Materials & Matter

Wilson Among This Year’s AAAS Fellows, Recognized for Science and Outreach

March 27, 2025

Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Economic Development Gillian Wilson has been named a 2024 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. Being...

Next Generations Building Next-Level Electronics

Imagine a cell phone you can fold up and carry in your wallet. When you drop it, nothing cracks or breaks, or if it does, it repairs itself. And when it’s time for an upgrade, the old phone...

New Consortium Seeks to Expose Students to a Galaxy of Opportunities

Imagine exploring the cores of stars to understand — and ultimately control — the type of fusion that’s taking place. High-energy density (HED) science is the study of properties...

Fundamental Fuel Cell Research Earns Engineer a CAREER Award

To further his fundamental research into solid oxide fuel cells and other high-temperature electrochemical energy systems, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Professor Min Hwan Lee its...

Two students in white lab coats work in a chemistry lab.

$1.5M Grant Will Transform Chemistry Curriculum, Improve Access to STEM Careers

It’s a startling statistic: Nearly 30 percent of UC Merced students who start their college careers in the School of Natural Sciences (SNS) switch to majors outside the science, technology,...

Understanding Why Designs Work — or Don’t — is Important

Just because a design works once doesn’t mean that the research and development is done. That’s why, Professor Sarah Kurtz argues in a new commentary in the prestigious journal...

A woman on the left and man on the right inspect metallic industrial equipment.

I2G Alumni Return as Event Expands, Enters Seventh Year

The idea for a year-end event showcasing School of Engineering students’ original designs started as a scribble on the back of a cocktail napkin and culminated in the exhibition of 12 teams...

Four students stand in front of a poster explaining their Innovate to Grow capstone project.

Wells Fargo Gift Helps ‘Innovate to Grow’ Continue Fall Expansion

Innovate to Grow (I2G), the School of Engineering’s showcase for senior capstone projects and student ingenuity in engineering and entrepreneurship, is emerging as a twice-a-year event, thanks...

A man wearing safety goggles adjusts a laser apparatus with a screwdriver.

Study: Quantum Vibrations Could Help Detect Nuclear Threats

National security and a beautifully resonant violin have found a surprising link — a classic experiment in acoustics, recently replicated at the quantum scale as part of a collaborative project...

A student stands in front of a sign that reads "NASA Research Park." Above the sign is a model of a NASA space shuttle.

NASA Interns Return With New Prospects, Realized Dreams

Zach Petrek, a second-year doctoral student in chemistry and chemical biology, can usually be found running experiments in the laboratory of his advisor, Professor Tao Ye. But this summer, he did...

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