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...

Students Continue Their Acting Careers at UC Merced

TaNayiah Bryels didn’t get the lead role of Mary in her first-grade Christmas pageant, but it did spark a lifelong interest in theater. The UC Merced student has been acting ever since, landing parts...

Valley Fever Lecture Series to Bring Attention to ‘Silent Epidemic’

Valley fever, described as a “silent epidemic” by the Centers for Disease Control, will be explored through a series of wide-ranging talks at the University of California, Merced. Twelve lectures...

Campus Spirit Encouraged Alumna to Pursue Fungi Research

Graduate school is a constant state of discovery, something UC Merced alumna Jackie Shay credits for her current passion: fungus. Shay just returned home from a month in the humid climes of...

Professor Discovers How to Rein in Power of Tiny Particles with Potentially Big Effect

The heat generated by smartphones and other electronic devices could be harnessed to also power them, according to compelling research out of the University of California, Merced. Physics Professor...

Grad Student Crunches Data for Viticulture Lab

Katherine Amrine knows a few things about data analysis. As a UC Merced graduate student, her dissertation described a new way of classifying living things from bits of data gleaned from whole...

Professor Helps Transform Carbon Monoxide into Sickle Cell Treatment

You probably know that carbon monoxide can be lethal. But one UC Merced professor is working to harness its health benefits to treat people with sickle cell disease. Henry Forman, a professor of...

UC Merced Wraps Another Record Year

Between record enrollment and research expenditures, a massive economic impact on the San Joaquin Valley, new buildings and a visit from the new UC president, the University of California, Merced,...

New Big Data Program Draws NSF Funding for UC Merced

As the world continues to amass more digital data everyday, thousands of skilled mathematicians will be needed to slice it into meaningful pieces that can help power the information economy. With the...

Graduate Student Finds Work in Sierra Rewarding

Graduate student Ryan Lucas is living a mountain-lover’s dream through his research. As part of engineering Professor Martha Conklin’s meadows-hydrology lab, he gets to spend a lot of time in the...