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Four new faculty members join UC Merced Physics

July 19, 2020
We at UC Merced physics are happy to welcome four new faculty members to our growing physics family!   Dr. Sarah Loebman, Dr. Anna Nierenberg,  Dr. Hui Cai and Dr. Brian Utter will all start in the fall of 2020. Between them, they will bring new research directions and...

NASA Renews Campus Research Center for Another Two Years

July 2, 2020
The Merced nAnomaterials Center for Energy and Sensing (MACES) —UC Merced’s NASA-funded center for nanomaterials-based research and education — has received a two-year, $1.8 million renewal from the federal space agency. Continuing to build on the research already underway...

Bacteria Use the Physics of Twist to Measure Their Own Size and Shape

June 9, 2020
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...

Bobcats Help Shape Future of NASA, SPACEX Missions

May 30, 2020
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...

Physics Ph.D. Student Named Grad Slam Campus Champion

May 21, 2020
UC Merced’s Graduate Division wrapped up its annual Grad Slam competition this week, announcing Physics doctoral candidate Boe Mendewala as its campus champion. The judges awarded two runners-up, Shayna Bennett, a third-year Ph.D. student in Applied Mathematics, and Melinda Gonzales, a first-year...

Katie Tyler and Ibrahim Abu-Hijleh win Undergraduate Physics Thesis Presentation Award

May 12, 2020
The Undergraduate Physics Thesis Presentation Award is award is given annually to the student who does the finest physics thesis presentation as judged by the physics faculty. This year, among several excellent talks, two students' talks were evaluated most highly, and they will share the award...

Babies Forage for Sounds That Contribute to Language Acquisition, Study Shows

April 16, 2020
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. The graduate student, who prefers to go by her first name, specializes in computational biophysics but likes...

Top 10 Finalists Advance in UC Merced’s Grad Slam

April 6, 2020
Although COVID-19 has changed everyone’s plans this spring, Graduate Division staff members rallied to make sure the campus’s annual Grad Slam competition — showcasing graduate student research — continued as planned. This year’s qualifying round was different than previous years. Each of the...

Professor Ajay Gopinathan interviewed about the challenges and joys of establishing a new university

April 3, 2020

Two Grad Students to Attend Nobel Laureate Meetings

March 19, 2020
UC Merced graduate students, Md. Mehdi Masud and Akshay Paropkari, will travel this summer to attend the prestigious 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, an invitation-only gathering in Lindau, Germany. They will join about 600 young scientists from 101 countries and attend lectures and small...

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