Research Excellence

UC Merced Chemist Wins DOE Award to Simulate Electron Motion at Quantum Speeds

November 5, 2025

Chemistry Professor Henrik Larsson has received a prestigious Early Career Award from the U.S. Department of Energy, becoming the first faculty member from UC Merced’s School of Natural Sciences to earn the honor. The award includes more than $878,000 in funding over five years to support...

UC Merced recently acquired the Ernest Lowe collection, a rich collection of images showcasing Central Valley farm-working communities in the 1960's.

Library Acquires Ernest Lowe Photography Collection Documenting 1960s Rural California Communities

In the 1960s, Ernest Lowe took his camera into the rural towns of California’s Central Valley, documenting the lives and struggles of farm-working communities. Sixty years later, these photos...

Pandemic Inspires Chemist to Open New Avenues of Research

Professor Michael Thompson doesn’t usually work in immunology or drug development. But his use of X-ray crystallography — research that visualizes the structures of protein molecules to...

Berhe Honored with Prestigious AGU Medal and Fellowship

Soil biogeochemistry Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe has been recognized by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) as one of this year’s recipients of the Joanne Simpson Medal for Mid-...

Professors Nancy Burke and Whitney Pirtle are the two newest MacArthur Foundation chairs at UC Merced.

Two MacArthur Foundation Chairs Awarded to Female SSHA Faculty

Two female faculty members of UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA) have been named the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation chairs, making four prestigious...

Researchers Seek to Understand Messy Proteins that are Critical to Cellular Function

Biophysical chemistry Professor Shahar Sukenik and the graduate students in his lab are trying to make sense out of what might seem to some to be chaos. They aim to better understand how a series of...

California deemed agriculture an essential business amid the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning many farm workers have worked during the harvest season under unusual and stressful conditions.

Public Health Professors Study COVID-19 Impact on Rural, Latinx Health

The coronavirus has impacted everyone in different ways and three public health professors are examining specifically how rural, Latinx communities in California have been affected in a new study...

Political Scientists Study Effects of Affluence in Newest Nature Publication

How does socioeconomic inequality affect people? Seeing expensive items such as cars, which function as signs of social class, can potentially influence people’s political behavior according...

Restoring State's Forests to Reduce Fire Risks Will Take Time, Money and Broad Commitment

School of Engineering professors Roger Bales and Martha Conklin have written a new article for The Conversation discussing the changes that need to be undertaken in land-management practices in...

New Project Focuses on Life in Soil in the Earth’s Critical Zone

Since 2007, UC Merced researchers have been extremely productive in the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory (CZO), delving into investigations of hydrology, climate change, geology, biology and...

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