Graduate Programs

Opportunities for Graduate Students Abound at CNAS

Graduate students looking to pursue an advanced degree through the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences have an opportunity to work with and learn from some of the top minds in their fields.

 


Taking Advantage


CNAS is a unique and diverse learning environment. It crosses disciplines, providing chances for graduate students to tailor their learning experience and explore ideas that they have never dreamed of. If what you want isn't happening in your department or lab, it's happening down the hall or in the next building. For example:

  • Professor Tom Perring in Entomology is creating a chemical duplicate of a moth's sex pheromone and figuring out how to spray it most effectively on date palms.
  • Prof. John Baez in Mathematics is researching mind-bending topologies as two-tangle surfaces embedded in four-dimensional space.

These are just a few of the hundreds of research programs waiting for you here at UCR.

 

The Next Step

The CNAS Graduate Student Affairs Center provides assistance to both applicants and enrolled graduate students. The seven-member staff of GSAC supports all the departments and graduate programs in the college, with the exception of the Departments of Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics & Astronomy, which have their own graduate advising staff. As a first step, visit the website of the appropriate graduate advising office:
 

 

Graduate Programs in Detail

To explore further, check out the links below to see the college's master's and doctoral degree offerings. Some are department based; others are interdisciplinary. Follow links to the faculty members' own laboratory pages to see what specific work they are doing and how that fits into your interests. Don't hesitate to email a professor if you have questions.

 

Graduate Programs

CNAS Headline News

NSF logo
Four professors win 2026 NSF CAREER Awards
Four UC Riverside faculty members have been awarded prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Awards to support their research. The program targets early-career faculty who demonstrate the potential to serve as academic role models and advance their organization’s mission. Research conducted with these funds should build the foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.  UCR’s 2026 CAREER Award recipients and their funded projects are listed alphabetically below.
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Chia-Wei Yeh
Advancing research to improve epilepsy care
Chia-Wei Yeh receives predoctoral research fellowship to investigate how stress influences brain function and seizure onset
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Professor Amir Verdi
UCR scientist rewarded for making water conservation easier
National society honors Amir Verdi for creating tools and curriculum to promote their use
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Jonathan Richardson
Physicist wins top RED seed grant to advance gravitational-wave astronomy
Jonathan Richardson’s project will use AI to help design more sensitive detectors capable of probing the farthest reaches of the universe
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The hidden health cost of dollar store groceries
New UC Riverside research shows a link between dollar store food quality and higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes.
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Pesticides make ants go crazy
Don’t assume an uptick in ant activity after setting out pesticide traps means the treatment failed. New UC Riverside research shows their behavior changes as chemicals make their way through a colony. 
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Vanillin flavoring in e-cigarettes disrupts human embryonic stem cell development
UC Riverside-led study suggests possible link between vaping and difficulty conceiving in women
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Athleticism doesn’t require sacrificing longevity or fertility
Being an elite athlete, at least as a mouse, does not shorten lifespan or limit how many children you can have.
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