Lorena Anderson

Soil is one of the foundations of life on Earth and could be an important part of the solution to climate change, if only we can stop treating it like dirt.

Six faculty members have been named this year’s Hellman Fellows — two from each of UC Merced’s schools.

The 2019-20 winners are:

• Professor Anna E. Beaudin, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, School of Natural Sciences;

• Professor Chih-Wen Ni, Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering;

Durable, reliable, affordable solar power is the future of energy, and UC Merced computational physicist Professor David Strubbe is diving into a new area of science to answer the call.

Strubbe’s new project aims to understand why two organic materials — that are cheaper and easier to produce than the prevalent silicon-based products — don’t last as long, and explore how to improve them.

Climate change is bad news for forests, and a new study by UC Merced Professor Emily Moran demonstrates one aspect of that news.

Higher summer temperatures hurt tree seedlings’ growth and survival.

But whether that is entirely bad depends on the degree of change in the number of young trees.

At the northern tip of the UC Merced campus, an unremarkable aluminum gate leads into a field that extends, seemingly, into infinity. Perpendicular to the gate, the LeGrand Canal, drawn from Lake Yosemite, snakes around campus into the emerald pastures, through farm rows and almond orchards across the highway. It’s the rainy season and bulbous cumuli foreground the rippled line of the Sierra Nevada that slices across the open sky.

Overdoses and suicides were among the most common reasons for mothers dying within a year of giving birth in California, according to a new study published this week.

Hundreds of students join the UC Merced campus each year intent on health-related careers.

What they might not know, though, is that there are resources on campus that can be critical in helping them achieve their goals.

“If it weren’t for the Pre-Health Advising program, I might not be where I am,” said Dr. Randell Rueda, a 2011 graduate of UC Merced who is in his residency as a family doctor in his hometown of Fresno. “I would have struggled in school and with myself.”

Akhila Yechuri is taking what she learned as an undergrad at UC Merced to Hyderabad, India, researching health disparities as the campus’s first undergrad to earn a Fulbright scholarship.

“I'm so overwhelmed and excited,” she said. “This is really thrilling.”

Three big UC Solar projects are poised to be the next big breakthroughs in low-cost, accessible sustainable commercial and residential energy in California and far beyond.

Researchers are building working models of one project developed through a grant from the California Energy Commission for a solar unit that can provide electricity and heat to commercial and residential buildings.

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.