Smaller Campus a Fit for Engineering Professor

Professor Ashlie Martini was looking for the chance to make a difference when she took a post at UC Merced.

Martini, now a professor in the UC Merced School of Engineering, was most recently a faculty member at Purdue University, home to about 40,000 students. But she wanted to work at a university where she could be more involved and have more impact.

The University of California’s 10th and newest campus was the perfect fit.

“It’s a great opportunity for me to be a part of what UC Merced will become,” said Martini, who is originally from San Diego. “I’m thrilled to be here.”

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UC Research Resource Center to Serve San Joaquin Valley

An innovative community-university partnership to empower San Joaquin Valley residents to analyze and communicate their most pressing challenges launches in Fresno this month.

The Participatory Action Research Resource Center (PARRC) will strengthen residents' skills in using research to improve their lives. It will also promote research collaborations between the University of California and other higher education institutions and communities.

UC Merced Professor Robin DeLugan, UC Davis Professor Jonathan London and Rey León, director of the San Joaquin Valley Latino Environmental Advancement Project (Valley LEAP), are collaborating to establish and grow the center.

“The PARRC will highlight the value of research for grassroots and community-based problem-solving efforts," said DeLugan, a leader in community-engaged scholarship at UC Merced. "Accordingly, we hope it will motivate new community-university research collaborations."

León, DeLugan and London are also founding members of Community University Research and Action for Justice (CURAJ), a network of academic and community leaders from throughout the region. CURAJ was awarded last year a nearly $15,000 grant to establish the center from the new UC Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California.

The grand opening of the PARRC will be from 3 to 5 p.m. Feb. 14 at the center, 2502 Merced St. in Fresno. A reception will follow. The organizers said everyone interested in this center is welcome to come and celebrate this valuable university-community partnership.

UC Merced Graduate Student Finds New Career in Military Research

As a chemistry teacher at Merced High School in 2004, Scott Seronello frequently told his students to keep working at their education and never give up their dreams. Then his students asked why he hadn’t done that himself.

So he applied to UC Merced to pursue his dream of earning a Ph.D., which he did in 2010. From there, Seronello’s path took an unexpected turn — toward military research in the U.S. Army.

Working with Professor Jinah Choi at UC Merced, Seronello studied the hepatitis C virus and its interactions with ethanol. Results from their work have been published in the journals PLOS One, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Free Radical Biology and Medicine.

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Media contact:
Brenda Ortiz

Computer Scientist Earns NSF Award, Research Grant

Engineering Professor Ming-Hsuan Yang of the University of California, Merced, has been named a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to further his work on improving visual tracking abilities in machines.

The award will provide Yang, a computer scientist, with research funding of $473,797 over five years. Yang’s research will focus on developing computer algorithms that can efficiently and effectively empower machines with object tracking, detection and recognition capabilities similar to human cognition, all with the use of only a single camera.

“Professor Yang’s innovative and groundbreaking research into visual tracking is certainly deserving of this honor from the National Science Foundation,” said Dan Hirleman, Dean of Engineering at UC Merced. “The award represents a clear recognition and validation of the importance of this work.”

While humans can effortlessly locate moving objects in different environments, visual tracking remains one of the most important and challenging problems in computer vision. Yang’s algorithms would help machines handle scenarios in which the objects they are designed to track drift, disappear and reappear, or are obscured by other objects.

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UC Merced Receives National CHEA Award

UC Merced has been awarded the 2012 Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) Award for Outstanding Institutional Practice in Student Learning Outcomes. The campus was selected for demonstrating its capacity to address the challenges of student learning outcomes while providing increasing accountability.

UC Merced is one of three institutions selected from 47 applications submitted nationwide.

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Media contact:
Brenda Ortiz