Research Excellence

NIH Grant Enables Outstanding Investigator to Advance Knowledge of Microbial Infections

June 30, 2025

Professor Clarissa Nobile investigates the mechanisms of biofilm infections that affect human health.

The National Institutes of Health are backing Professor Clarissa Nobile ’s mission to understand the mechanisms by which microbes form biofilms, specifically those that can be hazardous to human health. Biofilms are communities of microorganisms encased in protective matrices and are...

Study: Climate Change Extends Drought Recovery by at Least Three Months

A group of researchers at UC Merced has found that climate change means it takes about three months longer for California to recover from drought, and probably longer. “Climate change has...

air quality and health conference uc merced

Valley Air Quality, Public Health the Focus of UC Merced Conference

Scientists, policymakers and concerned community members will gather at UC Merced this week to compare notes and chart new directions to improve air quality and public health in the San Joaquin...

UC Merced Professor Christiana Spitzmueller

UC Merced Leads $6.5 Million Initiative to Reduce Promotion and Tenure Bias Against Black and Hispanic Faculty

Black and Hispanic faculty members seeking promotion at research universities face career-damaging biases, with their scholarly production judged more harshly than that of their peers, according to a...

Illustration for UC Merced home price database research

Interactive Database Tracks 116 Years of U.S. Housing Prices, Offers Insights for Future

A groundbreaking database that tracks 13 decades of annual changes in U.S. home sales and rental prices provides a clearer picture of economic shifts through the 20th century and will be a...

Pictured are RESTORE facility leaders Jennifer Manilay, Kara McCloskey, Changqing Li, and David Gravano.

New Facility Will Expand UC Merced's Groundbreaking Stem Cell Research

Stem cells hold vast potential to help people live healthier lives. UC Merced researchers have delved into expanded uses of these cells, which can be used to create any cell in the body, to...

Depicted are mouse embryonic stem cell derived-tip endothelial cells with nontip endothelial cells

UC Merced Research on Growing Blood Vessels Earns NIH Grant

A grant from National Institutes of Health will fund research into using stem cell-derived cells to grow new blood vessels in areas that might have blockages. The $416,741 grant will fund work by...

Study: People Facing Life-or-Death Choice Put Too Much Trust in AI

In simulated life-or-death decisions, about two-thirds of people in a UC Merced study allowed a robot to change their minds when it disagreed with them -- an alarming display of excessive trust in...

Lab members Zabir Mahmud and Farzan ZareAfifi are pictured on either side of electrical engineering Professor Sarah Kurtz.

As California Develops More Clean Energy, Researchers Delve Into How to Store it

As California lawmakers consider a package of bills aimed at increasing the production of clean energy, a major question arises: How would we store all this new power? Storage is a vital...

From left, Professor Fred Wolf, Sammy Villa and Vishva Dixit in the lab.

Researchers Discover Mechanism that Could Control Longevity, Cancer Cell Production

Researchers at UC Merced used fruit flies to uncover a cellular process common to many organisms that could dramatically impact the understanding of cancer and aging. Department of Molecular and...

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