While the COVID-19 pandemic has altered many things this spring on the UC Merced campus — from classes and research to events — UC Merced is making sure the Class of 2020 has a forum to commemorate students’ achievements and successes.
UC Merced will host the University of California’s first-ever virtual commencement ceremony Saturday, May 16, to recognize the more than 1,500 candidates who have registered to participate.
When UC Merced began transitioning to emergency remote instruction in late March, hoping to lessen the spread of COVID-19, Jackie Shay didn’t waste any time jumping in to help her fellow teaching assistants (TA) make the shift.
Although COVID-19 has changed everyone’s plans this spring, Graduate Division staff members rallied to make sure the campus’s annual Grad Slam competition — showcasing graduate student research — continued as planned.
UC Merced graduate students, Md. Mehdi Masud and Akshay Paropkari, will travel this summer to attend the prestigious 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, an invitation-only gathering in Lindau, Germany. They will join about 600 young scientists from 101 countries and attend lectures and small seminars with around 70 Nobel laureates.
Graduate students face a number of unique challenges as they embark on the life-changing journey of earning their master’s or Ph.D. Adjusting to graduate studies, achieving work-life balance and dealing with imposter syndrome are just a few.
At UC Merced, graduate students have a new ally in Maria Nishanian, who on Dec. 1 became the university’s first graduate academic counselor.
The American Society of Criminology (ASC) has elected Vice Provost and Graduate Dean and sociology Professor Marjorie Zatz as an ASC Fellow — the society’s highest honor — in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field of criminology.
The society celebrated Zatz’s achievements during an award ceremony at its meeting earlier this month in San Francisco.
Audio has become a top form of entertainment over the past several years, in large part due to the rising popularity of podcasts. UC Merced graduate students are seizing the opportunity to help improve science literacy.
A group of Quantitative and Systems Biology (QSB) graduate students started RadioBio, a science podcast that discusses biology topics, in 2016. The podcast sparked from a discussion between the students and Professor Fred Wolf during a graduate professional skills development course.
Quantitative and Systems Biology (QSB) graduate student Anh Diep will represent UC Merced at the University of California Grad Slam finals in San Francisco on May 10.
UC Merced’s Graduate Division will host its Grad Slam competition on April 18 with graduate scholars presenting on topics ranging from Valley Fever immune response and antibiotic resistance to computer vision and mathematical methods for thermal collection. This year’s competition started in March with 30 graduate students in the qualifying round, from which the judges narrowed the field to the top 12.
The campus’s 2019 Grad Slam semi-finalists are:
