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’s Invention Helps Scientists Win Nobel Prize

Professor Roland Winston has been tracking the Sudbury Neutrino Experiment since it began in the 1980s, because he invented the light collectors the scientists built to detect solar neutrinos. “I...

Event Connects High School Girls with Female Scientists

While many young women her age are thinking about their favorite shoes or who they’ll go with to the winter formal, Callie Nance, 15, is thinking about her favorite science organizations and her...

New Nanomaterials Taking Research to Mexico, Possibly into Space

Professors Linda Hirst and Sayantani Ghosh are combining liquid crystals with nanoparticles such as gold and quantum dots to come up with a new platform that could have applications in fields such...

UC Merced Researchers Gathering Data to Tackle California’s Water Crisis on Multiple Fronts

Note: This story originally ran in the Fall 2015 issue of UC Merced Magazine. By Joel Patenaude California, long envied by the rest of the country for its climate, beauty and natural resources, is...

Despite Constraints, UC Merced Enrollment Continues to Grow

Enrollment at the University of California, Merced, this fall has climbed to another all-time high of 6,685 students — an increase of 6.7 percent over Fall 2014, according to headcount figures...

From Africa to the Arctic, Scientist Carries Interdisciplinary Spirit

Professor Marilyn Fogel went from the heat of Africa to the chilly fjords of Norway this summer to lend her biogeochemical perspective to two international, interdisciplinary, intercollegiate...

Program Makes Transition Easier for Transfer Students

Four weeks after her move to UC Merced in January 2014, psychology major Valara Villanueva wasn’t sure if she fit in. She felt academically prepared, but the transition from community college to a...

New Supercomputer Can Advance Diverse Array of Research

A new supercomputer assembled on campus this summer is the first step toward making UC Merced a computational training ground for researchers throughout the Central Valley. “We can do extraordinarily...

Twelve Fresh Faces Join UC Merced Faculty

There are more than a few new faces on campus this year. In addition to new first-year, transfer and graduate students, 12 tenure-track professors have chosen the University of California’s newest...