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Paul Smaldino Wins International Award for Teaching Cultural Evolution

October 17, 2025
Our own Prof. Paul Smaldino has been recognized twice by the Cultural Evolution Society’s ACE Course Design Awards, an international competition recognizing excellence in teaching cultural evolution. Prof. Smaldino won the award for two of his UC Merced courses: COGS 174 (...

Perception or Reality? Rethinking How Polarized We Really Are

July 9, 2025
Are opinions on controversial political issues as divided as many people perceive them to be? Researchers from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen and the University of California Merced have addressed this...

Gaming cancer: How citizen science games could help cure disease

July 4, 2025
By inviting players to tackle real scientific problems, games can offer a hand in solving medicine's toughest challenges. Click below to read the full article written by Jeff Yoshimi, professor and founding faculty member in the Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences and the...

Fresno Unified superintendent called out amidst AI controversy

July 2, 2025
“We are not evolutionarily, psychologically prepared to understand that AI does not have general intelligence,” UC Merced Associate Professor Colin Holbrook said. He warns that AI is a dangerous tool to trust. Henry’s post says she “moved too fast under pressure,...

Congrats to CogSci graduates!

May 19, 2025
Congratulations to all CogSci graduates! On Friday May 16, we celebrated the achievements of a half-dozen junior cognitive-scientists who were awarded their PhDs during UC Merced's Graduate Commencement. And then on Sunday May 18, dozens of CogSci majors and minors walked the stage during...

CogSci major wins campus research award

March 20, 2025
Cognitive Science undergraduate student Maya Manesh has been awarded the Carter Joseph Abrescy and Larry Kranich Library Award for Student Research Excellence. Awarded annually by the UC Merced Library, the award "recognizes students who demonstrate effective use of UC Merced library and...

Students organize successful "Brain Waves" symposium

March 15, 2025
More than seventy-five undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors attended the first annual Brain Waves Research Symposium and Conference on March 1. The event was organized by UC Merced's Cognitive Science Student Association, a student-run campus club...

Why the Battle Against Cancer Needs Awesome Video Games

January 23, 2025
  Read UC Merced's Newroom Story HERE.

Are there equitable pathways to college for the Central Valley's students? CIS Prof. Aguirre-Muñoz has the data

November 20, 2024
Prof. Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz has released a progress update from the first phase of "Advancing Educational Opportunity in the Central Valley Project," a research initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Do high school students in the Central Valley, especially students...

Study: People Facing Life-or-Death Choice Put Too Much Trust in AI

September 4, 2024
In simulated life-or-death decisions, about two-thirds of people in a UC Merced study allowed a robot to change their minds when it disagreed with them -- an alarming display of excessive trust in artificial intelligence, researchers said. Human subjects allowed robots to sway their judgment...

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