Graduate Students

Chemistry Ph.D. Student Wins Campus Grad Slam Top Prize, Advances to UC-wide Final

April 28, 2025

Top nine Grad Slam finalists with graduate dean and associate graduate dean with R1 prop

Adekunle “Kunle” Adewole isn’t a stranger to the spotlight, having grown up singing at family functions and performing in theater productions. He also has fervently watched “The Voice,” a singing reality competition television series, envisioning himself performing on...

From left, professors Linda Hirst, Chris Amemiya and Valerie Leppert.

Researchers Unraveling Mysteries of Electrosensory Gel in Sharks, Skates

Cartilaginous fishes such as sharks and skates have a sixth sense, but it’s not ESP — it’s electrosense. Such fishes use hundreds or thousands of specialized organs to sense prey...

Professor Joel Spencer (far right) and members of his lab at UC Merced.

Spencer Lab Publishes New Technique for Live Imaging

Some scientific discoveries are a happy accident (think: penicillin). Others have been there all along, they just take a keen eye to notice, which was recently the case in Professor Joel Spencer...

Professor Shahar Sukenik, center, with graduate students Eduardo Flores and Karina Guadalupe, investigate intrinsically disordered proteins.

Chemistry Lab Receives NSF Funding to Study How Proteins Protect from Dehydration

Like many people this summer, Professor Shahar Sukenik has dehydration on his mind. But it’s not the soaring outside temperatures prompting this focus. Dehydration has been a theme of his...

Competitive Edge Summer Bridge participants and mentors

Incoming Grad Students Get a Jump Start

While the campus remained quieter than usual this summer, a group of new graduate students began their UC Merced journey earlier than the rest of their cohort. On July 6, 19 incoming grad students...

The exterior of the Leo and Dottie Kolligian Library at UC Merced is seen on the evening of Jan. 27, 2014.

After 18-Month Closure Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, UC Merced Library Reopening Its Doors

Since opening its doors in August 2005, the UC Merced Library has served as the hub of the campus. That all changed when the coronavirus pandemic hit and the building was forced to close in...

Falandays Wins Marr Prize for Phenomenon of Meaning Research

Cognitive and Information Sciences Ph.D. student Ben Falandays was recently awarded the Marr Prize for Best Student Paper at the Cognitive Science Society’s annual conference. The Cognitive...

Quantitative and Systems Biology Ph.D. alumna Kinsey Brock

Recent Ph.D. Grads Receive NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship

Quantitative Systems Biology Graduate Program alumni Kinsey Brock and Robert Boria were awarded Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) from the National Science Foundation (NSF)....

A machine developed in Professor Reza Ehsani's lab improves almond harvests by reducing the amount of dust stirred up as the nuts are gathered from the ground.

New AI Institute Expands UC Merced’s Smart, Sustainable Agriculture Effort

With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of...

Computer science and engineering Professor Florin Rusu (left) and his third-year graduate students Asoke Datta and Yesdaulet Izenov.

Computer Science and Engineering Professor, Students Improve Database Query Results with NSF Grant

Every time you surf the web, check your credit card balance, or even sign up for a class at UC Merced, you’re using a relational database. Relational databases are basically the back end of...