With COVID-19 protections lifting, many people are eager to travel again. Among them is graduate student Elena Bischak, who is planning multiple trips to Haiti in the coming months to study improving sanitation and human waste processing in the Caribbean country.
Proteins operate like biological machines, regulating nearly every major function and organ in our bodies through a still-mysterious shape-shifting process. Bioengineering graduate group chair Professor Victor Muñoz has a new $1,082,356 award from the National Science Foundation to unlock those mysteries.
In July, Joseph Bello will present his findings for the prestigious Donald A. Strauss Foundation scholarship to United Spinal, the longstanding nonprofit dedicated to overcoming the stigma of disability and increasing inclusivity for wheelchair users. It has taken months of work to prepare, but Joseph is no stranger to persistence.
Every time you surf the web, check your credit card balance, or even sign up for a class at UC Merced, you’re using a relational database.
Relational databases are basically the back end of operating software, aggregating information and culling results based on your search or query. Improving the speed of these results, known as query optimization, is the focus of computer science and engineering Professor Florin Rusu and his third-year graduate students Yesdaulet Izenov and Asoke Datta.
COVID-19 upended life as we know it, especially among the science community. While some scientists rushed to develop a vaccine, others sought a better understanding of the virus, hoping to predict where the next outbreak might be in order to better contain it. At UC Merced, this included testing the campus’s wastewater.
UC Merced’s campus has many buildings, but just one pipe through which wastewater leaves the campus. This turned out to be helpful to discern whether there would be forthcoming positive COVID-19 test results.
California is known for its beautiful coastline, where the Pacific Ocean meets sandy beaches and rugged cliffs. While many scientists have studied the land or the ocean independently, less is known about the nexus of the two.
While many are preparing to head off to college after an unprecedented year, a handful of students are already on UC Merced’s campus and working away in research labs. They’re part of the inaugural FACTS Bridge Program, a way for first-year and transfer students to get a head start on research and more.
