Research

COSMOS Expands to UC Merced, Opening Doors for California’s Brightest Young Scientists

December 11, 2025

High school students will have a wider array of research opportunities through COSMOS starting next summer.

Starting next summer, UC Merced will join an elite group of University of California campuses hosting COSMOS — the California State Summer School for Math and Science — giving some of the state’s most talented high school students a new destination for exploring advanced STEM...

GradSLAM! Finalists Hope to Become Campus Champion

Ten UC Merced graduate students are going to the campuswide finals of the GradSLAM! competition in the hopes of becoming campus champion and competing with grad students from across the UC system....

Young Professor Honored with Prestigious NSF Award

In his first faculty position, in his first year at UC Merced, Professor Dong Li has won his first grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and it’s a prestigious Faculty Early Career...

Researchers Identify Drug That Could Treat Melanoma

Less than a year after mapping the genetic landscape of melanoma, a researcher from the University of California, Merced, has identified a drug that could be effective in battling the deadly skin ...

Growing Research Week Offers Events and Activities for All

The annual Research Week tabling event has more than doubled in size from last year, and that’s just one of the new and growing events featured in UC Merced’s weeklong celebration of research. More...

Professor Elected to Leadership Role With American Physical Society

Professor Anne Myers Kelley, with the School of Natural Sciences, has been elected vice-chair of the Division of Laser Science (DLS) of the American Physical Society (APS), the world's largest...

Two Professors Named Campus’s First MacArthur Chairs

Two UC Merced faculty members with distinguished, international research careers recently became the campus’s first John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Chairs. Professor Mark Aldenderfer, who served...

Campus Named to Carnegie List of Research Universities

The University of California, Merced, has been designated a “doctoral-granting university with higher research activity” — or R2, the second-highest classification for American research universities...

Biomedical Researcher Earns Respected Keck Award

Professor Victor Muñoz’s novel approach to advancing biomedical research has earned him the campus’s first prestigious Keck Award, including $1 million over the next five years. The University of...

Biologist Earns Prestigious Guest Professorship in Germany

Computational biologist David Ardell has been awarded the 2016 Julius Kuehn Professorship by the academic senate of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. Ardell, a professor in UC...