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Brenda Ortiz

Students, Alums Awarded Prestigious NSF Graduate Fellowship

Four current or incoming UC Merced graduate students and an undergraduate alumnus were recently offered fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP).

UC Merced’s 2024 NSF GRFP recipients are:

  • Anthony Alfaro, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from UC Merced in 2022, is a second-year Ph.D. student at UC San Diego in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

UC Merced Alum Drives Innovation in Drug Manufacturing

You could almost say Edwin Shen was destined to become a bioengineer. His mother, a medical doctor, practices pathology in Northern California, and his father retired from a career as a mechanical engineer for medical device companies.

“I guess what I do is right in the middle of my parents’ occupations,” he said. “Bioengineering was something my dad recommended I try. I thought research might be something that aligned well with my personality. It turned out to be a perfect fit.”

Postdoc Awarded Fellowship to Support Computation and Immunology Cross-training

Postdoctoral scholar Lihong Zhao was one of 10 researchers named a 2022 Intersect Fellow by the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) — a first for UC Merced.

The AAI Intersect Fellowship Program for Computational Scientists and Immunologists is intended to improve communication and understanding between immunology researchers and computational scientists.

Ennis Receives Prestigious NIH Fellowship for Research of Biofilms

The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) awarded Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate student Craig Ennis the Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Service Research Award.

The award provides multiyear support to predoctoral students in health-related fields.

“It’s exciting to be awarded this fellowship because it provides support that allows me to further develop my research, and also grow professionally,” Ennis said.

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