Professor Roberto Andresen Eguiluz has received a CAREER award for his research into the underlying cause of arthritis.
He is the 33rd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The new UC Merced Farms Food Future innovation initiative is investing in 10 graduate researchers to solve climate and community challenges. Their work is the start of a concerted focus in climate-smart agriculture for the campus.
Sarif Morningstar wondered something: "What happens if I grow plants using fog?"
The UC Merced student's efforts to find an answer to that question led to a research project they got paid to conduct. That in turn led to an opportunity to study plant biology in the UC Davis Ph.D. program.
Like Morningstar, many undergraduate students at UC Merced can get paid to do research under the newly adopted Learning Aligned Employment Program (LAEP).
Roughly a third of all food worldwide goes to waste.
Outside of the obvious direct costs, that waste has numerous other repercussions: much of it goes to landfills, where it generates methane, a greenhouse gas. Resources such as water and seeds are squandered. And at the same time, one in four people are experiencing food insecurity.
"We're wasting all this food when folks are going hungry," said Erin Meyer, Sustainable Food Programs coordinator for UC Merced.
After weathering a pandemic shutdown and some fairly withering criticism, UC Merced's food service programs have emerged better than ever.
The shutdown that started in 2020 brought about abrupt changes to food service operations - prepackaged items were the order of the day to feed students, and for catering, there were no orders of the day.
While UC Merced's Experimental Smart Farm is focused on technology and automation, it's also about machine-human collaboration.
That was among the messages UC Merced's representatives shared in a panel discussion at the "What's the Future of Agriculture in California?" symposium, held Thursday, March 30, at California State University, Fresno.
UC Merced researchers will discuss the campus's Experimental Smart Farm, as well as pressing agricultural issues, at a one-day summit later this month at California State University, Fresno.
The summit, What is the Future of Agriculture in California, is free to attend either in person or virtually March 30 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Innumerable changes have come to UC Merced since ground was broken for the campus in 2002. Some of the women who helped found the campus and remain employed by UC Merced, reflected recently on the changes in the university and themselves for Women's History Month.
UC Merced once again broke a record for the number of first-year applications the university received, continuing to show impressive growth even as the national trend shows a decline in the number of students enrolling in higher education.
More than 26,000 prospective first-year, or freshmen, students applied for admission to the university. And nearly 4,000 students applied to transfer to UC Merced. Most of the applicants are from California.
Engineering gets its annual turn in the spotlight next week, and UC Merced is planning a number of events to celebrate.
Engineers Week, often shortened to EWeek, was founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) in 1951. This year, it takes place from Feb. 19-25 nationally. At UC Merced, events will take place Feb. 21-28.
