News Archive


2024-07-25Prof. John Miao led an interdisciplinary team that utilized atomic electron tomography to map the active sites of oxygen reduction nanocatalysts. This groundbreaking work has been published and featured on the cover of Nature Catalysis, along with a News & Views article.  Read More
2024-07-12Professor Troy Carter has been named Director of the Fusion Energy Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory Read More
2024-07-07Graduate student Dakotah Tyler’s story is linked from the APS home page! Read More
2024-06-04Professor Hudson's group reports a breakthrough towards a nuclear clock Read More
2024-06-02Congratulations to the 24/25 Astronomy and Astrophysics  recipients of the Dissertation Year Fellowship: Luke Michael Finnerty, William Lake, Jonathan William Lin, Thomas Schmidt Read More
2024-06-02Congratulations to the 24/25 physics recipients of the Dissertation Year Fellowship: Casey Michael O'Day Barkan, James Tyler Carbin, Chau Nguyen Dao, Richard Myers Read More
2024-05-21Zvi Bern, a theoretical physicist, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Read More
2024-04-04Congratulations to undergraduate Jessica Pan, for her receipt of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Read More
2024-04-04Congratulations to graduate student Casey Li, for their receipt of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Read More
2024-03-04Congratulations to Professor Michael Gutperle, who was named a 2024 Physical Review Oustanding Referree! Read More
2024-02-23UCLA Astronomer R. Michael Rich and Professor Harriet Buckley (U. Durham/Utrecht University) will be awarded honorary doctor of  science degrees from Lund University in Sweden on May 31, 2024.  Rich is recognized for his work on the inner Milky Way Galaxy, while Buckley is recognized for her work in environmental science. Read More
2024-02-04Are there bright galaxies in the early universe? Read More
2024-02-04Prof Malkan and Prof Naoz have been elected fellows of the American Astronomical society Read More
2024-01-15HRL Laboratories and Professor Jason Petta Awarded Grant to Advance Quantum Computing Read More
2024-01-15Dakotah Tyler, Professor Erik Petigura report comet-like tail trails hot Jupiter exoplanet WASP-69b Read More
2024-01-03Governor Newsom, Professor Hudson, and UC/UCLA announce plans for Innovation Hub Read More
2023-12-19Prof. John Miao led a team that determined, for the first time, the 3D atomic structure and chemical order of medium- and high-entropy alloys. The paper was published in Nature. Read More
2023-10-23PhD alum Steven Durr, Prof. Shenshen Wang and collaborators distilled physical principles from powerful machine learning algorithms. Read More
2023-10-23Congratulations to Professor David Saltzberg, the 2023 APS Division of Particles and Fields Instrumentation Prize Read More
2023-10-23Congratulations to Professor Alvine Kamaha, named as 2024 recipient of the APS Edward A. Bouchet Award, which recognizes... a distinguished minority physicist who has made significant contributions to physics research and the advancement of underrepresented minority scientists Read More
2023-08-27Congratulations to Professor David Leibrandt for his naming as 2023 Moore Experimental Investigator! Read More
2023-08-08Congratulations to Professors Derek Schaeffer and Mikhail Solon, named 2023 DOE Early Career Scientists Read More
2023-08-02UCLA Ph. D. John Sarrao named Director of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Read More
2023-07-26Prof. Kogar from condensed matter and Prof. Musumeci from accelerator and beam physics team up to win the highly competitive EPIQS award from Moore foundation to develop a novel high resolution electron energy loss spectrometer. Read More
2023-07-23Professor David Saltzberg provided equations to "Oppenheimer" Read More
2023-06-06Experimental particle physics postdoc Elisabetta Manca won the Conversi Dissertation Prize from the INFN (Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics). Read More
2023-05-31Congratulations to Stephen Ebert, Tiema Qian, and Zhiwan Xu, who were each awarded a UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship! Read More
2023-05-29Undergraduate Amanda Younes has been interviewed by New Scientist about her project 'cooling by heating'. Read More
2023-05-11Following his election to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Professor Karoly Holczer delivered his acceptance lecture on April 26, 2023. Read More
2023-04-23GLASS-JWST team, led by Prof Tommaso Treu confirms most distant cosmic structure known Read More
2023-04-16Prof. Shenshen Wang and former grad student Hongda Jiang explained, in a pair of works, why antibody-producing cells physically learn and collectively remember the pathogens. Read More
