Research

Leadership in STEM: Abigail Gyamfi Honored with 2025 ACS Leader Scholars Award

February 4, 2026

Chemistry and Biochemistry (CBC) Ph.D. candidate Abigail Gyamfi has earned the 2025 American Chemical Society Leader Scholars Award. The ACS Leader Scholars program recognizes outstanding undergraduate students, graduate students and early-career scientists. “I am profoundly grateful to...

From left, professors Linda Hirst, Chris Amemiya and Valerie Leppert.

Researchers Unraveling Mysteries of Electrosensory Gel in Sharks, Skates

Cartilaginous fishes such as sharks and skates have a sixth sense, but it’s not ESP — it’s electrosense. Such fishes use hundreds or thousands of specialized organs to sense prey...

HSRI Receives $1.2 Million to Research Health Impacts From Vehicle-Related Air Pollution

UC Merced's Health Sciences Research Institute (HSRI) has been awarded a $1.2 million grant to study the effects of vehicle emissions on public health and the environment. This award is part...

Professor Colleen Naughton (center) poses with first-year doctoral student Ana Grace Alvarado (left) and fourth-year undergraduate student Fernando Adali Roman, Jr (right). Photo by Veronica Adrover, UC Merced

UC Merced Joins Global COVID-19 Wastewater Data Center Effort

As the number of cases of COVID-19 surge again globally as a result of the delta variant, world leaders are searching for ways to make more informed decisions on how to contain the pandemic....

Incoming freshman Kyle Chun (mechanical engineering), third-year Daniel Baerwaldt (chemistry) and first-year Alejandro Lopez-Vaca (engineering) in front of their presentation.

USDA-funded Internship Program Introduced New Bobcats to Agriculture Research

Shortly before the fall semester kicked off in person, 11 students were wrapping up their first summer on campus as part of the FACTS summer bridge program. FACTS stands for San Joaquin Valley...

Professor Joel Spencer (far right) and members of his lab at UC Merced.

Spencer Lab Publishes New Technique for Live Imaging

Some scientific discoveries are a happy accident (think: penicillin). Others have been there all along, they just take a keen eye to notice, which was recently the case in Professor Joel Spencer...

Professor Shahar Sukenik, center, with graduate students Eduardo Flores and Karina Guadalupe, investigate intrinsically disordered proteins.

Chemistry Lab Receives NSF Funding to Study How Proteins Protect from Dehydration

Like many people this summer, Professor Shahar Sukenik has dehydration on his mind. But it’s not the soaring outside temperatures prompting this focus. Dehydration has been a theme of his...

Competitive Edge Summer Bridge participants and mentors

Incoming Grad Students Get a Jump Start

While the campus remained quieter than usual this summer, a group of new graduate students began their UC Merced journey earlier than the rest of their cohort. On July 6, 19 incoming grad students...

Antibiotic Resistance Found in Insecticides Commonly Used in California

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...

Edwards Eager to Expand Father of Evolution’s Work

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...