University of California, Merced

03/11/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 03/11/2026 11:48

UC Merced Receives $1 Million Award to Support Postdoctoral Fellows

UC Merced has received a $1 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to strengthen postdoctoral fellowships and expand research in the natural sciences. Awarded through the foundation's Postdoctoral Fellowship Commitment, this distinction places UC Merced among just 30 leading research universities nationwide to receive the grant.

The funding will support postdoctoral fellows, advancing UC Merced's commitment to scientists in the early stages of their professional development. The Moore Foundation's investment reflects the critical role postdoctoral researchers play in driving scientific discovery and shaping the next generation of scientific leaders, while enabling UC Merced to broaden its impact on research and innovation.

"We're grateful to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for their fervent dedication to postdoctoral research," Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Education Hrant Hratchian said. "Their generous gift will help UC Merced attract and retain outstanding early-career scientists, strengthen the mentoring culture across our research community, and advance the boundaries of discovery in key disciplines."

The selected postdoctoral fellows are:

  • Sobroney Heng, Ph.D., conducts research under the mentorship of Professor Ruben Michael Ceballos in the Host-Virus Evolutionary Dynamics Institute (HVEDI). She investigates virus-host interactions in photosynthetic microbes, focusing on cyanophages that infect cyanobacteria and phycodnaviruses that infect microalgae. Heng earned her doctorate from King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi in Thailand.

  • Derek Hollenbeck, Ph.D. '23, earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering at UC Merced and now conducts research with the Center for Methane Emission Research and Innovation (CMERI) and the Mechatronics, Embedded Systems and Automation (MESA) Lab under Professor YangQuan Chen. His work advances smart sensing technologies for environmental challenges, spanning digital twins, fluid mechanics, controls and fractional calculus. He applies these approaches to unmanned aerial systems for methane emission detection, localization and quantification.

  • Sourabh Kumar, Ph.D., received his doctorate in computational chemistry from the University of Bremen in Germany, and works with Professor Ashlie Martini. His research centers on mechanochemistry and multiscale modeling of force- and pressure-driven chemical processes using quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics simulations. Kumar seeks to advance understanding of how mechanical forces influence chemical transformations.

  • Vivian K. Rojas, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar in Professor Maggie Sogin's laboratory. She earned her doctoral degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Rojas uses untargeted metabolomics to identify chemical signals exchanged between bacteria and seagrass hosts, providing insight into ecosystem function, resilience and biogeochemical cycling in coastal environments. She aims to establish an independent research program focused on cross-kingdom metabolite signaling.

  • Monika Sanoria, Ph.D., completed her doctorate at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Working with Professor Ajay Gopinathan, her research examines how cellular groups make decisions through local interactions that drive collective migration and chemotactic instabilities. Using computational and theoretical modeling, she studies the structural and dynamical properties of active swimmers and explores the physical principles underlying self-organization across physics and biology.

Support from this grant lays the groundwork for a more robust postdoctoral community, enabling UC Merced to enhance professional development programming for postdocs, with workshops, mentoring resources and career readiness activities available to current fellows and the broader postdoctoral population. The funding also allows UC Merced to increase the number of postdocs on campus by between five to eight scholars, beyond the five fellows above.

Together, these efforts will deepen UC Merced's visibility as a recently designated R1 institution and further establish the campus as a hub for cutting-edge scientific inquiry and mentorship excellence.

Founded by Gordon and Betty Moore, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation works to create positive outcomes for future generations by advancing scientific discovery, environmental conservation and the special character of the San Francisco Bay Area.

University of California, Merced published this content on March 11, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on March 11, 2026 at 17:48 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]