Patty Guerra

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."

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 demonstrating projects they have been developing.

Students compete on teams that are judged by experts from around California. People can see the fall showcase Dec. 19, when teams display the results of their work.

These capstone projects are the culmination of students’ undergraduate careers, but the impacts are far more than academic: Teams work together to tackle real-world problems brought to them by clients.

Here's a nifty use for AI: Turning photographs and other images into Cubist art.

A team of UC Merced researchers developed a project to do just that, using artificial intelligence to transform images into the style of art created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque that reduces and fractures objects into geometric forms.

One of those researchers, Edric Chan, is still in high school.

Mushrooms are pretty amazing. They are light and porous yet have a high strength-to-weight ratio. They are absorbent. They can serve as filters.

Manufacturing a material that mimics mushrooms and other fungal structures could provide opportunities in any number of areas, ranging from aerospace engineering to clothing production.

The first four faculty members named to UC Merced's Agricultural Experiment Station look to make a big impact on farming in the San Joaquin Valley and beyond.

Between 70% and 80% of students who start classes at community colleges plan to transfer to four-year universities. But only between 20% and 30% do.

In California, that number is closer to the lower end of that spectrum, a University of Wisconsin researcher told a room full of higher education representatives.

Natural rubber is used in a wide range of products used throughout the globe. Lab-produced rubber works for many applications but is insufficient for vital items like airplane tires and specialty medical products.

Natural rubber also is a precious resource; 90% of the plants that serve as its source for are grown in a tiny area of Southeast Asia.