Research

Research Week Marks UC Merced’s First Full Year as an R1 Institution

April 9, 2026

Two students and their professor in a UC Merced research lab.

UC Merced will host Research Week April 13-17, celebrating innovative work across campus and encouraging engagement in research among students, faculty and staff. The weeklong event allows the campus community to showcase research findings, participate in workshops, take tours and connect with...

Researchers Enlist Hospital in Fight Against Antibiotic Resistance

There are 1.7 million multidrug-resistant, hospital-acquired infections that extend hospital stays, increase medical expenses and decrease quality of life. The United States alone reports at least...

Picking Over the Past Provides Clues to the Future

UC Merced professors Jessica Blois and Justin Yeakel and their graduate students are sifting through time, picking out tiny clues that will give them a mouse’s eye view of the ecosystem that...

High-Altitude Archaeology Uncovers Earliest Evidence of Potato Consumption

Every French fry, gnocchi, tater tot and order of hash browns humans have eaten in the past 5,000 years can be traced back to one place in the world — northwestern Bolivia and southern ...

Massive VR System Links Merced to the World

Imagine being able to explore the newly discovered hidden chambers in the Great Pyramid of Giza or microstructures within the human brain, to work on big-data projects with CERN or participate with...

People in Eurasia are Genetic Hybrids with Evolutionary Advantages, Study Shows

It’s not just luck or practice that gets Sherpa mountaineers up the slopes of Mt. Everest each year. Functioning so well at extreme elevations is in the Sherpa and Tibetan DNA — literally. A new...

Grad Student’s Water-Mapping Work Leads to National Recognition

UC Merced graduate student Lorenzo Booth’s research into more efficient use of water for agriculture has earned him accolades from the American Water Resources Association for not only producing...

Alumnus Stays Local, Launches Environmentally Friendly Career

Stephen Ho’s experience at UC Merced helped him land an internship with E. & J. Gallo Winery in Livingston shortly after his graduation in 2012. His engineering expertise, passion for the...

The Real Horror of ‘Frankenstein:’ Human Extinction

If fictional scientist Victor Frankenstein had created a mate for his nameless Creature, humans would have gone extinct in about 4,000 years, according to a new study co-authored by a UC Merced ...

Researcher’s Work Could Help Stop Aggressive Breast Cancers

Adjunct Professor Gabriela Loots is studying why certain cancers prefer to metastasize to bone, using novel technology developed by fellow UC Merced Professor Michael Cleary. Her work, which takes...