Science

For the First Time, All Avian Evolutionary Relationships Revealed Through Collaboration

April 29, 2025

Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by combining data on 9,239 species published in nearly 300 studies between 1990 and 2024 and...

‘E-Week’ Shines Spotlight on Engineering Field, Students

Competitions, showcases, career success stories and more highlight the work of the School of Engineering and its students at UC Merced’s annual celebration of National Engineers Week, Feb. 18...

Breakthrough in Stem Cell Research: First Image of Niche Environment

Professor Joel Spencer was a rising star in college soccer and now he is an emerging scientist in the world of biomedical engineering, capturing — for the first time — an image of a...

National Academy of Engineering Elects Kurtz Into Its Ranks

Professor Sarah Kurtz has become the first UC Merced faculty member to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in recognition of her contributions to the development of gallium...

UC Merced and Merced College Pair Up to Train Future Tech Researchers

Thirty-four students from San Joaquin Valley colleges are getting an opportunity to learn how to access and build careers in technology and research at a unique workshop designed to help diversify...

Bioengineering professor Eva de Alba in her lab with her students and postdoctoral scholar. Students in back row: Pedro Diaz-Parga, Arturo Gonzalez, Suzanne Sandin, Kevin Ramirez and Christopher Randolph. Front Row: Meenakshi Sharma and Eva de Alba.

Bioengineering Faculty Member Studies Inflammation with NIH Grant

Everyone has inflammation in their body at some point as it is a vital part of the immune system. It’s what happens when white blood cells flow to a wound, whether that is a bruise or a broken...

New Study Shows Patchy Resources Drove Evolutionary Changes to Body Size

Resource allocation isn’t just a problem for humans preparing a holiday dinner, or squirrels storing up nuts for the winter. It can actually affect the size of an animal or whether it...

Engineered Protein Assemblies that Respond to Cues Open Path for Smart, Protein-Based Medicines

Proteins are miniscule machines inside the body, about 10,000 times smaller than the thickness of human hair. They control all the processes of life — like how cells communicate to each other,...

A thin layer of compost is applied to grasslands in the Altamont Hills. This practice of carbon farming has been identified by the state as a pillar of its approach to fighting climate change.

Research Partnership Uses Compost to Tackle Climate Change

A thin layer of compost applied to grasslands could help fight climate change by capturing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil, recent research shows. UC Merced Professor...

Researchers Aim to Solve the Unsolvable to Predict the Unseeable

A pair of UC Merced researchers are combining computational chemistry and machine learning principles to solve what seems to be an intractable problem at the heart of quantum mechanics: predicting...