Our Faculty
QUANTITATIVE AND SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
Studies environments and processes that maximize STEM learning using principles, theory, and research methods from cognitive science and education
Email: zenaidaphd@gmail.com
Genetic basis and EvoDevo of vertebrate innovations
Email: camemiya@ucmerced.edu
Understanding how molecular interactions and forces across several length scales affect function in biology
Email: randreseneguiluz@ucmerced.edu
Computational biology and evolution of gene expression mechanisms
Email: dardell@ucmerced.edu
Experimental evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria
Email: mbarlow@ucmerced.edu
Evolution and development of chordates, developmental gene regulatory networks, STEM education research
Email: lbeaster-jones@ucmerced.edu
Microbial ecology and biogeochemical cycling in the oceans
Email: mbeman@ucmerced.edu
Evolution of animal-microbial symbioses
Email: gbennet2@ucmerced.edu
Paleoecology, niche and community modeling, and paleoinformatics
Email: jblois@ucmerced.edu
Ruben Michael Ceballos
Models of virus-host interaction dynamics, neuroscience, and microbial-based biotechnologies for biofuels, agricultural, and biomedical applications
Email: rceballos@ucmerced.edu
Polymer physics and engineering of cellular and environmental systems
Email: wchin2@ucmerced.edu
Cell fate decisions and regulation in Drosophila neural stem cells and RNA decay
Email: mcleary4@ucmerced.edu
Models of biological processes and molecular dynamics of disordered proteins
Email: mcolvin@ucmerced.edu
Evolutionary ecology, biogeography, and genomics; marine invertebrates
Email: mdawson@ucmerced.edu
Biochemical and biophysical approaches to understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating inflammation and programmed cell death
Email: edealbastarrechea@ucmerced.edu
Understanding the relationships between morphology, behavior and performance in a variety of vertebrates including bat, carnivoran and avian species
Email: edumont@ucmerced.edu
Molecular dynamics simulations and machine learning modeling of biomolecular systems with a focus on RNA polymerase dynamics, function, and spatial organizations
Email: bdutagaci@ucmerced.edu
Plant microbiomes; function, community assembly, transmission, and dispersal
Email: cfrank3@ucmerced.edu
Species interactions and the maintenance and persistence of biodiversity. complex network theory, empirical, and theoretical approaches focused on plant-pollinator interactions
Email: mgaiarsa@ucmerced.edu
General microbiology, microbial systems, STEM education research
Email: mgarcia-ojeda@ucmerced.edu
Cell signaling in neural development, brain tumors and neurological disorders
Email: xge2@ucmerced.edu
The properties of intracellular miRNA and extracellular miRNA and their contribution to viral infections, disease pathologies, disease diagnosis and treatment
Email: dgeekiyanage@ucmerced.edu
The origin of function in living matter at scales ranging from the molecular to multicellular
Email: agopinath@ucmerced.edu
Theory and computation to understand intracellular transport, regulation of cell shape and assemblies, and the collective migration of cells
Email: agopinathan@ucmerced.edu
Microbiome regulation, viral metagenomics, systems immunology
Email: jagrasis@ucmerced.edu
Transcriptional regulatory networks, epigenetics, fungal pathogenesis, and genome editing
Email: ahernday@ucmerced.edu
Experimental soft matter physics and biophysics
Email: lhirst@ucmerced.edu
Immunological tolerance and auto-immune disease, regulatory T cells
Email: khoyer2@ucmerced.edu
Animal foraging behavior and its impacts on individuals, populations, and ecological communities
Email: mhutchinson6@ucmerced.edu
Parasite pathogenesis and immunology, toxoplasma and host-immune responses
Email: kjensen5@ucmerced.edu
Fluid-structure interactions and multiphase flows in the ocean
Email: skhatri3@ucmerced.edu
Explores the interaction between environmental change and biotic response using stable isotope analysis
Email: skim380@ucmerced.edu
Cancer imaging, cancer therapy, fluorescence molecular tomography, x-ray imaging, biomedical imaging
Email: cli32@ucmerced.edu
Bacterial motility in complex media, single-cell behavior in biological processes
Email: bliu27@ucmerced.edu
Biochemistry and structural biology of chemokines, anti-HIV microbicides
