Editor's note: This story is republished from the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of UC Merced Magazine.
Omar DeGuchy remembers the moment he left the comfort of UC Merced — the place he’d found his footing — and stepped onto what some call “the smartest square mile on Earth...
News
April 8, 2026
It's no secret that artificial intelligence uses a lot of electricity.
A standard ChatGPT query consumes approximately 0.34 watt-hours - roughly 10 times more than a Google search. According to the Pew Research Center, U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024 -...
December 19, 2025
Detecting neutrinos and other elusive subatomic particles often relies on capturing tiny flashes of light produced when these particles interact with specialized detection media. In water-based scintillators, there is a competition between Cherenkov light (which is faint but directional and prompt...
November 14, 2025
The School of Natural Sciences Dean’s Office and the School Executive Committee established nine faculty awards to recognize faculty success in many key areas. Three Physics professors received awards and were acknowledged during the SNS annual Community Dinner on October 17.
Exceptional...
November 3, 2025
In the quiet labs of UC Merced, where sunlight is transformed into solutions and nanomaterials promise cleaner futures, Teddy Adams is crafting more than just cutting-edge technology — he’s building a legacy of resilience, representation and purpose...
September 19, 2025
Welcome to our 15 first-year students!
Name
Fall Rotation
Previous University
Shrouk Abdulshafy
Wilson
University of Padova, Italy
Daniel Bartolome...
September 4, 2025
This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2025 semester.
Rolando Ortega is closing in on his dream of earning a Ph.D. This fall, the Cal-Bridge scholar from Los Angeles County joins UC Merced to start his doctoral journey. With experience...
August 7, 2025
A team of physicists has discovered a method to temporarily halt the ultrafast melting of silicon using a carefully timed sequence of laser pulses. This finding opens new possibilities for controlling material behavior under extreme conditions and could improve the accuracy of experiments that...
May 1, 2025
Cosmology Professor Anna Nierenberg has received a CAREER award for a project that will vastly improve the study of the nature of dark matter in the universe.
She is the 42nd researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
CAREER awards are among the...
April 16, 2025
UC Merced physics graduate student Sameen Yunus has been awarded a prestigious fellowship allowing her to spend the next three years working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, conducting experiments and simulations that could lead to faster fusion ignition.
The UC-National Lab In-Residence...
