School of Natural Sciences

For the First Time, All Avian Evolutionary Relationships Revealed Through Collaboration

April 29, 2025

Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by combining data on 9,239 species published in nearly 300 studies between 1990 and 2024 and...

Lauren Schiebelhut is putting what she learned at UC Merced to take her research career to the next level.

Alumna Tackles Eco-Evolutionary Research on the California Coast

Lauren Schiebelhut credits the support and opportunities afforded to her at UC Merced with opening the door to her research career. Schiebelhut — a first-generation transfer student from...

Physicists Revealing Mysteries of Biological Fluids

A group of physics researchers from UC Merced have revealed that a fluid made from biological molecules found in human cells behaves much like ordinary fluids that are mixed externally, such as paint...

Applied Math — an ‘Oddity’ in its Field — Continues to Evolve at UC Merced

Math at UC Merced isn’t exactly like math at most other universities. Sure, there are parabolas and equations, orders of operations and cosines, but at this campus, those lead into topics...

Scientific equipment for making solar cells

UC Merced Reaches for Stars with Solar Cells

Two UC Merced physics groups are totally spacing out this year. Professors Sayantani Ghosh and David Strubbe and their students in the Department of Physics are working on a NASA initiative to...

Blood Cell Research Taking Groundbreaking Turns in Biology Lab

Developmental biologist Professor Anna Beaudin and her lab are making breakthrough discoveries in a growing field of research that could lead to exciting developments in such medical puzzles as...

TED Audiences get the Dirt on Soil and Climate Change from Berhe

Soil is one of the foundations of life on Earth and could be an important part of the solution to climate change, if only we can stop treating it like dirt. That’s the message Professor...

Hellman Family Recognizes Young UC Merced Faculty Projects and Careers

Six faculty members have been named this year’s Hellman Fellows — two from each of UC Merced’s schools. The 2019-20 winners are: • Professor Anna E. Beaudin, Department...

Founding Professor Named Associate Dean of Natural Sciences

The School of Natural Sciences has a new associate dean for Academic Programs, founding faculty member Professor Michael Colvin. “With his experience as a researcher and administrator,...

Harrison Duran, a fifth-year biology student, discovered a Triceratops skull during a paleontology dig in North Dakota.

Undergrad Discovers Triceratops Skull on Paleontology Dig in North Dakota

Harrison Duran has always wanted to discover ‘the land before time,’ and his desire to dig up dinosaur bones led him to the Badlands of North Dakota, where Alice the Triceratops was...