This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2026 semester.
Tayven Tipler won’t travel far from his hometown when he starts at UC Merced and he is already well along on his higher education journey. Tipler completed several courses at Merced College as a high school student.
Where I come from: I live in Atwater, where I was born and raised. I graduated this spring from Buhach Colony High School.
This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2024 semester.
San Joaquin Valley native Anmol Kaur is well on her way to making a splash in the worlds of science and medicine. The Bakersfield resident, coming to UC Merced as a first-year student, parlayed strong experiences in high school into a slot in the second SJV PRIME+ medical education cohort.
Kaur is poised to follow a path taken by her parents, who both have careers in medicine.
In a thick rainforest in Papua New Guinea, they're tracking bats. Researchers glue radio transmitters to the creatures’ little, furry bodies, then wait. And wait. When a bat flits to another position, the humans sprint through the foliage, stop and take a reading.
It’s 1 a.m. The researchers will do this all night, running from spot to spot, triangulating the bats’ movements. Logging data.
Having a blast.
“It’s just fun, right?” Betsy Dumont said, recounting a moment lived on the way to becoming one of the world’s top bat biologists. “It’s hard and it’s fun.”