2023-04-11The recent work on jet charge by Scientist Andrew Larakoski, former undergrad Jinghong Yang, and Prof. Zhongbo Kang has been selected as Editors’ Suggestion in Physical Review Letters. Read More
2023-04-02The department wishes to congratulate our undergraduate students awarded the 2023 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship: Cody Fan, Rebekah Jin Read More
2023-04-02The department wishes to congratulate our graduate students awarded the 2023 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship: Zoe Haggard, Sahil Hegde, Asari Prado, Claire Elisabeth Williams, Anna Wolz Read More
2023-03-23Prof. John Miao led a team that observed topological magnetic monopoles in 3D. The paper has been published in Nature Nanotechnology Read More
2023-03-22Prof. John Miao led a team of scientists from CU Boulder, UCLA, Stanford and UC Berkeley that has received a $7.5 million MURI award. Read More
2023-03-15Prof. Shenshen Wang and PhD student Hongda Jiang developed a new theoretical framework that predicts how and why immune cells use force to direct their own evolution. Read More
2023-03-02Congratulations to Professor Ni Ni, on her election to Secretary/Treasurer for the APS Division of Materials Physics. Read More
2023-02-14Congratulations to Professor Zvi Bern, who has been awarded the 2023 Galileo Galilei medal! Read More
2023-02-01Congratulations to Prof. James Rosenzweig for being awarded the 2023 EPS Hannes Hannes Alfven Prize Read More
2023-02-01Prof Tommaso Treu Named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Read More
2023-01-25Congratulations to Professor David Saltzberg for his well-deserved winning of the 2022 APS Division of Particles and Fields Mentoring Award Read More
2023-01-25Visiting Professor has something to say about the future of physics. Read More
2023-01-19A recently discovered acoustic effect allows a hot gas to simulate the gravity-induced convection within a star or giant planet. Read More
2022-11-21Alex Kusenko was named Associate Editor of the Reviews of Modern Physics. Read More
2022-11-16Tommaso Treu leads team finding and studying the first galaxies to form after the big bang. Read More
2022-11-11We congratulate Prof. James Rosenzweig for being awarded the prestigious Advanced Accelerator Concepts 2022 prize Read More
2022-11-08Dr Guido Roberts-Borsani awarded Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research. Read More
2022-11-08Tommaso Treu parts of a study published in Nature that captures very early stages of Supernova explosion using Read More
2022-10-31UCLA Graduate Dr. Agnieszka Sorensen won dissertation award from APS Division of Nuclear Physics Read More
2022-10-30Congratulations to Professor Wes Campbell, for his naming by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to the first cohort of Experimental Physics Investigators. Read More
2022-10-20Congratulations to Professors Campbell, Kraus, Naoz, and Ni for being named APS Fellows Read More
2022-10-18The department congratulates Professor Wes Campbell, named 2022 APS Fellow in the Division of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (DAMOP). Read More
2022-10-15Astrophysical Journal Letters Focus Issue on Early Results from the James Webb Space Telescope program GLASS, led by UCLA Professor Tommaso Treu. Read More
2022-10-10The department congratulates Professor Ni Ni, named 2022 APS Fellow in the Division of Materials Physics (DMP). Read More
2022-10-10The department congratulates Professor Smadar Naoz, named 2022 APS Fellow in the Division of Astrophysics (DAP). Read More
2022-10-10The department congratulates Professor Per Kraus, named 2022 APS Fellow in the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF). Read More
2022-09-27Congratulations to Dr. Matthew Hosek for receiving the Brinson Prize Fellowship to work with the Galactic Center Group. Read More
2022-08-18Graduate student Briley Lewis writes on research into black holes and dark matter at UCLA Read More
2022-07-31UCLA-led team develops new approach for building quantum computers. The building blocks of chemistry offer the potential to dramatically scale up quantum processing. Read More
2022-07-30Congratulations to Professor Tuan Do, who has been recipient of the 2022-2023 UCLA Society of Hellman Fellows award. Read More
2022-07-11An international team lead by UCLA Professor Tommaso Treu has obtained some of the very first data with the new James Webb Space Telescope. Read More
2022-07-11Congratulations to Dr. Brenna Mockler for receiving the UC Chancellor postdoctoral fellowship. Read More
2022-07-07Prof. Alvine Kamaha's LUX-ZEPLIN experiment set the world's best limit on dark matter and continues to run. Read More
2022-06-21Congratulations to Prof. Shenshen Wang on being awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER award. Read More
