Student & Alumni Success

Ph.D. Student Awarded Fellowship to Advance Environmental Health and Harmful Algal Bloom Mitigation

December 18, 2025

Collage photo of Black male with dark hair and beard wearing blue and gray long sleeve shirt and photo of campus signage and palm trees.

Public health Ph.D. student Felix Agyemang Opoku has been awarded the UC Global Health Initiative Center for Planetary Health Water and Health Summer Research Fellowship. The research fellowships are designed to provide students with funding to conduct research on water and health. Opoku...

UC Merced Receives Second Consecutive HEED Award For DEI Efforts

UC Merced has received the 2024 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award, making it the second straight year the university has earned the distinction. The award, given by Insight Into...

Study: Climate Change Extends Drought Recovery by at Least Three Months

A group of researchers at UC Merced has found that climate change means it takes about three months longer for California to recover from drought, and probably longer. “Climate change has...

Annaliza Perez Torres is pictured on campus at UC Merced.

UC Merced Grad Honored by Society of Women Engineers

Annaliza Perez Torres has already accomplished plenty. A 2019 graduate of UC Merced, Perez was named the School of Engineering's Outstanding Student in Materials Science and Engineering and...

Star Soccer Player Finds Success On and Off the Pitch

Four years ago, lifelong soccer player Yesenia Tijerina stopped playing when the pandemic shut everything down. Her classes at UC Davis were taken online at her home in Salinas. Tijerina started...

UC Merced Earns Seal of Excelencia Recertification For Advancing Latino Student Success

In recognition for its continuing efforts to advance Latino student success, UC Merced has earned recertification of the prestigious Seal of Excelencia. The Seal is a national certification for...

Ph.D. Student Named as 2024 Dole Caregiver Fellow

Karla Seijas is one of 14 individuals selected from across the nation as an Elizabeth Dole Foundation Caregiver Fellow. The Elizabeth Dole Foundation supports a community of more than 5.5 million...

U.S. News Places UC Merced Among Top 30 Public Schools Following Top Social Mobility Ranking By Wall Street Journal

The University of California, Merced, climbed once again in US News & World Report’s Best Colleges report, rising to the 26th best public school in the nation. Among all universities, UC...

Carlos Diaz Alvarenga and his wife, Rocio Medrano Calderon, are pictured.

UC Merced Graduate Ends Exciting Year with Professorship at Cal Poly

It is a serious understatement to say Carlos Diaz Alvarenga had a big year: He graduated from UC Merced, successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis and landed a position as an assistant professor at Cal...

UC Merced new Bobcat Bound Leslie Aquino

Bakersfield Student Ready to Go the Distance at UC Merced

This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2024 semester. A high school distance runner from Bakersfield is striding into new territory, becoming the...

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