Avinav Biswas, a third‑year undergraduate majoring in biological sciences at UC Merced, has been named a 2026 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar, becoming the university’s first recipient of one of the nation’s most prestigious undergraduate awards for students pursuing research careers in science,...
News
April 15, 2026
Nervous but prepared, Tahirah Williams took the stage at UC Merced’s Grad Slam competition in March and delivered her three-minute talk, “More Than Slime: When Mucus Meets the Valley Fever Invader.” By day’s end, she had been announced as the university’s 12th Grad Slam Campus Champion.
“It feels...
April 7, 2026
UC Merced saw broad gains in the U.S. News and World Report 2026 Best Graduate Schools rankings with graduate programs rising in national standing, reflecting the campus’s growing academic and research profile.
UC Merced’s School of Engineering broke into the top 100 in the rankings, securing No....
March 18, 2026
On most days, Reo Maynard’s life swings between two ecosystems: the microscopic world inside an ant’s gut and the sprawling one that stretches from Fresno to the Sierra Nevada mountains.
The 51-year-old Navy veteran, dad of two, screenwriter-in-waiting and newly minted Fresno City College faculty...
March 11, 2026
UC Merced has received a $1 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to strengthen postdoctoral fellowships and expand research in the natural sciences. Awarded through the foundation’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Commitment, this distinction places UC Merced among just 30 leading...
March 9, 2026
Ten UC Merced graduate researchers are gearing up to deliver the most intense three minutes of their academic careers.
Each spring, master’s and Ph.D. students across the campus’s three schools are invited to participate in Grad Slam — a fast‑paced competition that challenges scholars to distill...
February 10, 2026
Our circadian clocks play a crucial role in our health and well-being, keeping our 24-hour biological cycles in sync with light and dark exposure. Disruptions in the rhythms of these clocks, as with jet lag and daylight saving time, can throw our daily rhythms out of whack.
But a group of...
February 2, 2026
Biochemistry Professor Andy LiWang has spent much of his career studying how life keeps time. His work on the circadian clock of cyanobacteria — tiny, ancient organisms that share the planet with us — has shed light on one of biology’s most elegant systems.
But his newest research project,...
January 26, 2026
UC Merced continues to demonstrate its growing influence on the global stage.
Several faculty members landed on Clarivate’s 2025 list of the world’s most‑cited researchers. The honor is reserved for the top 1% of scholars whose work has shaped their fields over the last 10 years. Clarivate, which...
November 3, 2025
The same cellular renewal that keeps our bodies healthy might also fuel the growth of cancer. A UC Merced biologist has found that the brain could hold the key to stopping it.
Professor Néstor Oviedo, a molecular and cell biologist and affiliate of the Health Sciences Research Institute, received...
