students and an alum from the School of Natural Sciences were recently awarded fellowships from the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. This year, NSF awarded 1,000 GRFP fellowships compared to about 2,000 in previous years...

Cog Sci Program’s Strength Shown at Conference

Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced will be the top program represented this summer at the discipline’s premiere conference, Cognitive Science. There will be 25 presentations from the...

Grad Student’s Farmland Mapping Project Gets Prestigious Publisher

Working to map every square inch, UC Merced master’s student Andrew Zumkehr found there are 111 million acres of abandoned farmland in the United States. That’s a lot of space for growing biofuels...

Graduating Doctoral Student Pursues Research in Language, Behavior

Graduate student Stephanie Huette knew she would face challenges at UC Merced. The University of California’s 10th and newest campus was in its earliest stages when she arrived in 2008. No one sugar...

UC Merced Sends Off Class of 2013 with Twin Ceremonies

This year isn’t the first time Maxine Umeh-Garcia has walked across the commencement stage at the University of California, Merced. She was part of the campus's graduating class in 2010. But this...

Seals Attracted Grad Student to California

Born in central Mexico, the sea has long fascinated graduate student Jose Pablo Vazquez-Medina. Now, he’s hoping to figure out some of its secrets. Vazquez-Medina this year earned his doctorate in...

Senior’s Post-Graduation Plans Include Developing Web Business

Tyler Shaddix’s house looks like most of the other houses on his block in a subdivision not far from the UC Merced campus. It’s what’s inside that’s different – the home office of a startup company...

Research Explains Why Electric Fields Puncture Biological Cells

An exacting nanosecond jolt of electricity can briefly open a cell’s wall, allowing for the delivery of drugs or DNA. This procedure — called electroporation — is widely used in biology,...

Local Businesswoman Donates to Shape Student Leaders

Spurred by a gift from a prominent dairy woman, the University of California, Merced, announced plans today for a center to promote leadership qualities among its diverse student population. Margo...

Campus Hosts Two Commencement Ceremonies to Accommodate Growth

Retired astronaut and engineer Jose Hernandez and acclaimed author and organic farmer David Mas Masumoto will deliver keynote addresses at the University of California, Merced’s eighth commencement...