Molecular biology Professor Chris Amemiya and his former graduate student Molly Phillips have collaborated with Physics Professor Linda Hirst to make a discovery that upends traditional ideas about a structural polysaccharide called chitin that is found in some fish.
As scientists build smaller and smaller machines, they need to understand the invisible forces that make those machines work.
Thanks to research and the initiative of then-UC Merced graduate student Jake Pate, some of those forces can now be measured and manipulated.
Theoretical physics Professor Ajay Gopinathan has been working over the past decade to model a submicroscopic mystery. Now, he and a team of colleagues have verified an important piece of the puzzle of how tiny, intrinsically twisted protein filaments responsible for repairing and growing cells know where to go to perform their function.
The work could someday enable scientists to control bacterial growth.
As the SPACEX Crew Dragon spacecraft left Earth today to ferry two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, many Bobcats were watching the live stream with keen anticipation.
It’s not just that the flight marks the first time a commercial aerospace company will carry humans — two NASA astronauts — into Earth's orbit. The collaborative project also has special meaning for UC Merced.
Most people wouldn’t think physics has anything to do with baby babble and human language development.
But most people aren’t Ritwika Vallomparambath PanikkasserySugasree.
Flocks of starlings producing dazzling patterns across the sky are natural examples of active matter — groups of individual agents coming together to create collective dynamics.
Like many young women, Calista Lum absorbed the message that she was not as capable as her male peers when it came to science, technology, engineering and math.
Teachers in her Fairfield high school engineering classes often asked if male classmates had done her work for her.
“I just assumed the boys were so much better at it than me,” she said.
Physics Faculty Member Dr. Jing Xu wins competitive grant form NIH.
When Denzal Martin started his undergraduate work at UC Merced, he wasn’t thinking about a career in physics, interning with NASA or attending graduate school.
The Los Angeles native was studying computer science and engineering. One day, though, he decided to attend a materials science and engineering lecture by visiting NASA scientist Cheol Park.
“It was a very obscure subject to me, but I was interested to learn more,” Martin (’18) said. “The pictures he showed — it seemed like magic how they were fabricating these materials.”
Two UC Merced physics groups are totally spacing out this year.
Professors Sayantani Ghosh and David Strubbe and their students in the Department of Physics are working on a NASA initiative to fabricate solar cells in space and turn sunlight into electricity.
