School of Natural Sciences

June 1, 2026

A group of African elephants
Key Points: Elephants function as a keystone species, producing large amounts of nutrient-rich dung that sustain diverse dung beetle populations and support wider ecosystem health. A 15-year field experiment showed that removing elephants leads to sharp declines in dung beetle...
Professor Mark Sistrom
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...
A Galapagos snake
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...
Professor Nigel Hatton and student
The University of California Office of the President awarded three out of only seven UC-Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Initiative grants to UC Merced faculty members. The...
Quantitative and Systems Biology Ph.D. alumna Kinsey Brock
Quantitative Systems Biology Graduate Program alumni Kinsey Brock and Robert Boria were awarded Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) from the National Science Foundation (NSF)....
A machine developed in Professor Reza Ehsani's lab improves almond harvests by reducing the amount of dust stirred up as the nuts are gathered from the ground.
With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of...
Postdoctoral Scholar Mikahl Banwarth-Kuhn was awarded a $205,140 National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (NIH-F32) to be distributed...
To help Merced people in need, Professor Patti LiWang has been leading a diaper and toilet paper drive for the past 12 years. “When we moved here, the recession hit. It was hard for us, a...
Professor Marc Beutel waits to collect a wastewater sample as a facilities employee helps to remove the manhole covering on campus.
COVID-19 upended life as we know it, especially among the science community. While some scientists rushed to develop a vaccine, others sought a better understanding of the virus, hoping to predict...
Chemistry and Chemical Biology graduate student Ali Abou Taka is one of 12 students to receive the inaugural Merck Research Award for Underrepresented Chemists of Color. Abou Taka, a Ph.D....

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