News Archive


Friday, June 5, 2020: Prof.Grad Student Eddie Chang won "Best Poster" at the national APS meeting of the Group on Precision Measurement and Fundamental Constants. Read More

Friday, June 5, 2020: Prof. Zhongbo Kang has won an NSF Career Award for theoretical work in quantum chromodynamics and nucleon structure. Read More

Monday, June 1, 2020: Our department mourns the passing of Prof. Roberto Peccei and remembers his deep legacy and friendship. Read More

Friday, May 15, 2020: UCLA physicists have created the world's best fidelity qubit, the basic element of quantum information, making it easier to build a quantum computer. Read More

Friday, May 1st, 2020: A surprising ferromagnetic order in superconductors predicted by Prof. Sudip Chakravarty, then-grad student Angela Kopp, and then-postdoc Amit Ghosal has been found experimentally. Read More

Tuesday, April 14, 2020: Prof. Robijn Bruisnma published an article calculating the general phase plot for the capsid of viruses, which was selected as Editor's Suggestion for Physical Review Letters. Read More

Tuesday, April 7, 2020: A Nature video featuring the research from Prof. John Miao's group has reached 10 million views, becoming the most viewed video ever made by Nature in any discipline and indicating that the public is still interested in the basic research. Read More

Thursday, April 2, 2020: Dr. Hanguo Wang of UCLA helped start a project to build ventilators to fight COVID-19 disease using common off-the-shelf parts. Read More

Thursday, April 2, 2020: Prof. Michalis Bachtis and UCLA colleagues have been awarded $2.2M as part of an NSF Major Research Equipment & Facilities Grant to upgrade the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Read More

Monday, March 30, 2020: Trent Thomas, a senior astrophysics major in the UCLA Physics & Astronomy department, just received an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Read More

Monday, March 9, 2020: Prof. John Miao led a team that produces most accurate 3D images of 2D materials. The work was published in Nature Materials today, accompanied with a News & Views article by Prof. Angus Kirkland of Oxford University. Read more

Tuesday, February 25, 2020: Professors Andrea Ghez and Ian McLean were named inaugural fellows of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) for their contributions toward the AAS mission of enhancing and sharing humanity's scientific understanding of the universe. Read more

Wednesday, February 12, 2020: Erik Petigura, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, has been selected to receive the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowship, which selects early-career scientists and scholars who are rising stars of science. Read more

Thursday, December 12, 2019: David Jewitt leads a new analysis of data from Hubble Space Telescope that provides more details about the first observed interstellar comet. Read more

Wednesday, December 11, 2019: Astrophysicist Smadar Naoz has found that a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy may have a friend. Read more

Wednesday, November 20, 2019: UCLA professors Edward L. Wright and Ni Ni have been acknowledged in the 2019 list of the world’s most influential scientific researchers. Read More

Monday, November 4, 2019: Jia Han is the lead author of the article "3D measurements of plasma parameters in an industrial plasma etch tool” in "Physics of Plasmas." Read More

Thursday, October 24, 2019: Astronomer Tommaso Treu and colleagues have released a study suggesting that the universe is expanding more rapidly than previously thought. Read More

Tuesday, October 22, 2019: Lucy Fortson won the APS Nicholson Medal for "the humanitarian aspect of physics." Dr. Fortson received her Ph.D. in physics from UCLA in 1991. Read More

Thursday, October 17, 2019: Ben Zuckerman and Hilke Schlichting have co-authored a study suggesting that Earth is not unique: Earth-like planets may be common in the universe. Read More

Wednesday, October 16, 2019: David Jewitt has captured the best and sharpest look at a comet from outside of our solar system that recently barged into our own. Read More

Tuesday, October 15, 2019: R. Michael Rich has led an international team carrying out a survey for the Haloes and Environments of Nearby Galaxies (HERON) collaboration. Read More

Thursday, October 3, 2019: In a recent article in The Conversation, Brad Hansen discusses what moons in other solar systems reveal about planets like Neptune and Jupiter. Read More

Thursday, September 26, 2019 Chris Regan and William Hubbard have received Microscopy Today's "Innovation Award" for their invention of SEEBIC imaging. Read More

Tuesday, September 24, 2019 UCLA has had four faculty named APS Fellows in the 2019 Cohort: Andrea Ghez, Eric Hudson, Aydogan Ozcan, and Chee Wei Wong. Read More

Tuesday, September 24, 2019: Prof. Stuart Brown and collaborators have published a major breakthrough in superconductivity in the journal Nature. Read More

Saturday, September 21, 2019: Riju Dasgupta, recent UCLA PhD in physics, has been profiled in the Washington Post regarding his research at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Read More

Wednesday, September 11, 2019: The enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy is having an unusually large meal of interstellar gas and dust. Researchers don’t yet understand why. Read More

Monday, September 9, 2019: Professor James Rosenzweig has been selected to receive a DOE research grant for work in particle accelerator science and technology. Read More

Wednesday, September 4, 2019 Andrea Ghez, distinguished professor and director of UCLA’s Galactic Center Group, was awarded an honorary degree from Oxford University. Read More

