School of Natural Sciences

Professor Dives with Crocs, Displays Megalodon Expertise During Shark Week

July 17, 2025

Professor Sora Kim swam with a Nile crocodile for this year's Shark Week special, which focuses of sharks versus prehistoric reptiles. Photo courtesy of Kruger National Park, South Africa.

Shark Week starts Sunday and Professor Sora Kim will be featured again this year in a special airing at 9 p.m. Monday, titled “Jaws vs. Mega Croc,” and the filming allowed her to swim with a Nile crocodile. “I flew to Florida and learned about crocodiles – their evolution...

Professor Wins Major Award for ‘Time Machine’ Project

UC Merced Professor Miriam Barlow was honored with a major award last month for her role in developing a method to restore the efficacy of antibiotics and help doctors deal with resistant bacteria....

Professor Joins Executive Board of American Physical Society

Professor Linda Hirst, with the School of Natural Sciences, has been elected to the executive council of GSOFT, the new Topical Group on Soft Matter in the American Physical Society (APS), the world'...

Professor Takes a Bird’s-Eye View of Collective Movements

All of life is motion — whether it is molecules shuttling around within our cells or flocks of birds in the sky. Physics Professor Ajay Gopinathan, with the School of Natural Sciences, and the...

Campus Research Taking a Healthy Approach

By Jeremy Olson for UC Merced Magazine Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the fall 2015 issue of UC Merced Magazine. The University of California, Merced, was plotted at the juncture...

New Grants Aid Chemist’s Research, Support Student Learning

Almost $2 million in grants will go a long way toward helping Professor Christine Isborn and colleagues at other universities learn more about the molecular processes involved in capturing solar...

Fellowship Funds Undergrad’s Research on Biofilms

UC Merced undergraduate students can find opportunities to conduct research in a lab as early as their freshman year — what’s less common is getting that research funded. Fourth-year biology major...

UC Merced Experts Part of New UC Climate Report

The University of California aims to lead the way to a sustainable future in the face of global warming, and UC Merced professors have contributed to a report that offers practical steps to help get ...

Professor Helps Identify New Giant Galapagos Tortoise Species

Professor Danielle Edwards is part of a team of researchers that made a huge discovery recently about two groups of giant Galapagos tortoises — they are actually two different species. The team’s...

Super-Calculations Could Provide Clearer View of the Future

Applied mathematics Professor Noemi Petra develops algorithms and uses complicated computations to examine some of the world’s biggest problems — the ones that can’t be seen. They are called inverse...