2022-05-31Congratulations to Prof. Roger Ulrich on being awarded the 2022 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. Read More
2022-05-13Read Prof. Andrea Ghez's interesting interview with the LA Times Read More
2022-05-08Prof. Karoly Holczer has been elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Read More
2022-05-02Prof. Alice Shapley will give the Faculty Research Lecture on "Traveling Back in Time to the Birth of Galaxies” (May 17) Read More
2022-05-02CERN has featured a UCLA physics result, a search for exotic new particles signaled by anomalous lifetimes Read More
2022-05-02Graduate Student Walter Lynn won a Dept. of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Fellowship Read More
2022-05-02Congratulations to Dr. Stephanie Krilov, who has won the Academic Senate's staff award for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Read More
2022-04-11Congratulations to Joshua Samani for being awarded the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award for Senate Faculty. Read More
2022-04-05Congratulations to Sydney Feldman on winning an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Read More
2022-03-24Prof. Smadar Naoz was elected to the Executive Committee of the Far West Section of the APS. Read More
2022-02-17Prof. Zhongbo Kang won a Dept. of Energy grant to boost diversity in nuclear physics. Read More
2022-02-17Profs. Malkan, Shapley, and Treu presented a webinar on UCLA Astronomy's science with the James Webb Space Telescope. Read More
2022-02-14Prof. Mikhail Solon named Sloan Research Fellow. UCLA leads all universities in number of 2022 awardees. Read More
2022-01-30Recent PhD graduate, Agnieszka (Wergieluk) Sorensen, had her nuclear physics results featured by DOE Office of Science. Read More
2022-01-12Astrophysics B.S. graduate, Maria Vincent, was granted the UAE Golden Visa award. Read More
2022-01-05Prof. Tommaso Treu was named AAS Fellow for his "innovative strong gravitational lensing observations and analysis methods." Read More
2021-12-12PhD alum Amy Lo was featured on "60 Minutes" for her role on the James Webb Space Telescope. Read More
2021-12-12PhD alum Lauren Pearce, Prof. Kusenko, and collaborators have linked gravitational waves, supersymmetry, and the Universe’s matter/antimatter asymmetry. Read More
2021-10-30CERN publicized PhD student Brent Stone's search for TeV-mass particles decaying into two Higgs bosons. Read More
2021-10-18Prof. Hudson and colleagues won a $3M NSF grant to support PhD students in quantum science and engineering. Read More
2021-10-12Profs. Alice Shapley and Tommaso Treu have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society (APS). Read More
2021-09-19Prof. Smadar Naoz and collaborators won the Scialog award: Signatures of Life in the Universe, for averting false biosignatures. Read More
2021-09-19Recent Astro PhD, Jon Zink, and colleagues improved Kepler planet finding and are featured in Physics Today. Read More
2021-09-05Physics Today featured Prof. Stuart Brown's lab for ruling out claims of SRO's spin-triplet superconductivity. Read More
2021-08-29Prof. Rene Ong's General AntiParticle Spectrometer was approved by NASA for at least two Antarctic balloon campaigns. Read More
2021-07-20Prof. Ni Ni's group and collaborators discovered the Layer Hall effect in a 2D topological axion antiferromagnet. Read More
2021-06-29Prof. Thomas Dumitrescu has co-founded the Simons Collaboration on Global Categorical Symmetries, initially awarded $8M to unlock the power of symmetry. Read More
2021-06-22Congratulations to Dissertation Year Fellows: Kevin Chen, Bao Minh Hoang, Chaowei Hu, Dimitrios Kosmopoulos, John Terry, & Ji Zou. Read More
2021-06-07UCLA's Basic Plasma Science Facility accelerated electrons by Alfvén waves to solve the mystery of aurora borealis. Read More
2021-05-17Former grad student Chen-Hsuan Chu (PhD '14 with Chakravarty) won RIKEN's Emergent Matter Science award. Read More
2021-05-01Congratulations to PhD students Eric Cropp and Kyle Ferguson on winning DOE Office of Science graduate fellowships Read More
2021-04-22Prof. John Miao received the 2021 Innovation in Materials Characterization Award from the Materials Research Society Read More
2021-04-21Congratulations to Spenser Talkington and Jonathan Lin on their NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. Read More
2021-04-14Congratulations to Dr. Shu "Suzy" Zhang on the UCLA Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research Read More
2021-04-05Congratulations to PhD students Anowar Shajib, Jon Zink, and former undergrad Erika Holmbeck on their Hubble Fellowships. Read More
2021-03-31Prof. John Miao led a team that solved a century-old scientific problem, the paper is published in this week's Nature. Read More
2021-03-31Profs. Malkan, Shapley, Treu, Turner, and Drs. Hosek and Roberts-Borsani are among the first awarded James Webb Space Telescope time. Read More
