Lorena Anderson

Bioengineering Professor Victor Muñoz has answered a long-standing genetic mystery, and his research suggests that someday, bioengineers could devise ways to control gene activity — manually switching off the genes that contribute to cancer, for instance.

“If this mechanism turns out to be as powerful as we anticipate, engineering it will be relatively straightforward,” Muñoz said. “Controlling the output of genes could be done in a targeted way by new genome editing technologies such as CRISPR.”

Professor Joel Spencer was a rising star in college soccer and now he is an emerging scientist in the world of biomedical engineering, capturing — for the first time — an image of a hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) within the bone marrow of a living organism.

Professor Jing Xu and her students study extremely tiny motor proteins, but their work could make a huge contribution to the growing body of knowledge about Alzheimer’s and other diseases that progressively destroy brain tissue.

Professor Clarissa Nobile has been named the newest Kamangar Family Endowed Chair in Biological Sciences and will be honored at a private ceremony with the donors this fall.

“I am so pleased and honored to have been named to this chair,” Nobile said. “Thank you for investing in me and the future of biomedical research on infectious diseases at UC Merced.”

UC Merced is offering the opportunity for Valley residents to learn what clinicians and researchers know about Valley fever, an airborne fungal infection that can have serious, even fatal, consequences for people across California and the Southwest.

A multi-campus Valley fever summit in the California Room at UC Merced on Oct. 25 is free and open to all who reserve seats online by 5 p.m. Oct. 15.

Developmental biologist Professor Anna Beaudin and her lab are making breakthrough discoveries in a growing field of research that could lead to exciting developments in such medical puzzles as cancer treatments, regenerative medicine and the cause of autism.

She examines the mechanisms of how distinct blood stem cells are established during fetal development, how and why they give rise to the cells that make up human immune systems, how these cells work and what happens when something goes wrong.

Six faculty members have been named this year’s Hellman Fellows — two from each of UC Merced’s schools.

The 2019-20 winners are:

• Professor Anna E. Beaudin, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, School of Natural Sciences;

• Professor Chih-Wen Ni, Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering;

Overdoses and suicides were among the most common reasons for mothers dying within a year of giving birth in California, according to a new study published this week.

Akhila Yechuri is taking what she learned as an undergrad at UC Merced to Hyderabad, India, researching health disparities as the campus’s first undergrad to earn a Fulbright scholarship.

“I'm so overwhelmed and excited,” she said. “This is really thrilling.”

Children who live near major roads are at higher risk for developmental delays because of traffic-related pollutants.

That’s the major finding of a new study authored by UC Merced environmental epidemiology Professor Sandie Ha and colleagues. The study appears in the journal Environmental Research and is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the UC Merced Senate Grant.