News and Events

Available as an online webinar, the CITRIS Research Exchange featured UC Merced's Tom Harmon, Director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute and Chair and Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering. He presented his ongoing program the Labor and Automation in California Agriculture (LACA): Equity, Productivity, & Resilience. Funded by the UC Office of the Presidents for $3.1 million for four UC campuses, LACA is intended to change the way California farms food in a way that is both environmentally friendly and boosts the economy. At its core, technology is a solution that will be carefully implemented to preserve jobs for a skilled workforce, leading to the vibrancy of the valley...

Launched in 2020, the UC Merced Faculty Success Initiative Extramural Funding Fellowship (EFF) program helps early-career faculty learn key ways to synthesize their work for wider audiences. The aim of the program is to support faculty in the pursuit of extramural funding, with the goal of growing UC Merced’s research enterprise, advancing concepts in science, and enhancing national health and welfare...

Vice Provost for Academic Personnel Teenie Matlock has been honored with the Athena Award for Academic Leadership by the Women in Technology Initiative at the University of California. Matlock was selected from a nationally competitive pool of candidates exemplifying high technical achievement along with support for women in technical fields and advancements for gender equity. The award notification stated, “Your leadership in linguistics and HCI and your commitment to mentoring the next generation of researchers and faculty is inspiring.”...

Registration for the Women in Tech Initiative at UC’s flagship event is now open! Now in its fifth year, this major annual event will showcase issues, sector opportunities, and the career paths of experts in human-computer interaction (HCI). Now entering a new era, human-computer interaction is a multidisciplinary field that combines new technology in cyber-physical systems with human-centered design and usability. This year’s symposium will examine leading-edge technologies and challenges to ensuring equitable and inclusive HCI...

The Women in Tech Initiative at UC is proud to announce the fifth annual Athena Award winners. Sponsored by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute and Berkeley Engineering, the awards recognize those who embody, encourage, and promote the inclusion of women in technology. This year’s Athena Award winners include UC Merced Professor Teenie Matlock, World Economic Forum’s Sheila Warren, UC Davis Assistant Professor Katia Cánepa Vega, and the nonprofit organization Self e-STEM...

Awarded every two years, the highly competitive MRPI program seeks to leverage the world-renowned research capabilities of the UC system to develop real-world solutions to significant problems facing the state and the world. This year’s competition garnered 94 proposals that spanned the breadth of UC’s expertise, from computer science and particle physics to anthropology and human rights. Fifteen projects — totaling $19 million — were selected based on their compelling approaches to advancing research areas that are important to UC and the state one of which was the LACA MRPI led by Professor Thomas Harmon of UCMerced...

UC Merced faculty are involved in three new proposals to address society’s—and the San Joaquin Valley’s—problems through technology: health, agriculture, and access to STEM careers. The CITRIS Core Seed Fund awards are each $60,000 and will be used to catapult research into actionable results within a year. Of the 68 proposals, seven teams were awarded, including three with UC Merced researchers. Learn more about the proposals here...

¡Valle!, now in its second year, helps Central Valley students stay in STEM studies and access opportunities. The program is open to undergraduates in STEM across the Central Valley, including community colleges, CSUs and UC, and the deadline to apply has been extended to Dec. 20. Learn more about Valle by clicking the picture above!...

CITRIS celebrates 20 years of creating new technologies and solutions to benefit society. The University of California research center has forged public and private partnerships to shape the future of tech...