2021-03-30Congratulations to former UCLA Astro PhD student Dr. Emily Martin for her 51 Pegasi b Fellowship from the Heising-Simons Foundation Read More
2021-03-25Congratulations to Astro PhD student Sanaea Rose for winning the Charles E. and Sue K. Young Graduate Student Fellowship. Read More
2021-03-05A $500,000 gift from Astrid and Howard Preston will allow renovation of UCLA's Remote Observing Facility Read More
2021-02-11Congratulations to Prof. Tommaso Treu on the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize and locating a Fast Radio Burst. Read More
2021-02-05Congratulations to Prof. Alex Kusenko for being selected as a Simons Fellow in Theoretical Physics. Read More
2021-02-01Recent PhD student, Daniel Gilman, won honorable mention at the CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award ceremony. Read More
2021-01-17Prof. Matt Malkan has been appointed to the National Science Board to advise Congress and the White House. Read More
2020-12-14Graduate student Dimitrios Kosmopoulos has been awarded the Mavroyannis Scholarship in Theoretical Physics from the AHEPA. Read More
2020-12-10Congratulations to P&A alumna Kalliopi Petraki (PhD '09) on promotion to the highest professorial rank at the Sorbonne and a 2M euro theory grant." Read More
2020-12-04Prof. Troy Carter chaired the panel that authored the long-range strategic plan for fusion power and plasma science. Read More
2020-12-02Engineer Maxx Tepper's high-bandwidth custom electronics work for the LHC was featured by Samtec Blog. Read More
2020-11-24Prof. Graciela Gelmini was named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Read More
2020-11-20The newest faculty of UCLA Astronomy and Astrophysics gave a public webinar about their research to nearly 1,000 people. Read More
2020-11-10Senior physics major Alina Kochocki won Honorable Mention for the 2020 University Space Research Association (USRA) Distinguished Undergraduate Award Read More
2020-10-12Check out the profile of Prof. Erik Petigura in the Daily Bruin. Read More
2020-10-05Andrea Ghez, the Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics at UCLA, has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. Read More
2020-09-21Prof. Karoly Holczer and colleagues won a $1M NSF award to develop nitrogen vacancies in diamonds to advance quantum sensing. Read More
2020-09-08Profs. Walter Gekelman and Victoria Vesna will give a virtual plasma physics tour for Ars Electronica. Read More
2020-08-31We mourn the passing of Prof. Bob Finkelstein who joined our faculty in 1948 and remained active through this year. Read More
2020-08-19Prof. John Miao, PhD student Arjun Rana and colleagues report an innovative method to capture multiple images from attosecond pulses. Read More
2020-08-04Prof. Seth Putterman was awarded the DoD's Newton Award for Transformative Ideas during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Read More
2020-07-28Former UCLA Physics PhD Student, Anne White, has been appointed the Distinguished Professor of Engineering at MIT's School of Engineering. Read More
2020-07-28Congratulations to Prof. Ni Ni and PhD student Chaowei Hu for the fabrication and discovery of the first intrinsic ferromagnetic topological insulator. Read More
2020-07-24Congratulations to Prof. Christoph Niemann for winning the 2020 APS John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Read More
2020-07-21UCLA Physics will co-lead a new $25M NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute to overcome scientific challenges to quantum computing. Read More
2020-07-17Congratulations to Prof. Warren Mori for winning the 2020 APS Maxwell Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of plasma physics. Read More
2020-07-01Congratulations to Prof. Thomas Dumitrescu for being named a UCLA Hellman Fellow. Read More
2020-06-05Prof. Zhongbo Kang has won an NSF Career Award for theoretical work in quantum chromodynamics and nucleon structure. Read More
2020-06-05Grad Student Eddie Chang won "Best Poster" at the national APS meeting of the Group on Precision Measurement and Fundamental Constants Read More
2020-06-01Our department mourns the passing of Prof. Roberto Peccei and remembers his deep legacy and friendship. Read More
2020-05-15UCLA 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
2020-05-01A 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
2020-05-01Congratulations to second-year grad student Jessica Pilgram, recent awardee of an NSF GRFP. Read More
2020-04-14Prof. 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
2020-04-07A 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
2020-04-02Prof. 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
2020-04-02Dr. Hanguo Wang of UCLA helped start a project to build ventilators to fight COVID-19 disease using common off-the-shelf parts. Read More