Tuesday, September 3, 2019: MorrisFest 2019 celebrates Mark Morris’ academic and scientific career as well as his 2^3 * 3^2 birthday. Please join us at UCLA September 5-7, 2019. Read More

Friday, August 23, 2019: Walter Gekelman's latest paper shows that Launching Alfvén waves into Earth’s magnetosphere can save satellites from nuclear catastrophe. Read More

Friday, August 23, 2019: DOE tweeted about the Basic Plasma Science Facility @UCLA: "Sometimes you need tools that are not too big and not too small but just right." Read More

Thursday, August 15, 2019: An international team co-led by the UCLA Particle Beam Physics Lab (Prof. James Rosenzweig, director) demonstrated a new type of electron source. Read More

Monday, August 12, 2019: Dr. Tuan Do and collaborators have discovered an extremely bright and unexpected flare from the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Read More

Tuesday, August 6, 2019: Prof. Sergio Ferrara, UCLA faculty and member of the Bhaumik Institute, has won the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Read More

Monday, August 5, 2019: Astronomer Dr. Beth Klein has been awarded the American Physical Society's M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship. Read More

Thursday, August 1, 2019: Prof. Thomas Dumitrescu, assistant professor in the department, has been awarded the prestigious Department of Energy Office of Science Early Career Award. Read More

Monday, July 29, 2019: UCLA is now one of the host institutions for the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship offered by the Heising-Simons Foundation. Read More

Thursday, July 25, 2019: Andrea Ghez and her research team reveal an analysis of a star’s orbit near supermassive black hole that gives a look into how gravity behaves. Read More

Wednesday, July 24, 2019: At 6:56 in this Nature video watch Mayank Mehta explain his research in Neurophysics about how the brain perceives space-time. Read More

Tuesday, July 16, 2019: Professor Nathan Whitehorn's IceCube Collaboration (NSF) has been awarded a 37 million dollar upgrade. Read More

Wednesday, July 3, 2019: Former PhD student Prof. Abigail Vieregg has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Read More

Tuesday, July 2, 2019: David Cesar has been chosen for the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Technical Committee (PAST) award. Read More

Thursday, June 27, 2019: Hudson researchers show that low-temperature activation of chemical reactions via excited electronic states leads to a lower-than-expected reaction rate. Read More

Wednesday, June 26, 2019: Prof. John Miao and team capture atomic motion in 4D for the first time, with results (published in Nature) that contradict classical nucleation theory. Read More

Friday, June 21, 2019: Former UCLA Physics PhD Anne White has been named head of the Nuclear Science & Engineering Department at MIT. Read More

Friday, June 21, 2019: Graduate student Alexander Stephan and his advisor, Smadar Naoz, have published new results on the fate of binaries in the Galactic Center. Read More

Friday, June 7, 2019: Smadar Naoz is this year’s UCLA Faculty Career Commitment to Diversity DEI Award recipient, raising awareness for departmental inclusion and diversity. Read More

Friday, April 19, 2019: The National Science Foundation has selected Seejia Scarlett Yu, a member of the Campbell Group, for a prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship. Read More

Thursday, April 18, 2019: Graduate student Jared Reiten has received a prestigious fellowship from UC Office of the President: the UC-National Lab In-Residence Graduate Fellowship. Read More

Wednesday, April 17, 2019: Professor Slava Turyshev is co-author of a Scientific American article proposing a new way to search for Near-Earth Objects (asteroids and comets). Read More

Thursday, April 11, 2019: Astronomer and Galactic Center director Andrea Ghez has been in the news as a commentator on the first image of a black hole in the M87 galaxy. Read More

Monday, April 8, 2019: Tommaso Treu and colleagues use the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes to measure the universe's current velocity and expansion rate. Read More

Wednesday, March 20, 2019: Mark Morris and colleagues have discovered two "galactic center chimneys" that seem to funnel matter and energy away from the Milky Way's center. Read More

Friday, March 8, 2019: ‘The Big Bang Theory’ scholarship will now support twice as many UCLA students pursuing STEM research. Read More

Tuesday, March 5, 2019: Physics & Astronomy will host SudipFest, a three-day workshop celebrating the career of Distinguished Professor Sudip Chakravarty, April 4-6, 2019. Read More

Friday, February 22, 2019: The American Astronomical Society has selected Prof. Alice Shapley to deliver the Kavli Foundation Plenary Lecture at the 234th AAS meeting in St. Louis. Read More

Thursday, February 21, 2019: James Rosenzweig's article in Nature Photonics describes research into a fascinating aspect of light: the existence of orbital angular momentum (OAM). Read More

Wednesday, February 6, 2019: Former UCLA alumnus and leading plasma scientist Thomas C. Katsouleas has been appointed the 16th president of the University of Connecticut. Read More

Monday, February 4, 2019: UCLA participates in the worldwide Cherenkov Telescope Array project, the world’s largest and most sensitive ground-based, gamma-ray observatory. Read More

Tuesday, January 22, 2019: 3 UCLA students (Rafi Hessami, Shon Mackie, River Robles, coached by Josh Samani) won the silver medal in the 9th Annual University Physics Competition. Read More

Tuesday, January 22, 2019: A research team led by two UCLA astronomers uses split images of quasars to produce a new estimate of the Hubble constant. Read More