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Lorena Anderson

¹ú²ú´«Ã½ campus photo of sign

Senior Writer and Public Information Representative

Office: (209) 228-4406

Mobile: (209) 201-6255

landerson4@ucmerced.edu

SNRI Sees a Leadership Transition

Change is everywhere at ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ this year, from hiring a new chancellor to the completion of a major campus expansion. The (SNRI), an early hallmark of research excellence at ¹ú²ú´«Ã½, is also making a change: After a 13-year tenure, Faculty Director has stepped down and is taking the reins.

$3.5 Million Hellman Endowment Expands Future of Research at ¹ú²ú´«Ã½

Since 2011, the Hellman Fellows Fund has provided close to 60 ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ assistant professors with much-needed research support in the form of seed funding. The prestigious Hellman Fellowship has launched countless careers at ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ and across the UC system.

Now, thanks to a generous new $3.5 million gift from the Hellman family, ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ will permanently establish the ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ Society of Hellman Fellows starting in 2021. The endowment allows the program to continue in perpetuity, while affording the campus more flexibility in funding early-career research.

New Project Aims to Advance Understanding of Immune Cells as they Develop

Maybe now more than ever, scientists need to understand the immune system.

A new National Institutes of Health grant is funding a cross-disciplinary collaboration between bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer and immunology that will allow them to watch as immune-system cells develop in the bone marrow of a living mouse to gain insights into how they work.

New Grant Helps Assess Benefits of Satellites for Determining Water Quality

Summertime means fun in the water, but as temperatures increase, algal blooms can grow in freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Some algae are natural and life-giving, while others are the result of life out of balance and can have harmful effects. Consisting of bacteria and tiny plankton, they arise quickly and alter the ecosystem by consuming available oxygen, killing fish.

New Bridge Program Involves Incoming Students in the Future of Agriculture

Incoming first-year and transfer students will have a new resource for success and an introduction to research starting next summer, thanks to a four-year, $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Paper Microscopes Enable Materials Science and Engineering Project to Move Forward

The coronavirus pandemic has upended everything, including ¹ú²ú´«Ã½â€™s classes and research. But materials science and engineering and recent graduate and independent study student Jasmine Nava are working on a microscopy project, even without access to their usual lab.

Study Reveals How Chemicals in Flame Retardants Interfere with Brain Development

Many of the items people use in their everyday lives, from baby clothes and Halloween costumes to furniture, are doused with chemical flame retardants designed to make the items safer.

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

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.

Human Waste Treatment Helps Solve Climate-Change Puzzle, New Study Shows

About 4.5 billion people around the globe do not have access to adequate sanitation, and what they do have — typically pit latrines and lagoons — are responsible for widespread illnesses and a portion of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

¹ú²ú´«Ã½ Professor Rebecca Ryals and a group of colleagues have a solution that not only increases safety, sustainability and jobs, but reduces greenhouse gas emissions and waste-borne illnesses while producing an effective fertilizer for agriculture.

Bobcats Help Shape Future of NASA, SPACEX Missions

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 ¹ú²ú´«Ã½.