Health

Ph.D. Student Awarded Fellowship to Advance Environmental Health and Harmful Algal Bloom Mitigation

December 18, 2025

Collage photo of Black male with dark hair and beard wearing blue and gray long sleeve shirt and photo of campus signage and palm trees.

Public health Ph.D. student Felix Agyemang Opoku has been awarded the UC Global Health Initiative Center for Planetary Health Water and Health Summer Research Fellowship. The research fellowships are designed to provide students with funding to conduct research on water and health. Opoku...

Statewide Coalition Forming to Bring COVID Awareness to At-Risk Communities

A new coalition of universities and community partners across the state — including UC Merced —aims to address the COVID-19 pandemic in communities that are disproportionally affected...

Public Conference Presents COVID-19 From Different Angles

Everyone will have opportunities to learn about collaborative research at the intersections of COVID-19 and topics related to the environment, health and equity through a series of online conference...

ACTIVATE Bringing Telehealth Services to Vulnerable Merced County Residents

(Photo credit: DocBook) Researchers at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute at the University of California have launched a...

Public Health Ph.D. Student Wins CCAPW Scholarship

Shaina Santa Cruz, a graduate student in the Public Health Graduate Program, was awarded the Central California Asian Pacific Women (CCAPW) scholarship. The scholarship provides financial...

Some Immune Cells Appear to ‘Know’ the Coronavirus, Even Though They’ve Never Met

Having had the common cold appears to have programmed some people’s immune cells to recognize the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. That discovery — by an immunology team that includes...

$3.5 Million Hellman Endowment Expands Future of Research at UC Merced

Since 2011, the Hellman Fellows Fund has provided close to 60 UC Merced assistant professors with much-needed research support in the form of seed funding. The prestigious Hellman Fellowship has...

Low-Wage Work Is Linked to Spread of COVID-19, Study Finds

California counties with high numbers of low-wage workers are seeing higher incidence of COVID-19, suggesting a link between so-called “worker distress” and spread of the virus, according...

New Project Aims to Advance Understanding of Immune Cells as they Develop

Maybe now more than ever, scientists need to understand the immune system. A new National Institutes of Health grant is funding a cross-disciplinary collaboration between bioengineering Professor...

New Grant Helps Assess Benefits of Satellites for Determining Water Quality

Summertime means fun in the water, but as temperatures increase, algal blooms can grow in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Some algae are natural and life-giving, while others are the result of...