Research

Sensor Provides Cheap, Smart Way to Monitor How Much Water Crops Need

January 24, 2025

Image depicts a scene of grass, sidewalks and a large UCM at UC Merced.

As water becomes an ever more precious and unpredictable resource, particularly in the Central Valley, finding ways to precisely irrigate crops is a valuable tool in the fight against climate change. Climate shifts have triggered more frequent and more severe droughts that have reduced the...

Chemistry Professor Tao Ye and his students gathered on campus.

Chemical Biology Lab Creating DNA-based Nanomachines that can Self Assemble

Professor Tao Ye and colleagues have received a $1.18 million grant from the Department of Energy to study how DNA molecules can arrange themselves into nanostructures that could form the basis of...

The scarcity of research on smoking rates among Arab Americans led Ph.D. student Sarah Alnahari to broaden her focus from minority and immigrant health to the social, historical and political contexts pertaining to tobacco control.

Fellowship Advances Student’s Research into Arab American Smoking Behaviors

Public Health doctoral student Sarah Alnahari was awarded a UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship to continue her community-driven research examining tobacco use...

Innovate to Grow Coming to a Zoom Room Near You

UC Merced’s premier experiential learning expo, Innovate to Grow (I2G), is providing students, faculty and staff with a new set of experiences to learn from this year, as the event continues in...

Breast Milk Shows Promise for Treating COVID-19 and Protecting Babies

Health psychology Professor Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook and incoming grad student Jessica Marino have a new study suggesting that the breastmilk of mothers who have recovered from COVID-19 contains...

Physicist Liu Receives NSF CAREER Award to Create ‘Bacteria Treadmill’

Physics Professor Bin Liu has received a CAREER award for his research into a new micromanipulation technique to virtually hold freely moving microorganisms, essentially creating a “bacterial...

Q&A: How People Decide Whether to Comply with Public Health Orders

How do people decide whether to comply with public health directives around the COVID-19 pandemic, such as wearing masks, social distancing and staying at home? Whether to take such preventative...

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...

New Book Details Best Practices in Research Among Vulnerable Populations

Rosa D. Manzo, Ph.D., associate director of medical education and a project research scientist, has co-authored a new book on community-based and community-engaged research. “Cultura y...

Researcher Examining CBD Effects on Metabolic Syndrome

About 35 percent of Americans have metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that raises the risk of cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in the United States. If you have...