Research Excellence

April 22, 2026

Depicted are postdoctoral researcher Sourabh Kumar and Professor Ashlie Martini in their lab.
Mechanical force can do more than just push things around - it can also trigger chemical reactions. A new review by researchers at UC Merced and Penn State brings together decades of work to explain how these reactions occur and why they matter for technologies ranging from pharmaceuticals to the...
Professor Mark Sistrom
The over the counter, “safe,” organic-compliant insecticides people purchase at home-improvement stores could be causing a problem that goes far beyond the vegetable garden or farm field...
A Galapagos snake
It has been 186 years since Charles Darwin collected the samples of the Galapagos Islands species that led to his explanation of how the diversity of life on Earth has evolved and forever changed the...
A machine developed in Professor Reza Ehsani's lab improves almond harvests by reducing the amount of dust stirred up as the nuts are gathered from the ground.
With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of...
Computer science and engineering Professor Florin Rusu (left) and his third-year graduate students Asoke Datta and Yesdaulet Izenov.
Every time you surf the web, check your credit card balance, or even sign up for a class at UC Merced, you’re using a relational database. Relational databases are basically the back end of...
More than 100 sociology undergraduate students got the opportunity to conduct research about social movements and civic engagement in Central America. A UC Merced professor, along with...
Two engineering professors and a graduate student received a grant from NASA to study how wildfires alter changes in carbon and sediment along California’s coastline.
California is known for its beautiful coastline, where the Pacific Ocean meets sandy beaches and rugged cliffs. While many scientists have studied the land or the ocean independently, less is known...
Professor Marc Beutel waits to collect a wastewater sample as a facilities employee helps to remove the manhole covering on campus.
COVID-19 upended life as we know it, especially among the science community. While some scientists rushed to develop a vaccine, others sought a better understanding of the virus, hoping to predict...
When physics graduate student William Delmas made samples of solar energy harvesting perovskite films two years ago, he had no idea that this summer, he’d be analyzing those same samples after...
Victor Muñoz
Proteins operate like biological machines, regulating nearly every major function and organ in our bodies through a still-mysterious shape-shifting process. Bioengineering graduate group chair...

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