2020-03-30Trent Thomas, a senior astrophysics major in the UCLA Physics & Astronomy department, just received an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Read More
2020-03-08Prof. 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
2020-02-24Professors 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
2020-02-12Erik 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
2020-01-20American Astronomical Society has announced that Smadar Naoz is the recipient of the Helen B. Warner Prize for 2020 for her many early career contributions to theoretical astrophysics. Read More
2020-01-09Hanguo Wang has been awarded the 2019 DPF Instrumentation Award for contributions to and development of the use of liquid xenon and argon detectors for direct detection searches for dark matter, including the two-phase technique. Read More
2020-01-09Professor Ni Ni and graduate student Chaowei Hu have found a new magnetic topological insulator, MnBi4Te7, a candidate for the Quantum Anomalous Hall effect. Read More
2020-01-07Tommaso Treu and other HoLiCOW colleagues have found a new Hubble measurement that strengthens a discrepancy in the universe's expansion rate. Read More
2020-01-07Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Tommaso Treu and fellow astronomers have found that dark matter forms much smaller clumps than previously known. Read More
2019-12-16Mark Morris and colleagues have revealed a new image of a candy-cane-shaped feature in the center of our galaxy. Read More
2019-12-11Astrophysicist Smadar Naoz has found that a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy may have a friend. Read More
2019-12-11David Jewitt leads a new analysis of data from Hubble Space Telescope that provides more details about the first observed interstellar comet. Read More
2019-11-19UCLA professors Edward L. Wright and Ni Ni have been acknowledged in the 2019 list of the world's most influential scientific researchers. Read More
2019-11-05Jia 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
2019-11-04David Jewitt and colleagues have discovered twenty new moons of Saturn. This brings the ringed planet's total number of moons to 82, surpassing Jupiter, which has 79. Read More
2019-10-28Astronomer Tommaso Treu and colleagues have released a study suggesting that the universe is expanding more rapidly than previously thought. Read More
2019-10-25Lucy 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
2019-10-25Ben 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
2019-10-24David 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
2019-10-22R. Michael Rich has led an international team carrying out a survey for the Haloes and Environments of Nearby Galaxies (HERON) collaboration. Read More
2019-10-22In a recent article in The Conversation, Brad Hansen discusses what moons in other solar systems reveal about planets like Neptune and Jupiter. Read More
2019-10-01Chris Regan and William Hubbard have received Microscopy Today's "Innovation Award" for their invention of SEEBIC imaging. Read More
2019-10-01UCLA has had four faculty named APS Fellows in the 2019 Cohort: Andrea Ghez, Eric Hudson, Aydogan Ozcan, and Chee Wei Wong. Read More
2019-10-01Prof. Stuart Brown and collaborators have published a major breakthrough in superconductivity in the journal Nature. Read More
2019-10-01The 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
2019-09-01Thomas Dumitrescu, assistant professor in the department, has been awarded the prestigious Department of Energy Office of Science Early Career Award for his work "New Tools for Strongly Coupled Quantum Field Theories." Read More
2019-09-01Professor Nathan Whitehorn's project, IceCube, the Antarctic neutrino detector that in July of 2018 helped unravel one of the oldest riddles in physics and astronomy - the origin of high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays - is getting an upgrade. Read More
2019-08-07Dr. Beth Klein has been awarded the American Physical Society's M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship. Dr. Klein, a junior development engineer in the Astronomy Division, studies polluted white dwarf stars, elemental compositions of extrasolar planetesimals, formation and evolution of rocky planets and exoplanets, and high-resolution spectroscopy and imaging. Read More
2019-07-01At 6:56 in this video by Nature Magazine, Physics & Astronomy Professor Mayank Mehta discusses how virtual-reality mazes are helping to unlock the complexity of the human brain. Read More
2019-01-01More than 100 years after Albert Einstein published his iconic general theory of relativity, it is beginning to fray at the edges, said Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. "Einstein's right, at least for now," said Ghez. Read More