UC Merced Professor Creates Powerful HIV Inhibitor

UC Merced Professor Patricia LiWang has designed an HIV inhibitor that can protect people against nearly every strain of the deadly virus.

LiWang's inhibitor, a novel combination of two existing drugs, has a strength that ranges from several times better than existing inhibitors to several hundred times better, depending on the strain of HIV. The inhibitor works by blocking HIV from entering a person's cell at two different steps of viral entry. This so-called "entry inhibition" is at the forefront of new strategies for stopping the virus.

There are hundreds of different strains of HIV, LiWang said, and the virus mutates when it gets inside a person's body.

“However, since this drug is a combination of two inhibitors, it would be nearly impossible for a virus to mutate so it wouldn't get hit with either one of these drugs," she explained.

The research is an example of UC Merced's faculty addressing real-world health problems.

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UC Merced Names First Alumni Association Board Members

In conjunction with Homecoming weekend, UC Merced has announced the formation of the first-ever board of directors for its Alumni Association.

Christopher Abrescy (’09), Uday Bali (’08), Josh Bolin (’07), Jason Castillo (’09), Efferman Ezell (’09), Sam Fong (’09), Jose Godinez (’11), James Kirby (’10), Jacqueline Miramontes (’10), Elizabeth Perkins (’11) and Yaasha Sabba (’09) will represent their fellow alumni as the association moves into a new phase.

“UC Merced now has more than 1,200 alumni,” said Heather Buckner, director of alumni affairs. “This group will continue to grow by the hundreds and soon by more than a thousand every year. It’s important to establish a sound structure, with a board to advocate for the entire alumni base, as we move into a new phase.”

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Soil Scientist Chosen for Selective Fellowship

Stephen C. Hart, an ecology professor in the UC Merced School of Natural Sciences, has been chosen as a 2011 Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) Fellow, the group announced.

The SSSA will recognize Hart and the 12 other new fellows at a special awards ceremony during its annual meeting this week in San Antonio, Texas.

Members of the society nominate worthy colleagues based on their professional achievements and meritorious service. Only 0.3 percent of the SSSA’s active and emeritus members may be elected as a fellow.

“I am honored to be elected to such an elite group,” Hart said. “As a scientist who studies the interfaces between biological and earth sciences, I hope this recognition will further my cause of promoting interdisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems.”

Hart, also a member of UC Merced’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute, received his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees at UC Berkeley and his master’s at Duke University. His research focuses on plant-soil interactions in wildland soils.

Before coming to UC Merced in 2008, he spent 17 years as a professor in the School of Forestry at Northern Arizona University. He has authored or co-authored more than 125 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has received more than $13.5 million dollars in research grants as a principal or co-principal investigator.

Hart has been actively involved with SSSA, serving as an associate editor and now as a technical editor for the Soil Science Society of America Journal. He was also a division chair for the society.

The SSSA is a progressive, international scientific society that fosters the transfer of knowledge and practices to sustain global soils. It has more than 6,000 members dedicated to advancing the field of soil science, and it provides information about soils in relation to crop production, environmental quality, ecosystem sustainability, bioremediation, waste management, recycling and wise land use.

Researchers Net $2M Grant for Sierra Snowpack Measurement

UC Merced Professor Roger Bales and a team of researchers from UC Merced and UC Berkeley have received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to expand on a prototype system that uses a network of wireless sensors to track snowpack depth, water storage in soil, stream flow, and water use by vegetation in the Sierra Nevada — information that is key to efficient usage of such a scarce resource.

The research team will develop and implement a network of sensors throughout the 2,000-square-mile American River Basin of the Sierra Nevada, serving as the largest prototype yet of a system that could ultimately provide water managers in California the ability to better predict snowmelt runoff, the source of much of the state’s water supply.

“With this new funding, we will be able to test our system for snow and related measurements at the full watershed scale,” said Bales, director of UC Merced's Sierra Nevada Research Institute. “We believe this type of wireless sensor network could ultimately revolutionize the way we understand our most important sources of water, both in California and elsewhere.”

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