Patty Guerra

A grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will fund a project led by a UC Merced researcher looking into predicting behavior of wildfires.

Jeanette Cobian-Iñiguez is leading a team from UCs Merced and Irvine awarded $1,179,479 to predict the impact of forest fuel treatments on fire behavior, focusing on an improved understanding of the influence of surface-fuel attributes on fire behavior and severity, and ultimately, on forest carbon storage, according to a project summary.

A team from UC Merced has been selected to participate in the Department of Energy (DOE) "BattChallenge," a three-year competition to develop a battery for an electric vehicle.

UC Merced researchers will tackle climate changes in multiple ways through more than $4 million in grants recently awarded from within the university.

The Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED) issued nine awards totaling $4,096,197 for proposals that range from studying methane gas emissions to making electronic vehicles more accessible to people.

Two of mechanical engineering Professor Ricardo de Castro 's Ph.D. students recently earned awards for their research on electric vehicles.

Dilawer Ali, whose work centers on the electrification of tractors, won the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) award for the best student poster presentation in California during the 2023 Agricultural Equipment Technology Conference (AETC23).

Understanding the atomic-scale mysteries of "crushing" chemistry is the goal of an expanding research center with a newly awarded $20 million investment from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

Managed by Texas A&M University, NSF's Center for the Mechanical Control of Chemistry (CMCC) will conduct the most rigorous exploration yet into how the mechanical application of force can enable new advances in chemistry, with the potential to make industrial processes cheaper and more environmentally friendly.

After seven months of working for hours each weekend to design, build and fly a drone, it all came down to a nervous moment for UC Merced students taking part in a worldwide competition.

Their drone had to be suspended between two poles and held together while weight was placed inside it.

"We were a little bit nervous," said team member Alex Minton. "We didn't have the best luck with our prototypes."

But the team's drone held up, though there was some concerning creaking at one point, the team members said.

Engineering gets its annual turn in the spotlight next week, and UC Merced is planning a number of events to celebrate.

Engineers Week, often shortened to EWeek, was founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) in 1951. This year, it takes place from Feb. 19-25 nationally. At UC Merced, events will take place Feb. 21-28.