School of Natural Sciences

Research into Hidden Chemistry Shaping Future Air Quality Earns Zhang an NSF Award

September 8, 2025

As nations cut emissions that once fueled urban smog, scientists are discovering unexpected chemistry taking place in the atmosphere. UC Merced Professor Xuan Zhang is leading a project to uncover how these chemical shifts could affect the air we breathe and the climate. The project is supported...

Researcher Takes First Step Toward Improved Diagnosis for Valley Fever

Clinicians searching for a new way to identify Valley fever patients who will develop the disease’s worst symptoms will find hope in a new paper by UC Merced Professor Katrina Hoyer . A...

Six graduate students landed spots at Idaho National Laboratory through the National GEM Consortium (From left: Jordan Galloway, Denise Owusu, Stephanie Jones, Diana Perales, Terrence Buck (program manager), Malik Hayes, Jorge Ramirez.) Photo courtesy of Idaho National Laboratory.

Graduate Student Spends Summer as GEM Fellow at Idaho National Lab

As a graduate student at UC Merced, Jordan Galloway looks for ways to push himself forward and lead by example. The third-year Chemistry and Chemical Biology student forged a new path...

New Consortium Seeks to Expose Students to a Galaxy of Opportunities

Imagine exploring the cores of stars to understand — and ultimately control — the type of fusion that’s taking place. High-energy density (HED) science is the study of properties...

CAREER Award Will Help Professor Advance Organic Chemistry Education

Chemistry and chemical biology Professor Ryan Baxter recently became the campus’s 22nd recipient of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) prestigious early CAREER awards for untenured...

The Poetry of Science Sparks International Collaboration

Writing poetry can lead to increased innovation in science, according to a new article in BioScience that came about because of a Twitter connection between UC Merced and Swansea University in...

Emergence, Extinction of Massive Ancient Shark to be Explored with NSF Grant

Forty million years after dinosaurs went extinct, one of the largest predators that ever prowled Earth’s oceans emerged, feeding the imaginations of modern scientists and the nightmares of...

UC Merced Professors Honored for Work with First-Generation Students

UC Merced psychology Professor Anna Song and biology Professor Jennifer Manilay had a special dinner with UC President Janet Napolitano at her Oakland home recently to honor the faculty...

NSF Grant Helps Professor Connect Evolutionary Dots along the Open Tree of Life

UC Merced life and environmental sciences Professor Emily Jane McTavish and a collaborator at the University of Kansas recently received a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (...

Jaapna Dhillon is UC Merced’s first postdoctoral researcher to receive a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Instit

Postdoc Earns Prestigious NIH Award to Study Health Disparities

Jaapna Dhillon had no idea that studying how almonds affect health would win her a huge advantage in securing a tenure-track position. But Dhillon just became UC Merced’s first postdoctoral...