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...

Breakthrough in Stem Cell Research: First Image of Niche Environment

Professor Joel Spencer was a rising star in college soccer and now he is an emerging scientist in the world of biomedical engineering, capturing — for the first time — an image of a...

Fellows prepare to undergo mock interviews where they will present their research in a way the general public can understand.

New Fellowship Program Gives Faculty an Edge in Competitive Funding Landscape

Many faculty members are experts in their fields, pioneering new ways to think about complex subject matter. But how does one communicate that research in a simple way, specifically when seeking...

Public Health Ph.D. student Chia Thao's research interests center on improving minority health disparities and promoting well being.

Ph.D. Student Gets to the Root of Health Disparities Facing Hmong Farmers

Chia Thao was a teenager when she arrived in Fresno with her family to begin a new life. She was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, where her Laotian parents had fled after the Vietnam War....

Engineered Protein Assemblies that Respond to Cues Open Path for Smart, Protein-Based Medicines

Proteins are miniscule machines inside the body, about 10,000 times smaller than the thickness of human hair. They control all the processes of life — like how cells communicate to each other,...

Rural Poverty and Health Summit to Feature UC Merced Health Leaders

UC Merced health experts will join other Central Valley medical leaders on Friday, Nov. 22, for the Rural Poverty and Health Equity Summit in Delano. Professor Nancy Burke, chair of the...

Postdoctoral Fellow Earns Best Presentation at International Conference

Deepti Chittamuru won the best abstract award — out of 700 abstracts submitted — at the 17th International Conference on Communication in Healthcare. She was also awarded the...

Free Health Conference Offered for Spanish-Speaking Students and Families

UC Merced will hold a free Spanish-language health conference for the community on Saturday, Nov. 16, with sessions on topics including preventative health measures, coping with stress, domestic...

Lab Works to Understand Molecular Motors and Cholesterol’s Relation to Alzheimer’s

Professor Jing Xu and her students study extremely tiny motor proteins, but their work could make a huge contribution to the growing body of knowledge about Alzheimer’s and other diseases that...

CCBM Bringing High-Powered Speakers for Two-Day Workshop

The NSF-CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM) at UC Merced is hosting a two-day workshop entitled “Emerging Themes in Cellular and Biomolecular Machines” on campus...