Staff & Faculty News

Astronomers Reveal Hidden Activity in the Early Universe’s Most Massive Galaxies

January 5, 2026

Spectroscopy at the UC's W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii helped the researchers interpret complex data about ultramassive galaxies. Photo courtesy of the W.M. Keck Observatory.

An international team of astronomers has studied ultramassive galaxies - galaxies containing more than 100 billion stars - as they existed when the universe was less than 2 billion years old. The results show that while some of these ultramassive galaxies, or UMGs, had already shut down star...

Graduate students stand before the Beginnings sculpture.

Grad Students Invited to UC Merced’s First ‘Nanoengineering Environmental Sensors’ Incubator Program

Graduate students who are passionate about their research, concerned about the environment and eager to reach across disciplinary boundaries are invited to apply for a three-week summer program in...

Last Year’s Drought Cost Ag Industry More Than $1 Billion, Thousands of Jobs, New Analysis Shows

The 2021 drought directly cost the California agriculture sector about $1.1 billion and nearly 8,750 full- and part-time jobs, according to estimates in a new analysis led by UC Merced researchers...

Professor's Film Earns High Praise

Professor Yehuda Sharim’s latest documentary, “ Letters2Maybe,” has opened to glowing reviews at the New Jersey Film Festival. The film is based on events and dreams that took...

Chemist Becomes Campus’ Second Cottrell Scholar

Theoretical chemist Professor Aurora Pribram-Jones has been named a Cottrell Scholar, winning one of only 24 of the prestigious $100,000 grants for her proposal entitled “Reframing...

Celebrate National Engineers Week with the Nine UC Engineering Schools and Programs

Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) in 1951, National Engineers Week is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing...

Hotter, Drier Nights Mean More Runaway Fires

Thanks to the warming climate, the potential for more severe nighttime wildfires is increasing, and warmer nights mean firefighters will not be able to rely on cooler temperatures to help them get a...

McCloskey Earns a Place Among Fellows in Prestigious Bioengineering Organization

The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has elected founding faculty member Professor Kara McCloskey into its College of Fellows for outstanding contributions to...

Love is in the Air and in the National Park this Spring

Preparations are underway for this year's production of Shakespeare in Yosemite, and the show promises to be groovy. Working with students, Professors Katie Brokaw and Paul Prescott are...

Professor Yang and colleagues at a 2016 conference

Largest Computing Organization Elevates Computer Vision Researcher

Engineering Professor Ming-Hsuan Yang has been elected one of the 71 new fellows recognized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ─ the world’s largest educational and scientific...

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