Life and Environmental Sciences

April 29, 2026

Elementary school students get a lesson in engineering and physics from undergraduates in the CalTeach program.
Students who arrive at UC Merced planning on specific careers often discover along the way that their interests — and strengths — are broader than they first imagined. A new initiative called Education Tracks, or EdTracks, is designed to give students a flexible, low‑risk way to...
Avinav Biswas has been named a 2026 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar.
Avinav Biswas, a third‑year undergraduate majoring in biological sciences at UC Merced, has been named a 2026 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar, becoming the university’s first recipient of one of the...
The sign reads University of California, Merced
Professors Asmeret Asefaw Berhe and Ming-Hsuan Yang have been named 2025 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society and...
UC Merced graduate student Reo Maynard studies a carpenter ant from one of his many ant colonies.
On most days, Reo Maynard’s life swings between two ecosystems: the microscopic world inside an ant’s gut and the sprawling one that stretches from Fresno to the Sierra Nevada mountains...
A sign on a southern California beach indicates it is unsafe to swim because of human-caused contamination.
Although the oceans are the least explored places on the planet, even their depths are not untouched by humans. Drawing on more than 2,300 seawater samples collected across the Pacific, Atlantic...
three stages of cotton textile composting
UC Merced researchers are collaborating on a two-year research project to develop effective composting methods for cotton textiles. The project explores manufacturing cotton waste scraps from...
Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
When Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe arrived at UC Merced in 2009, she and her husband, Professor Teamrat Ghezzehei, were leaving major research institutions to join a brand-new campus in California...
Professor Xuan Zhang
As nations cut emissions that once fueled urban smog, scientists are discovering unexpected chemistry taking place in the atmosphere. UC Merced Professor Xuan Zhang is leading a project to uncover...
This year's Hellman Fellows: Adeyemi Adebiyi, Qian Wang and Meredith Van Natta
As the Hellman Fellowships celebrate their 30th year, three more researchers, one from each of UC Merced’s schools, have joined the prestigious ranks of recipients. Electrical engineering...
A sign posted on a tree in Eastern Europe warns of active land mines.
More than 100 million land mines remain buried around the world, posing a threat in approximately 70 countries and territories, and killing or injuring about 5,000 people, most of them civilians,...

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