Although COVID-19 has changed everyone’s plans this spring, Graduate Division staff members rallied to make sure the campus’s annual Grad Slam competition — showcasing graduate student research — continued as planned.
UC Merced graduate students, Md. Mehdi Masud and Akshay Paropkari, will travel this summer to attend the prestigious 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, an invitation-only gathering in Lindau, Germany. They will join about 600 young scientists from 101 countries and attend lectures and small seminars with around 70 Nobel laureates.
Audio has become a top form of entertainment over the past several years, in large part due to the rising popularity of podcasts. UC Merced graduate students are seizing the opportunity to help improve science literacy.
A group of Quantitative and Systems Biology (QSB) graduate students started RadioBio, a science podcast that discusses biology topics, in 2016. The podcast sparked from a discussion between the students and Professor Fred Wolf during a graduate professional skills development course.
UC Merced doctoral student Melissa Spence and incoming graduate students Caleb Larnerd and Cristian Sarabia were awarded Graduate Research fellowships (GRFP) from the National Science Foundation.
The fellowship provides multiyear support to predoctoral students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) awarded Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate student Craig Ennis the Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Service Research Award.
The award provides multiyear support to predoctoral students in health-related fields.
“It’s exciting to be awarded this fellowship because it provides support that allows me to further develop my research, and also grow professionally,” Ennis said.
UC Merced’s Graduate Division will host its Grad Slam competition on April 18 with graduate scholars presenting on topics ranging from Valley Fever immune response and antibiotic resistance to computer vision and mathematical methods for thermal collection. This year’s competition started in March with 30 graduate students in the qualifying round, from which the judges narrowed the field to the top 12.
The campus’s 2019 Grad Slam semi-finalists are:
Two UC Merced Ph.D. students took to the State Capitol yesterday with representatives from the other UC campuses to advocate for the importance of the research being done across California.
Portia Mira scored $1,000 for winning third place in the University of California’s 2018 Grad Slam competition , marking UC Merced’s first appearance as a top-three finalist during the systemwide contest.
More than 3,700 individuals visited UC Merced last Saturday during the campus’s annual Bobcat Day — a 26 percent increase over 2017 and more than any previous year.
When prospective student-athletes visit UC Merced, soccer standout Abbie-Leigh Meneses is among the first people they meet.
Not long ago, Meneses was a recruit herself, touring the University of California’s 10th and newest campus. She fell in love with UC Merced and its central location within driving distance to Yosemite National Park and the San Francisco Bay Area.
