GRADUATE DIVISION

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & SCHOOL OF NATURAL SCIENCES

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES,

HUMANITIES AND ARTS

Yuriana Aguilar-Sanchez, Ph.D.

Yuriana Aguilar-Sanchez was born in Mexico and at the age of 5 years old her entire family decided to look for a better life and immigrated to the United States. Her parents settled in California’s Central Valley. Although they worked in the fields and had only attended elementary school, they knew that a successful education was the key to pursuing the American dream.

Aguilar-Sanchez went to school in Madera and then Fresno like any kid her age and dreamt of becoming a doctor someday. It was during her senior year at Fresno High School when counselors were helping students apply for financial aid that she realized she did not have the same opportunities as other students. Her undocumented immigration status closed many doors, but her tenacity and family’s support pushed others open.

Despite the struggle, Aguilar-Sanchez attended UC Merced in 2007 — the first in her family to complete high school and enroll in higher education, Aguilar-Sanchez was a role model for her four siblings and the rest of her extended family.

The educational journey was not easy for a first-generation Latina student, but she persevered in academics and constantly searched for ways to use her developing intellect and apply it outside the classroom. She actively engaged in community service, student organizations and research, something completely new to her. She did community research as part of the Community Scholars internship program and then joined UC Merced Professor Monica Medina's lab, studying the effects of global warming on the ocean coral ecosystem. She applied for the UC LEADS program in 2009 and participated in two summer research internships, one at UC Merced and another at UC Davis studying atherosclerosis, which cemented her future interest in biomedical research. This new experience of combining her two interests, research and medicine, sparked a change in her career goals.

After graduating in 2011, she continued conducting biomedical research in the lab of Professor Ariel L. Escobar and applied for graduate school but had to defer her enrollment to actively apply for funding to cover her graduate degree.

While doing an experiment in the lab in June 2012, Aguilar-Sanchez saw then-President Barrack Obama's announcement of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that opened the door for her to start her doctoral degree. She started the Quantitative Systems Biology Ph.D. program in Escobar’s lab in Spring 2013 and received her Ph.D. focused on the autonomic nervous system regulation over the heart’s function in December 2016.

She completed two post-doctoral fellowships, one at Rush University in Chicago and another at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

This year, Aguilar-Sanchez started her research lab as Assistant Professor in Texas A&M studying the effects of diabetes in the heart.

Lourdes M. Castro Ramírez

As President and Chief Executive Officer of the Housing Authority of the City of Angeles, Ms. Castro Ramírez guides the second-largest public housing authority in the nation, serving more than 200,000 people.

Ms. Castro Ramírez assumed the lead role for HACLA this month after serving for a year as the city’s Chief Housing and Homeless Officer, working with county, state and federal partners to develop unified solutions to homelessness and increasing affordable housing.

At HACLA, Ms. Castro Ramírez is committed to strengthening HACLA’s mission to expand affordable housing in a city of nearly 4 million by increasing access to services, investing in people and building strong communities. She is the city top advisor on housing to Mayor Karen Bass.

Previous to her work for the City of Los Angeles, Ms. Castro Ramírez was Secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. She led dozens of boards and bureaus responsible for improving affordable housing, reducing homelessness, and protecting consumers.

Ms. Castro Ramírez has held other prominent positions. She was appointed by former President Barack Obama to lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Public and Indian Housing. She also has been President and CEO of the San Antonio Housing Authority, President of the University Health System Foundation in San Antonio, and a Department Director at HACLA.

Ms. Castro Ramírez earned her academic degrees at UCLA – a bachelor’s in Political Science and Chicano Studies, and a master’s in Urban Planning.

Shreegandha Kulkarni

School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts Student Speaker

Shreegandha Kulkarni is a double major in cognitive science and psychology. She grew up in Foster City and her family moved to Dublin during high school.

While at UC Merced, she served as president and design coordinator of the Cognitive Science Student Association and she served as public relations chair for Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology, and director of financial operations for her panhellenic sorority.

She performed undergraduate research in Distinguished Professor Martin Haggar’s Social and Health Psychology Applied Behavioral Research for Promotion and Prevention — SHARPP — Lab. She also gained valuable experience as a student intern in the Office of Student Involvement.

Notably, she published a literature review on fashion psychology in the Undergraduate Research Journal and studied abroad at the University of Padova in northern Italy in spring 2024.

After graduation, she aspires to work in the fashion industry as a user interface designer or a user experience researcher.

Berrydal Moshe

School of Engineering and Natural Sciences Student Speaker

Berrydal Moshe is a computer science and engineering major. She was born in Israel and her family lives in Pleasanton.

At UC Merced, Moshe worked as a peer math tutor for the STEM Center and served as an officer for the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics Club (SIAM). She conducted undergraduate research in two different labs and was team lead for Electronics, Electrical and Embedded Systems for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Battery Workforce Challenge Program, a comprehensive electric vehicle and battery workforce development program.

She spent a summer as an intern at Lawrence Livermore National Lab developing a machine learning model that processes data from electrocardiograms looking for ventricular arrhythmias to help physicians identify cardiovascular disease with more accuracy.

Before transferring to UC Merced, she earned an associate’s degree in computer science, physics and mathematics from Santa Barbara City College.

She was recently accepted into UC Merced’s mechanical engineering graduate program and will work with Professor Ricardo Pinto de Castro beginning in January.