School of Natural Sciences

Chemistry Ph.D. Student Wins Campus Grad Slam Top Prize, Advances to UC-wide Final

April 28, 2025

Top nine Grad Slam finalists with graduate dean and associate graduate dean with R1 prop

Adekunle “Kunle” Adewole isn’t a stranger to the spotlight, having grown up singing at family functions and performing in theater productions. He also has fervently watched “The Voice,” a singing reality competition television series, envisioning himself performing on...

UC Merced Professor Delivers Pellissier Lecture

Everyone is invited to hear UC Merced Professor Clarissa Nobile, this year’s Pellissier Distinguished Speaker, discussing biofilms. “Microbial Films: Why are They Important? How do They Form? And...

Raindrops, Red Wine Inspire Solar Tech Advancements

In recent publications, Professor Vincent Tung proves that inspiration for advancements in materials science can come from anywhere — even the merging of raindrops on a windshield or the sheeting of...

New UC Grant Enables Deeper, Broader Valley Fever Research

Researchers at UC Merced are playing key roles in the new UC Valley Fever Research Initiative, studying how the Valley fever fungus, Coccidioides immitis, causes disease in its mammalian hosts, and...

Genetic Changes Made Native Americans Susceptible to Smallpox, Study Shows

A new study identifies genetic changes in Native Americans that came about when Europeans settled in the Pacific Northwest and might have played a major role in why so many natives died of infectious...

Researchers Enlist Hospital in Fight Against Antibiotic Resistance

There are 1.7 million multidrug-resistant, hospital-acquired infections that extend hospital stays, increase medical expenses and decrease quality of life. The United States alone reports at least...

Picking Over the Past Provides Clues to the Future

UC Merced professors Jessica Blois and Justin Yeakel and their graduate students are sifting through time, picking out tiny clues that will give them a mouse’s eye view of the ecosystem that...

People in Eurasia are Genetic Hybrids with Evolutionary Advantages, Study Shows

It’s not just luck or practice that gets Sherpa mountaineers up the slopes of Mt. Everest each year. Functioning so well at extreme elevations is in the Sherpa and Tibetan DNA — literally. A new...

The Real Horror of ‘Frankenstein:’ Human Extinction

If fictional scientist Victor Frankenstein had created a mate for his nameless Creature, humans would have gone extinct in about 4,000 years, according to a new study co-authored by a UC Merced ...

Researcher’s Work Could Help Stop Aggressive Breast Cancers

Adjunct Professor Gabriela Loots is studying why certain cancers prefer to metastasize to bone, using novel technology developed by fellow UC Merced Professor Michael Cleary. Her work, which takes...