News

Michelle Len, fourth year PhD student in ME, placed second in the campus-wide GradSlam event. Michelle is the first grad student from Mechanical Engineering to place in this competition!

  Ala Qattawi, an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, receives prestigeous Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from SME.    Since 1980, the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award has recognized manufacturing engineers, age 35 or younger, who... Read More

Zach Petrek, a second-year doctoral student in chemistry and chemical biology, can usually be found running experiments in the laboratory of his advisor, Professor Tao Ye. But this summer, he did something different — he went to NASA. Petrek was one of seven UC Merced students to intern at NASA... Read More

MACES, the Merced nAnomaterials Center for Energy and Sensing, held its second annual open house on April 19, showcasing student research and highlighting the center’s connection to NASA. The daylong event kicked off with remarks from MACES Director and Professor Jennifer Lu, who shared her vision... Read More

Two startup companies run by UC Merced alumni have taken big steps toward the kind of success many entrepreneurs can only hope for. St. Vincent’s Solutions, which makes a humidifying respirator for premature babies, and Sweep Energy, which makes energy-monitoring devices for production facilities... Read More

As agriculture and food production achieve greater high-tech heights and resources such as water become more scarce, the country will increasingly depend on innovative solutions from its brightest minds. A new initiative at UC Merced aims to poise today’s students at the leading edge of the nexus... Read More

In recent publications, Professor Vincent Tung proves that inspiration for advancements in materials science can come from anywhere — even the merging of raindrops on a windshield or the sheeting of red wine down the inside of a glass. Through those liquid movements, Tung discovered and optimized a... Read More

  Tiebiao Zhao, a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering was recently awarded with 2016-17 Yara North America Almond Fellowship equivalent to a total of $15,000.   The prestigious Yara North America Almond Fellowship is intended to support UC Merced Ph.D. students. Ideally the... Read More

Students often expect that in classes, there will always be a right answer. Multilayered engineering problems with uncertain outcomes are a challenge for any student, but especially for first-generation learners who don’t have backgrounds or role models in engineering. That’s why mechanical... Read More

Current and prospective graduate students now have the option to earn degrees in mechanical engineering, after the UC system and the WASC Senior College and University Commission recently granted accreditation for both master’s and doctoral degrees. The University of California... Read More

  ME faculty member Sachin Goyal and his graduate student researcher Soheil Fatehiboroujeni helped promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in the Merced county this summer. They presented workshops in the TEAM-E[1] initiative coordinated by Merced... Read More

  ME graduate program is recently awarded a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The project entitled "Innovation and Entrepreneurship Programs to Train Hispanic Students for Future... Read More

A team of UC Merced engineering students — plus one from a nearby state university and two from a local high school — made progress this summer on prototypes of portable machines for diagnosing diseases while enhancing the breadth of their education at the same time. Mentored by Professor Anand... Read More

When she began her journey at UC Merced, Sheena Truong had the future planned out. She’d graduate, go to dental school and become an orthodontist. But Merced had more to offer — and in a roundabout way, it became her destination. In her third year at UC Merced, Truong realized that meeting the... Read More

Researchers at UC Merced are making a big deal out of a piece of equipment that lets them look at really tiny things. And they should — the new Zeiss Gemini SEM 500 scanning electron microscope is the first of its kind installed in the United States. “It’s the latest model in Zeiss’ well-... Read More

A proposal to conduct high-performance computing across science and engineering disciplines has won UC Merced and Professor Christine Isborn a research computing cluster that will be used for a variety of projects across campus. UC Merced professor Christine Isborn Each year,... Read More

Last fall, the Division of Student Affairs and the Office of Undergraduate Education launched an internship program with the goal of providing undergraduate students an opportunity to build experience and skills related to their career ambitions and to integrate them with their academic learning.... Read More

Researchers from the UC Merced Mechatronics, Embedded Systems and Automation (MESA) Lab and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) recently tested JPL miniature methane gas sensor similar to one developed for use on Mars, on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). A team conducted the tests... Read More

A small team of undergraduate students from UC Merced is gaining major exposure in a global competition to design portions of what could be the next big innovation in transportation. Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor and co-founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, has envisioned a “hyperloop” in... Read More

Professor Ashlie Martini is one of only a few university researchers in the country who work on tribology — the study of friction, lubrication and wear. Her work and her willingness to develop partnerships has led to a pilot program with the Chevron Products Company that will allow three... Read More

Two overlapping research projects involving UC Merced professors could have big implications for the region’s economy and effects on renewable energy, water and wildfires. Professor Gerardo Diaz, with the School of Engineering, received nearly $900,000 through two grants: one from the California... Read More

Professor Ashlie Martini is one of only a few university researchers in the country who work on tribology — the study of friction, lubrication and wear. Her work and her willingness to develop partnerships has led to a pilot program with the Chevron Products Company that will allow three... Read More

In UC Merced’s first 10 years, the once-fledgling campus has gone from a few buildings near a cow pasture to about 1 million square feet of classrooms, research laboratories, offices and student housing. The campus is behind on its initial projections for enrollment, which were affected by... Read More

The summer might mean an extended break for some in the campus community, but UC Merced researchers are busier than ever. Whether here or abroad, many professors and students are taking advantage of the time off to pursue important research projects.  Below are a few examples from the... Read More

NASA has awarded a group of researchers at the University of California, Merced, $5 million to establish the campus’s largest extramurally funded research and education center to date, designed to benefit current and future students and contribute to NASA’s missions. School of... Read More

Research into sustainable water supplies and viable solar energy solutions won the University of California, Merced, an anticipated $5 million in prestigious and competitive grants from the University of California. UC Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI) awards will go... Read More

Two University of California, Merced, students – Viridiana Murillo and Alexandro Perez-Tovar – won first prize in their divisions at the recent Society for Advancement of Hispanics/Chicanos & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) conference in San Antonio, Texas.... Read More

The School of Engineering has hired four faculty members for the 2014-15 academic year, two of whom are mechanical engineers. The faculty hires reflect areas of rapid enrollment growth, greatest potential for interdisciplinary collaboration, research potential and other factors aligned with the... Read More

Mechanical engineering students Xiaoli Hu and Hongyu Gao have both won awards this spring. Hu took first place in the student poster competition at the annual meeting of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers in May. In April, Gao received the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding... Read More

People don’t often think of deformation as a good thing. But when it comes to biofilaments – such as strands of DNA – it’s not only good, it’s necessary for the biofilament to complete its functions. When biofilaments twist, twine, bend or loop in the ways that... Read More