Patty Guerra

Many people with electric vehicles drive them to work during the day and then charge them overnight after returning home. But a simple reversal of that schedule could make it cheaper and easier to charge your electric car.

That was the conclusion reached by a team of UC Merced researchers, who recently published a paper in the Electricity Journal on "Aligning Electric Vehicle Charging with the Sun: An Opportunity for Daytime Charging?"

The first solar-over-canal project in California, which started with research at UC Merced, has begun producing electricity. Plans are now in the works to expand the technology to other areas.

A groundbreaking initiative led by faculty from seven top research universities aims to accelerate the deployment of solar arrays over California's extensive canal network.

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 key organ in the human immune system.

Family is everything to Linda Chang.

Chang, a 30-year-old administrative officer with the UC Merced Police Department, was a quiet high school freshman when she joined the Leo Club, the youth branch of the Merced Breakfast Lions Club's community service organization.

The youngest of 10 children (including two sets of twins), Chang got involved with the Leos at Merced High School for a simple reason: She was following her older sisters' footsteps.

Annaliza Perez Torres has already accomplished plenty.

A 2019 graduate of UC Merced, Perez was named the School of Engineering's Outstanding Student in Materials Science and Engineering and earned Research Excellence recognition from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center.

Now Perez, an engineer with Lockheed Martin, has received a Rising Technical Contributor Award from the Society of Women Engineers.

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.

Measurements and data collected from space can be used to better understand life on Earth.

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 Merced engineering and computer science students to demonstrate projects they have been developing.

Teams of students work to address challenges presented to them by clients, then present their results to judges who are experts from around California.

It took Lilly Uvalle a few tries to complete her education at UC Merced.

Uvalle started her collegiate career in the fall of 2010 after graduating from Buhach Colony High School in Atwater.

"I did two years, my freshman and sophomore years," she said. "Then I withdrew. I tried coming back once in 2013 and withdrew again. Then I tried coming back in 2017."

Family obligations, mental health concerns and feeling overwhelmed by what it would take to get back to school got in the way. Then, in 2022, something changed.

In 2010, former President Jimmy Carter made his way to a young University of California, Merced campus to accept the Spendlove Prize in social justice, diplomacy and tolerance and to speak to the National Parks Institute.

"This is an honor for me," the president said, according to news accounts of the event. "The fact is human rights should encompass all those things, the basic freedoms that we cherish because of our constitutional commitments and the right of people to live a decent life."