UC Merced’s CalTeach program is opening new pathways for younger students to experience hands-on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning, academic support and early exposure to a college environment.
On most days, Reo Maynard’s life swings between two ecosystems: the microscopic world inside an ant’s gut and the sprawling one that stretches from Fresno to the Sierra Nevada mountains.
The 51-year-old Navy veteran, dad of two, screenwriter-in-waiting and newly minted Fresno City College faculty member is in his eighth year at UC Merced, earning his Ph.D. in Quantitative Systems Biology.
“I’ll be defending in May. The end is here,” he said, with the equal parts relief and wonder of someone who kept moving when the ground shifted beneath him.
Although the oceans are the least explored places on the planet, even their depths are not untouched by humans.
Drawing on more than 2,300 seawater samples collected across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, researchers found that hundreds of synthetic chemicals — many of them rarely monitored and originating from everyday products — are now woven into the fabric of marine organic matter.
Our circadian clocks play a crucial role in our health and well-being, keeping our 24-hour biological cycles in sync with light and dark exposure. Disruptions in the rhythms of these clocks, as with jet lag and daylight saving time, can throw our daily rhythms out of whack.
But a group of researchers is getting closer to understanding how these clocks operate.
UC Merced biochemistry Professor Andy LiWang and his colleagues have solved how the circadian clocks in microscopic bacteria precisely control when different genes are turned on and off during the 24-hour cycle.
Biochemistry Professor Andy LiWang has spent much of his career studying how life keeps time. His work on the circadian clock of cyanobacteria — tiny, ancient organisms that share the planet with us — has shed light on one of biology’s most elegant systems.
But his newest research project, supported by a prestigious $1.2 million grant from the William M. Keck Foundation, pushes that inquiry into bold, uncharted territory.
UC Merced continues to demonstrate its growing influence on the global stage.
Several faculty members landed on Clarivate’s 2025 list of the world’s most‑cited researchers. The honor is reserved for the top 1% of scholars whose work has shaped their fields over the last 10 years. Clarivate, which produces journal impact factors and other analytics, says the award identifies the world’s most influential researchers.
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 fields.
Professors Roger Bales and Martha Conklin arrived in Merced in 2003, the first non-administrative faculty members at UC Merced. They came with a vision: to create a research university that would serve California’s future.
Now, after more than 22 years of building institutions, mentoring and pioneering environmental research, Bales has retired from UC Merced.
A team of scientists led by UC Merced is embarking on a project to understand how the twisted shapes of specific molecules can influence the spin of electrons — a phenomenon that could revolutionize solar energy, electronics and quantum computing.
The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program, focuses on a mysterious effect known as chirality-induced spin selectivity, or CISS.
