Professor will explore new frontier in biofuel production

UC Merced School of Engineering professor Elliott Campbell has received the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, through which he’ll receive $407,588 over five years to study the capacity of abandoned agricultural lands to generate crops used to produce biofuels.

That's something of a new step for researchers looking for renewable fuel sources. Prime ag lands are best used for food, not fuel, and cutting natural forests to pave the way for new biofuel crops doesn't exactly go along with the spirit of the endeavor. So Campbell will determine the amount of abandoned ag land in the United States and Brazil, then calculate the amount of biomass that could be produced on those fields.

“Biofuels hold great promise as a new energy source, but they must be produced wisely to avoid impacting our food economy, air quality and water resources,” Campbell said. “We know how to make biofuels, but we are still unclear on how to make biofuels without hurting our ability to grow food and protect natural resources.”

UC Merced Graduate Students Research Successful Teaching Techniques

UC Merced's Center for Research on Teaching Excellence is launching a two-year program that will explore solutions to problems often confronted by first-generation college students.

Backed by a $295,484 grant from the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, teams of UC Merced graduate students will develop innovative curriculum that addresses the needs of undergraduates, especially first-generation college students.

More than half of UC Merced’s undergraduate students are the first ones in their family to attend college. It’s also a demographic growing exponentially at other research university campuses.

“There are so many creative ideas and useful instructional techniques graduate student instructors and faculty members have developed in response to our students’ needs,” said Anne Zanzucchi, the Center’s guidebook and assessment coordinator. “The program is an effective way to capture and publish a lot of interesting teaching techniques that otherwise might be ephemeral.”

UC Merced Students Position Themselves for Success

Not every university major has a clear cut path.

In order to find their niche, a group of UC Merced environmental engineering students founded the Environmental Engineering Student Organization and realized their career options are broad and unlimited.

Through networking, the organization promotes the academic and career success of environmental engineering majors and students in similar disciplines – earth systems science, environmental systems, applied mathematical sciences and management.

One goal is to get professionals already working in the industry to address the group, so students can gain insight into the field and learn what steps they can and should take to build their careers.

Grant Will Fund Solar Energy Tracking System

UC Merced School of Engineering assistant professor Alberto Cerpa has received a $568,202 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a system to track the amount of sunlight collected by solar panels on the ground, which will make it easier for electricity providers to plan and manage solar generation systems within their electrical grids.

The three-year grant, funded under the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is for the project “MRI: Development of ASSIST: Affordable System for Solar Irradiance Sensing and Tracking.” Cerpa, along with associate professor Carlos Coimbra and assistant professor Qinghua Guo, are developing the system in part to help energy producers determine the most optimal opportunities to use solar.

ASSIST will use a network of sensors to collect solar irradiance data at ground levels. The sensors will measure and track cloud cover, aerosol content and the presence of gases such as water vapor and carbon dioxide -- all of which can reduce the amount of sunlight a solar cell can collect -- in the Earth’s lower atmosphere and stratosphere.

The system will enable engineers and computer and earth system scientists to quantify data at levels not yet seen -- even with current state-of-the-art instruments used in solar observation research. Additionally, the project will allow UC Merced faculty and students in the campus’ environmental engineering and electrical engineering and computer science programs to expand their knowledge and further critical research skills as they work on issues of scientific and societal relevance.

Extreme Science Leads the Way

UC Merced's extreme science almost defies the imagination. It's supersmall, ultacold and hyperfast.

Researchers in the School of Natural Sciences are pushing boundaries in hopes of yielding results that could change the world. Their research – in photons, artificial atoms and molecules – is only a sampling of UC Merced’s cutting-edge interdisciplinary research that could impact renewable energy, health and communication.

Physics Professor Sayantani Ghosh studies how artificial atoms, known as quantum dots, react to light and temperature because the rules of physics change at the quantum scale. Physics Professor Jay Sharping uses lasers that pulse at intervals of 50 femtoseconds, far faster than what’s visible to the human eye. One femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second.

Chemistry Professor Tao Ye studies the ways artificial molecular machines can be used to perform many interesting tasks, such as combating devastating diseases like cancer. Molecules moving around the body like tiny robots are what make a person’s arms swing and retinas dilate. One of the goals is to create artificial molecules – or nanostructures – that can be dispatched to deliver medicine and attack disease cells.