Email: pliwang@ucmerced.edu
Developmental immunology, cell fate regulation, hematopoiesis
Email: jmanilay@ucmerced.edu
Genomic control of gene expression, gene regulatory networks in organismal development
Email: smaterna@ucmerced.edu
Stem cell and tissue engineering for regenerative medicine applications
Email: kmccloskey@ucmerced.edu
Computational approaches to big trees and big data, phylogenetics genomics, The Open Tree of Life
Email: ejmctavish@ucmerced.edu
Design and construction of nanoscale biomaterials from the self-assembly of programmable biomolecular building blocks
Email: amerg@ucmerced.edu
Evolutionary ecology of plant responses to environmental change
Email: emoran5@ucmerced.edu
Protein folding, structure prediction and design, protein aggregation
Email: vmunoz3@ucmerced.edu
Host-microbe interactions and microbial ecology
Email: nish@ucmerced.edu
Molecular development of microbial communities, biofilm formation
Email: cnobile@ucmerced.edu
Regulation of metabolism especially during nutritional perturbations; Metabolic Syndrome, Hypertension & CVD; Pharmacological interventions w/ CBD
Email: rortiz@ucmerced.edu
Stem cell regulation, cancer and regeneration in planarians
Email: noviedo@ucmerced.edu
Molecular evolution, gene/genome structure, intragenomic conflict, balancing selection, sex chromosomes and determination
Email: sroy5@ucmerced.edu
Developing machine-learning methods and sequencing assays for understanding cellular information processing and how this is encoded in the genome
Email: trube@ucmerced.edu
Biomedical image analysis, mathematical modeling, machine learning, cancer treatment and resistance
Email: erutter2@ucmerced.edu
Signal transduction, transcriptional, and epigenetic mechanisms of neuronal gene expression and their roles in neurodevelopment, cognitive functions and brain disorders
Email: rsaha3@ucmerced.edu
Plant adaptation, species range limits biological invasions and evolutionary conservation science
Email: jsexton2@ucmerced.edu
Kelly Shepardson
Fungal immunology and pathogenesis, anti-viral immune responses. Molecular and cellular techniques, as well as a murine model, focused on the lung environment
Email: kshepardson2@ucmerced.edu
Mathematical biology, dynamical systems and computational biology and bioinformatics
Email: ssindi@ucmerced.edu
Population dynamics, social and cultural evolution, self-organization, mathematical and computational modeling
Email: psmaldino@ucmerced.edu
Exploration into how microorganisms use molecules to interact with their eukaryotic hosts and their environment. The Sogin lab employs a cross-disciplinary approach that combines metabolomic and meta'omic analyses with experimental and computational analyses
Email: esogin@ucmerced.edu
Novel optical imaging and sensing systems for applications in tissue regeneration, transplantation, and cancer
Email: joel.spencer@ucmerced.edu
Experimental biophysics, cellular reconstitution, experimental synthetic biology
Email: asubramaniam@ucmerced.edu
Biophysical chemistry, structural biology; Understanding the interplay between proteins and their environment by combining biophysical methods and live cell microscopy
Email: ssukenik@ucmerced.edu
Developing new approaches that utilize X-ray crystallography and complementary biophysical techniques to study the structure, dynamics, and function of enzymes and other biological macromolecules
Email: mthompson30@ucmerced.edu
Sequence-based approaches to studying microbial community assembly, function and dynamics
Email: sgtringe@ucmerced.edu
Human functional genomics and enhancers in development and disease
Email: avisel@ucmerced.edu
Applications of high performance computing to big-sequencing data and machine learning
Email: zwang37@ucmerced.edu
Genetic and neural coding of behavior in Drosophila. Neurobiology/Neuroscience
Email: fwolf@ucmerced.edu
Endoderm development and epithelial morphogenesis in zebrafish
Email: swoo6@ucmerced.edu
Microbial genomics of candidate phyla representatives and development of functionally targeted single-cell approaches
Email: twoyke@ucmerced.edu
Experimental biophysics, quantitative biology single-molecule analysis of molecular motors
Email: jing.xu@ucmerced.edu
Animal foraging and food web dynamics over space and time
Email: jyeakel@ucmerced.edu
Structural, biochemical and functional studies of membrane transport proteins
Email: mzoghbi@ucmerced.edu