Faculty

Hurricanes Create Powerful Changes Deep in the Ocean, Study Reveals

June 6, 2025

Hurricane Bud left some surprising changes in its wake, UC Merced researchers found.

With careful planning and a little luck, researchers found a surprising upside to hurricanes after a Category 4 storm disrupted their expedition off the coast of Mexico. The team was able to sample the ocean right after the storm passed and found that the storms churn the ocean so powerfully and...

Extreme Changes in Seasonality Affect Soils’ Ability to Store Water and Carbon, Research Shows

Extreme changes in seasonality in the Sierra Nevada can have lasting impacts on meadow health and could mean less water and carbon storage in high elevation wetlands, according to research conducted...

Climate Change Influencing Freshwater Mountain Runoff, Research Shows

As the climate warms, sources of the water so critical to life everywhere on Earth are drying up. By the end of this century, communities dependent on freshwater from mountain-fed rivers could see...

Rare Flower Variant Discovered by Professor Offers Insight into Evolution

The discovery of a new, rare species of monkey flower by Professor Jason Sexton provides clues as to how new species are born. Sexton, who researches the monkey flowers that grow wild throughout...

California Overspends Water Rights by 300 Million Acre Feet

California is deficit-spending its water and has been for a century, according to state data analyzed recently by researchers from the University of California. UC Merced Professor Joshua Viers and...

Professor Discovers Key Elements for Biofilm Spreading

A biology professor at the University of California, Merced, discovered mechanisms that allow a potentially fatal biofilm to spread and resist drugs. The research was published last month in mBio, an...

Facilities Management Seeks Campus’s Help in Attaining Sustainable Certifications

UC Merced is one of the greenest campuses in the nation, with 100 percent of its new construction having earned LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Those certifications have been...

Big-Data Project Nets Professor a Big Award

Professor Florin Rusu’s passion for analyzing voluminous amounts of data has won him a prestigious early-career award from the federal Department of Energy, making him the fifth of the nine eligible...

Book Explores Tea Party's Rise, Dynamics

There’s a tendency for researchers to only study leftist movements, but a new book co-edited by UC Merced sociology Professor Nella Van Dyke analyzes the Tea Party movement. “We need to understand...

Project to Bring Attention to Overlooked American Artists

For the past several years, art history Professor ShiPu Wang has been on a detective mission to find every work produced by a group of overlooked artists from the early 20th century. Wang has...