A multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund research at UC Merced that could help cancer patients and others live longer, healthier lives.
The $3.5 million, five-year grant will fund bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer's lab, which is investigating the thymus, a key organ in the human immune system.
Family is everything to Linda Chang.
Chang, a 30-year-old administrative officer with the UC Merced Police Department, was a quiet high school freshman when she joined the Leo Club, the youth branch of the Merced Breakfast Lions Club's community service organization.
The youngest of 10 children (including two sets of twins), Chang got involved with the Leos at Merced High School for a simple reason: She was following her older sisters' footsteps.
UC Merced researchers are taking part in a comprehensive, multi-agency effort aimed at efficiently measuring and mitigating methane emissions.
IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory are leading the effort, which earned a $20 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy in December.
Measurements and data collected from space can be used to better understand life on Earth.
It took Lilly Uvalle a few tries to complete her education at UC Merced.
Uvalle started her collegiate career in the fall of 2010 after graduating from Buhach Colony High School in Atwater.
"I did two years, my freshman and sophomore years," she said. "Then I withdrew. I tried coming back once in 2013 and withdrew again. Then I tried coming back in 2017."
Family obligations, mental health concerns and feeling overwhelmed by what it would take to get back to school got in the way. Then, in 2022, something changed.
In 2010, former President Jimmy Carter made his way to a young University of California, Merced campus to accept the Spendlove Prize in social justice, diplomacy and tolerance and to speak to the National Parks Institute.
"This is an honor for me," the president said, according to news accounts of the event. "The fact is human rights should encompass all those things, the basic freedoms that we cherish because of our constitutional commitments and the right of people to live a decent life."
Here's a nifty use for AI: Turning photographs and other images into Cubist art.
A team of UC Merced researchers developed a project to do just that, using artificial intelligence to transform images into the style of art created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque that reduces and fractures objects into geometric forms.
One of those researchers, Edric Chan, is still in high school.
The first four faculty members named to UC Merced's Agricultural Experiment Station look to make a big impact on farming in the San Joaquin Valley and beyond.
Between 70% and 80% of students who start classes at community colleges plan to transfer to four-year universities. But only between 20% and 30% do.
In California, that number is closer to the lower end of that spectrum, a University of Wisconsin researcher told a room full of higher education representatives.
Natural rubber is used in a wide range of products used throughout the globe. Lab-produced rubber works for many applications but is insufficient for vital items like airplane tires and specialty medical products.
Natural rubber also is a precious resource; 90% of the plants that serve as its source for are grown in a tiny area of Southeast Asia.
