Lorena Anderson

At UC Merced, research and education are inextricably intertwined – in the lab and in the classroom. Professors continually refine and advance their teaching methods and curriculum to convey knowledge, and to build the critical thinking skills that last throughout a lifetime.

Supporting these aims, the California Education Learning Lab has awarded a collaborative grant to UC Merced, CSU Bakersfield and Bakersfield College for “Improving Equity, Accessibility and Outcomes for STEM Gateway Courses.”

A nine-year experiment by a UC Merced Department of Life and Environmental Sciences professor and his colleagues is illuminating the importance of soil carbon in maintaining healthy and functioning ecosystems because of its influence on the microbial communities that live in soil.

These communities’ health can help researchers understand the effects of climate change.

The undergraduate engineering curriculum at UC Merced offers students professional experience by participating in the senior capstone project, the Innovation Design Clinic (IDC). The IDC culminates in the Innovate to Grow event on Friday, May 17, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in an annual showcase of student talent and ingenuity, highlighting the culture of entrepreneurship in UC Merced’s School of Engineering .

Most people wouldn’t think sharks can teach researchers about the planet’s distant past and its more immediate future.

UC Merced paleoecologist Professor Sora Kim isn’t most people.

There’s a connection between data in fossilized shark teeth and climate change, and thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, she aims to use that information to better understand climate change.

Graduate student Vicky Espinoza shared the plight of some San Joaquin Valley families with a wide audience this spring in her role as a Next Generation delegate to this year’s Chicago Council on Global Affairs Global Food Security Symposium, entitled “From Scarcity to Security: Managing Water for a Nutritious Food Future.”

Children who live near major roads are at higher risk for developmental delays because of traffic-related pollutants.

That’s the major finding of a new study authored by UC Merced environmental epidemiology Professor Sandie Ha and colleagues. The study appears in the journal Environmental Research and is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the UC Merced Senate Grant.

Chemistry and chemical biology Professor Ryan Baxter recently became the campus’s 22nd recipient of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) prestigious early CAREER awards for untenured faculty.

The $647,000 he received from NSF will mostly go toward paying student research assistants and purchasing supplies to help advance his lab’s work developing new strategies for initiating radical chemical reactions to engineer mild experimental protocols.

If you’re an American with Internet access, you’ve probably done it. You get a headache, a sniffle or a mystery bruise, and instead of seeing your doctor, you consult “Dr. Google.”

According to some studies, more than 80 percent of Americans have used the Internet to “self-diagnose” health issues. UC Merced public health communication Professor Susana Ramirez’s new partnership with an eHealth startup aims to help people get quality information and find out what they do with it once they have it.

Psychology Professor Eric Walle ’s Interpersonal Development Lab will recruit local infants and mothers as an important and unique part of a large-scale study focusing on the development of young children.

Led by scientists at New York University and Pennsylvania State University, the Play and Learning Across a Year (PLAY) project involves 65 researchers across the United States and Canada and is funded by a $6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The California Teachers Association (CTA) indicates the state faces a massive shortage of highly qualified teachers – especially those who can teach math, science and special education — and early childhood caregivers and educators.

Studies show these shortages disproportionately affect students in high-poverty, rural areas, students from low-income families and students of color, amplifying the persistent achievement gaps between those students and wealthier peers.