Editor's note: This story is republished from the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of UC Merced Magazine.
Omar DeGuchy remembers the moment he left the comfort of UC Merced — the place he’d found his footing — and stepped onto what some call “the smartest square mile on Earth.” He defended his Ph.D. dissertation in applied mathematics remotely in 2020 and started a job at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
DeGuchy’s journey from a first-generation college student unsure of his future to a staff scientist at one of the nation’s premier labs reflects a growing trend. UC Merced has an expanding pipeline of students finding their place, their confidence and their futures at national laboratories.
DeGuchy credits internships secured during his time at UC Merced for opening his eyes to the possibility of government research.
“They had access to a lot more computing than I had at school, and subject matter experts in different areas,” DeGuchy said of his summer at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
That experience fueled his curiosity, and with a connection from his advisor Professor Roummel Marcia, opened the door to LLNL through its Data Science Summer Institute led by the Data Science Institute.
“In both internships, it was really appealing to me how the teams worked together,” he said. “I really liked that collaborative research; it was something that I was already doing at UC Merced.”
Pathways Built Through Collaboration
Proximity to and shared research priorities with four U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national labs — LLNL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories’ Livermore branch — have led to outside researchers serving as adjunct faculty, cross-university research and collaborative initiatives such as the Joint Genome Institute-UC Merced Internship Program.
The collaboration with the JGI began as a graduate student summer internship at LBNL, founded by applied mathematics Professor Suzanne Fernandes-Sindi and JGI’s Axel Visel and Zhong Wang in 2014. It is currently a year-long initiative funded by a DOE RENEW grant with Sindi as the principal investigator. The collaboration has involved professors Carolin Frank, Fred Wolf and Tomas Rube, as well as Wang, Visel and other JGI researchers who have mentored undergraduate and graduate students.
“We want our students to see themselves in different career pathways,” said Sindi, who is an applied mathematics professor. “It can be incredibly valuable to spend time thinking and talking with folks in a different environment. It's hard to know what kinds of skills and problems you might work on at a national lab without going to a national lab.”
Hands‑on Challenges
More than 90 UC Merced students have worked directly with JGI scientists on biosystems and bioenergy research to enhance their computational skills and professional development.
In 2019, Sindi helped launch another lab pathway: LLNL’s Data Science Challenge (DSC) with Marisol Gamboa, now the lab’s computing workforce manager. The challenge brings students to Livermore for an intensive two-week summer program where they collaborate on complex scientific and computational problems.
DeGuchy, who now leads the DSC on the LLNL side, emphasized it is a stepping stone for students to gain experience and network within the lab in hopes it will lead to longer internships, postdoctoral appointments, or full-time positions.
“It started as an opportunity to give students at UC Merced exposure to a data science problem that they would find at the lab and help the students interact with the lab in some capacity,” said DeGuchy, noting that the challenge has expanded to include other universities. “It's hard to get internships initially, and this gives students something to put down on their resumes that they can point to when they're applying to longer internships.”
UC Merced students now have access to innumerable opportunities through UC‑systemwide programs and DOE-wide internship pathways, and collaborations with national lab scientists through workshops and research initiatives.
Alumna Andrea Rodarte Hernandez, ’14, recalls visiting SLAC in Menlo Park with physics Professor Linda Hirst to use its high-power linear accelerator for her research investigating the dispersion of semiconducting quantum dots into thermotropic liquid crystal. She intended to stay in academia after grad school, but her time at SLAC allowed her “to see some of the work that is happening at the national labs” and helped her stand out during the hiring process at Sandia Labs in New Mexico, where she is a failure-analysis engineer.
“Having the opportunity to go to other user facilities made it easier for me to be able to walk into a national lab and feel a little bit more comfortable,” said Hernandez, who has a Ph.D. in physics.
Hernandez and DeGuchy’s paths are no longer exceptions. The same national labs that once felt out of reach now actively recruit UC Merced talent, collaborate with its faculty and build programs to bring Bobcats into mission-driven research.
