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Thymus Research Could Unlock Immune System Improvements

March 12, 2025
A multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund research at UC Merced that could help cancer patients and others live longer, healthier lives. The $3.5 million, five-year grant will fund bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer's lab, which is investigating the thymus, a...

Center Engages Campus, Community with Africa and its Diaspora

February 27, 2025
This story is part of a series for Black History Month. Read more stories highlighting Black excellence at UC Merced. The brutal deaths of African Americans George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and others at the hands of police officers five years ago catalyzed for Black communities to unite globally and...

Physiological Society Recognizes Rudy Ortiz for Mentoring Underrepresented Students

February 24, 2025
Physiology Professor Rudy M. Ortiz has been named this year's winner of the A. Clifford Barger Underrepresented Minority Mentorship Award by the American Physiological Society. The UC Merced professor was recognized for his leadership, guidance and mentorship of underrepresented minority and...

Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center Enlists Wastewater Tests in Fight Against Smoking

February 10, 2025
UC Merced's Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center has embarked on an innovative partnership with university researchers who can track an entire community’s health and habits with samples of human sewage. The project aims to determine trends and levels of nicotine use in San Joaquin Valley...

UC Awards Support Tackling Big Questions in Health, Physics, Agriculture and Climate

February 5, 2025
Faculty members at UC Merced are taking the lead on four Multicampus Research Program Initiatives (MRPI), working with colleagues around the University of California system to address challenges around labor and agriculture, active matter, Indigenous health and fusion energy. “The MRPI program...

COVID Lockdown Disrupted Preschoolers’ Social Skills, Trailblazing Research Shows

January 29, 2025
Lockdowns. Social distancing. Shuttered schools and businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic and its sweeping disruptions set off a stampede of “what it’s doing to us” research, focused largely on schoolchildren. How were students’ academics affected? Their mental health? Their social development? Left...

Grant Will Cover Tuition for Community Health Worker Program

November 27, 2024
A new program aimed at training people to be community health workers has already gotten an important boost: a grant to cover scholarships for some attendees. The Community Health Worker Specialized Training Certificate program was introduced earlier this year as a partnership of UC Merced...

Medical Education at UC Merced Grows; Adds New Students, Faculty

November 21, 2024
Medical education at UC Merced is expanding at a rapid pace as part of the campus’ long-term goal to address the shortage of physicians and health care professionals in the Central Valley. This fall, the university welcomed the second cohort of students in the B.S.-to-M.D. pathway. Formally known...

Ending Health Disparities Starts with Good Data, National Authority Says

November 14, 2024
  Solid and sharable research data must go hand in hand with collaboration and caring to tackle the health gaps that trouble minoritized and underserved populations in the San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere. That was the main message from a national leader in minority health care disparities during a...

3 New Majors Meet at Crossroads of Communication and Science

November 12, 2024
Information – how it is shaped, delivered and received – is a thread that runs through three dynamic new majors at UC Merced. Communication and media; neuroscience; and science, technology and ethics will be available to undergraduate students in the fall semester 2025. The majors are centered in...

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