News

Professor YangQuan Chen is pictured standing behind a table with flowers at UC Merced on Main.

Services are set Sunday afternoon for Professor YangQuan Chen, whose contibutions to UC Merced's School of Engineering and to the university as a whole will endure through programs he helped build, the research he advanced, and the many students and colleagues he inspired.

Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering, died April 27. He was 59.

Photo depicts electrical engineering and computer science Professor Ming-Hsuan Yang on a blue and gold background.
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the premier scientific society dedicated to advancing the understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines, has honored a UC Merced professor for his work in AI. Electrical...
Photo is a graphic depiction of the thymus gland.
A multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund research at UC Merced that could help cancer patients and others live longer, healthier lives. The $3.5 million, five-year grant will fund bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer's lab, which is investigating the thymus, a...
UC Merced logo in blue and gold text
Each spring, master’s and doctoral students across UC Merced’s 18 graduate groups are invited to contend in the campus’s Grad Slam Finals. They are given three minutes and one visual slide to present their research to a panel of non-specialist judges. This year’s competition will take place during...
Professor Rudy Ortiz
Physiology Professor Rudy M. Ortiz has been named this year's winner of the A. Clifford Barger Underrepresented Minority Mentorship Award by the American Physiological Society. The UC Merced professor was recognized for his leadership, guidance and mentorship of underrepresented minority and...
Postdoctoral researcher Derek Hollenbeck and mechanical engineering Professor YangQuan Chen are pictured.
UC Merced researchers are taking part in a comprehensive, multi-agency effort aimed at efficiently measuring and mitigating methane emissions. IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory are leading the effort, which earned a $20 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy in December. UC Merced's...
A scenic photograph of the Science and Engineering 2 building is pictured.
A research panel, project demonstrations and banquet are among the festivities planned for Engineers Week at UC Merced. Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers in 1951, Engineers Week is "dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing...
UC Merced has assumed its place in the top echelon of research institutions in the nation by earning R1 status from Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The announcement was made Thursday morning by the American Council on Education and comes less than 20 years after the...
A fluorescence microscope image of one kind of active matter being studied. Image courtesy of Amanda Tan, UC Merced
Faculty members at UC Merced are taking the lead on four Multicampus Research Program Initiatives (MRPI), working with colleagues around the University of California system to address challenges around labor and agriculture, active matter, Indigenous health and fusion energy. “The MRPI program...
Photo depicts a scene of UC Merced and a mugshot of Professor Emeritus Ariel Escobar.
On Friday, the campus community will hold a remembrance to celebrate the life and contributions of bioengineering Professor Emeritus Ariel Escobar, who died in December. He joined UC Merced in 2008. His laboratory developed new optical, micro-mechanical and electrophysiological techniques for...
Members of the BioSCape team are pictured with NASA and South African aircraft.
Measurements and data collected from space can be used to better understand life on Earth. An ambitious, multinational research project funded by NASA and co-led by UC Merced civil and environmental engineering Professor Erin Hestir demonstrated that Earth's biodiversity can be monitored and...
A student is depicted in front of a poster describing the almonry stockpile project at UC Merced.
Helping diplomats navigate new cultures, removing mircroplastics from stormwater and automating raisin processing: These are some of the projects awarded winning scores at UC Merced's fall Innovate to Grow event. Innovate to Grow, or I2G as it's known on campus, is a twice-a-year showcase for UC...
Give to UC Merced, the university’s annual year-end fundraising campaign, was the most successful of its 11-year history, garnering nearly $1.43 million from 647 donors. The tremendous show of generosity far exceeded the original goal of $250,000 from 500 donors. Each year, the UC Merced campaign...
Image depicts a scene of grass, sidewalks and a large UCM at UC Merced.
As water becomes an ever more precious and unpredictable resource, particularly in the Central Valley, finding ways to precisely irrigate crops is a valuable tool in the fight against climate change. Climate shifts have triggered more frequent and more severe droughts that have reduced the amount...

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