School of Natural Sciences

Cal-Bridge Scholar Rolando Ortega Wants to Build the Future

August 22, 2025

This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2025 semester. Rolando Ortega is closing in on his dream of earning a Ph.D. This fall, the Cal-Bridge scholar from Los Angeles County joins UC Merced to start his doctoral journey. With experience...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...