Research

Rising Simultaneous Fire Weather Threatens International Firefighting Efforts

February 18, 2026

Depicted is a scene of burned-out trees and ash in the wake of the Caldor Fire.

High-risk conditions for fires are increasingly happening across countries at the same time, making wildfires even more challenging to tackle, new research reveals. Scientists from UC Merced and the University of East Anglia found this synchronized extreme fire weather — characterized by...

Professor Continues to Focus on Efficient Solvent Usage

In a move that will save the campus money, improve campus safety and help save the environment, Professor Jason Hein set up a new solvent purification system. This project is similar to his previous...

Anthropologist Publishes Ethnography on Nation-Building

Nation-states, as we know them, have been built and rebuilt since the 18th century. Professor Robin DeLugan is an expert in nation-building and recently published a case study examining how the...

Graphic Labels Discourage Smoking in Young Adults

Graphic cigarette warning labels are better at discouraging smoking in young adults than text-only labels, according to research recently published by a UC Merced professor. Health psychology...

Professor’s Fellowship Takes Her Into the Halls of Power

Like many faculty members, Professor Katrina Hoyer is busy running a lab, teaching and researching. This year, she adds another item to her to-do list – learning how public policy is implemented and...

Cog Sci Program’s Strength Shown at Conference

Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced will be the top program represented this summer at the discipline’s premiere conference, Cognitive Science. There will be 25 presentations from the...

Founding Faculty Member Honored with NSF Grant for Excellence

A five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation is helping Professor Alberto Cerpa develop the next big breakthrough in wireless sensor networks – an autonomous, self-learning system...

Grad Student’s Farmland Mapping Project Gets Prestigious Publisher

Working to map every square inch, UC Merced master’s student Andrew Zumkehr found there are 111 million acres of abandoned farmland in the United States. That’s a lot of space for growing biofuels...

Undergraduates Win Coveted APS Summer Research Fellowships

Two UC Merced undergraduates will spend the summer immersed in research after winning prestigious fellowships from the American Physiological Society. Sophomores Debby Lee and Meagan Moreno competed...

Professor’s Work Earns Her a Spot in Prestigious Journal

Using some of the tiniest fossils in the world to help clarify how climate change is modeled has earned Professor Jessica Blois a big honor – publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of...