Research Excellence

Astronomers Reveal Hidden Activity in the Early Universe’s Most Massive Galaxies

January 5, 2026

Spectroscopy at the UC's W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii helped the researchers interpret complex data about ultramassive galaxies. Photo courtesy of the W.M. Keck Observatory.

An international team of astronomers has studied ultramassive galaxies - galaxies containing more than 100 billion stars - as they existed when the universe was less than 2 billion years old. The results show that while some of these ultramassive galaxies, or UMGs, had already shut down star...

Professor Ahmed Sabir Arif is pictured with PhD students Tafadzwa Joseph Dube, Laxmi Pandey (graduated Spring 2022), Gulnar Rakhmetulla (graduated Spring 2022), and Yuan Ren.

CAREER Award Funds Research Into Lip Reading for Mobile Devices

Professor Ahmed Sabbir Arif has received a CAREER award for his research into non-acoustic, image-based speech input on mobile devices. He is the 35th researcher from UC Merced to earn a...

Fossil Shark Research Draws Prestigious NSF Award

Professor Sora Kim has received a CAREER award for her project that bridges concepts between modern and ancient marine ecosystems by integrating geochemical and modeling approaches with paleobiology...

Photo of bio manufacturing research courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory © The Regents of the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

UC Merced-Led Project Wins $1 Million NSF Engines Development Award

The Circular Bioeconomy Innovation Collaborative (CBIO Collaborative) has been awarded $1 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines program for "...

CAREER Award will Fund Research into Arthritis Cause

Professor Roberto Andresen Eguiluz has received a CAREER award for his research into the underlying cause of arthritis. He is the 33rd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award...

UC Merced graduate programs in the natural sciences and engineering are included in the newest U.S. News rankings of 2023-2024 Best Graduate Schools.

UC Merced’s Graduate Programs Rank Among Best in the Nation

UC Merced continues to be recognized nationally, with some programs leaping forward, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2023-2024 edition of Best Graduate Schools released on April 25...

Graduate student Di An uses drones to assess soil carbon.

UC Merced Invests in the Next Generation of Ag-Tech Leadership

The new UC Merced Farms Food Future innovation initiative is investing in 10 graduate researchers to solve climate and community challenges. Their work is the start of a concerted focus in climate-...

UC Merced researchers will use drones donated by SeekOps Inc. to gather data.

Drones Donated to UC Merced by Start-Up SeekOps Will Monitor Environmental Conditions

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipment donated by Texas-based start-up SeekOps Inc will support UC Merced's research efforts in environmental monitoring and conservation. The gift includes...

From left, graduate student John Wilson, alumnus Qiaochu “Michael” Li and Professor Jing Xu.

Graduate Students Help Further the Understanding of Diseases such as Alzheimer's

Student researchers in experimental physics Professor Jing Xu’s lab have played a critical role in a study that will help understand Alzheimer’s and other diseases that progressively...

NASA mounted samples of solar films developed at UC Merced on a cube outside the International Space Station for 10 months.

First Test of Perovskite Films in Space Indicates More Resilience than Researchers Expected

Solar films developed by a graduate student in the Department of Physics at UC Merced while on an internship at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) not only survived 10 months in space with minimal...

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