Featured News (gateway)

Developmental biologist Professor Anna Beaudin and her lab are making breakthrough discoveries in a growing field of research that could lead to exciting developments in such medical puzzles as cancer treatments, regenerative medicine and the cause of autism.

She examines the mechanisms of how distinct blood stem cells are established during fetal development, how and why they give rise to the cells that make up human immune systems, how these cells work and what happens when something goes wrong.

Six faculty members have been named this year’s Hellman Fellows — two from each of UC Merced’s schools.

The 2019-20 winners are:

• Professor Anna E. Beaudin, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, School of Natural Sciences;

• Professor Chih-Wen Ni, Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering;

Harrison Duran has always wanted to discover ‘the land before time,’ and his desire to dig up dinosaur bones led him to the Badlands of North Dakota, where Alice the Triceratops was waiting for him.

UC Merced students come from all over the state, some from very long distances. But for dozens of students just five miles away from campus, getting here took its own kind of journey.

Becoming Gateway Scholars allowed 67 Merced High School students to reach a destination they thought was closed to them, and because of it, a path to higher education has opened to them.

Climate change is bad news for forests, and a new study by UC Merced Professor Emily Moran demonstrates one aspect of that news.

Higher summer temperatures hurt tree seedlings’ growth and survival.

But whether that is entirely bad depends on the degree of change in the number of young trees.

Hundreds of students join the UC Merced campus each year intent on health-related careers.

What they might not know, though, is that there are resources on campus that can be critical in helping them achieve their goals.

“If it weren’t for the Pre-Health Advising program, I might not be where I am,” said Dr. Randell Rueda, a 2011 graduate of UC Merced who is in his residency as a family doctor in his hometown of Fresno. “I would have struggled in school and with myself.”

Asmaa Mohamed’s enthusiasm for research is contagious. Her passion not only radiates through her words, but it is also evident in the research career she has built in her undergraduate years at UC Merced.

Mohamed was born in Egypt. In 2013, her father accepted a position as a senior medical physicist in the Merced Cancer Center, prompting her family to move to Merced. About four months before immigrating, she began to learn common words to prepare for full English immersion.

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.

All complex life evolves in alliance with, in defense of or in reaction to bacteria.

A new paper by UC Merced Professor Gordon Bennett demonstrates one of the novel ways the relationship can evolve and begins to repaint a picture that humans have only begun to understand.