Exhibit: Selected Works (2022): Graduate Student Research @ UC Merced

Selected Works: Graduate Student Research @ UC Merced is an annual exhibit that recognizes the exciting research being conducted by graduate students at UC Merced.

Amanda Caterina Leong

Amanda Caterina Leong is a Ph.D. candidate whose research seeks to build a genealogy of 'multimedia' representations of female javānmardī (chivalry) to provide new understandings regarding intersections of race, class, and gender from a premodern Persianate perspective. Her research has recently won the Middle Eastern Studies Association's 2021 Best Graduate Student Paper Award as well as the 2022 Belle da Costa Green Award from the Medieval Academy of America while also being awarded various travel and research grants from different organizations such as the American Institute of Iranian Studies, the Fred and Mitzie Ruiz Fellowship, the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender, and the Middle Eastern Medievalists. Amanda's research has also appeared in various magazines ranging from Ajam Media Collective, Chicago Review of Books' Arcturus Magazine, and IranWire. Leong is also an aerialist who uses acrobatic arts to translate and communicate her work on female power.

Danielle Bermúdez

Danielle Bermúdez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program at the University of California, Merced. She earned her M.A. in Interdisciplinary Humanities from UC Merced, and a B.A. in Feminist Studies, with a minor in Global Peace Studies, from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program Study grant, which gave her the opportunity to conduct 10 months of research in El Salvador in 2018-2019, and a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant (2022) to continue her advanced study of the Nahuatl language (Huasteca, Veracruzana de México) and of Nahuat-Pipil (El Salvador). Her dissertation focuses on Nahua women's memories of state violence in El Salvador, and how Indigenous Pipil epistemologies of healing and resistance reimagine possibilities of justice and dignity in Kuskatan.

Saima Akhtar Sumaiya

Saima A. Sumaiya is a PhD candidate in the department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Merced. She works in Baykara Lab. Saima’s research focuses on studying atomic-scale structure and properties of 2D materials by real-space surface imaging. She has authored several journal articles and has expertise in several experimental techniques related to surface science. She is the recipient of multiple fellowships and awards including those from the Northern California Chapter of the American Vacuum Society (NCCAVS) and the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE).

Zachary Malone 

Zachary Malone is a second year Environmental Systems PhD student at UC Merced. He focuses on the application of amendments made from organic materials, such as compost, on urban soils. He researches how these amendments change urban soil carbon and nutrients, which are important for fighting climate change and promoting healthy urban communities and ecosystems.

Mirko De Tomassi