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Life and Environmental Sciences

September 11, 2025

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’s Central Valley. It was a leap of faith — one made easier by the Sierra Nevada Research...
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,...
Professor Sora Kim swam with a Nile crocodile for this year's Shark Week special, which focuses of sharks versus prehistoric reptiles. Photo courtesy of Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Shark Week starts Sunday and Professor Sora Kim will be featured again this year in a special airing at 9 p.m. Monday, titled “Jaws vs. Mega Croc,” and the filming allowed her to swim...
Hurricane Bud left some surprising changes in its wake, UC Merced researchers found.
With careful planning and a little luck, researchers found a surprising upside to hurricanes after a Category 4 storm disrupted their expedition off the coast of Mexico. The team was able to...
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...
The Central Valley is a major contributor to a growing dust problem, in large part because of agriculture, researchers say.
An average of more than 1 million acres of idled farmland a year is a significant contributor to a growing dust problem in California that has implications for millions of residents’ health and...
A dust storm rises near Owens Lake. Photo Courtesy of UC San Diego
People don't think about dust much until it's time to clean the house, but a new report by UC researchers could raise awareness of the growing threat of dust and dust storms. Dust affects...
An avocet
Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by...

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