UC Riverside receives seven grants totaling $7M for graduate education

UC Riverside has received seven grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) Program. The program offers grants to academic departments and programs at higher education institutions to fund graduate fellowships. Students with strong academic records and who have demonstrated financial need and intent to pursue the highest...

Unconventional interface superconductor could benefit quantum computing

A multi-institutional team of scientists in the United States, led by physicist Peng Wei at the University of California, Riverside, has developed a new superconductor material that could potentially be used in quantum computing and be a candidate “topological superconductor.”

Frontiers of Cosmology Lecture

WAS THERE A BIG BANG? This event is free and open to the public. The local community, and middle and high school students are strongly encouraged to attend.
Ken Barish

Physicist elected chair of international nuclear physics experiment’s council

Kenneth Barish, a professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside, has been elected the chair of the STAR Council for a two-year term beginning March 2025. The STAR Experiment is run at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Lab in Upton, New York. The Solenoid Tracker at RHIC, known...

Cal-State University San Bernardino Visit Day

California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB) physics students and faculty visited the UCR Department of Physics and Astronomy for tours of the condensed matter experimental labs at UCR for the second year in a row. UCR Physics faculty and graduate students took the group of over 20 students to 8 experimental research labs (Joe, Gabor...
Ken Barish

DOE renewal grant funds student research

Kenneth Barish, a professor of physics and astronomy, has received a three-year renewal grant of more than $1 million from the Department of Energy, or DOE, to support the activities of the Nucleon Spin Physics Group at UC Riverside. The group’s research aims to unlock secrets about the fundamental structure of the universe by probing...

NSF funds instrumentation in lab linked to LIGO research

Jonathan Richardson, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UCR, has received a grant of $450,000 from the National Science Foundation to develop high-precision, low-noise laser wavefront control capabilities for LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory based at sites in Louisiana and Washington. Such capabilities are needed to improve LIGO’s sensitivity, enabling higher precision...

UCR physicists receive DOE grants as early career scientists

Physicists Miguel Arratia and Shawn Westerdale at UC Riverside have each been awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, to fund their research. Arratia will lead a project titled “Toward quantum imaging of nuclei.” Westerdale will lead a project titled “Developing low-threshold liquid argon time projection chambers with photo-sensitive dopants for...

Experimental Cosmology Center draws Congressman Mark Takano to campus

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, visited UC Riverside on August 6 to learn about the new Experimental Cosmology Center in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The center, spearheaded by Nobel laureate Barry Barish, a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy, was launched earlier this year.

New astrophysics research supports the existence of an unknown influence

A University of California, Riverside, study has expanded our knowledge of the structure of the universe and supports the existence of a new physical effect, such as a particle that has never been observed before.

Making ferromagnets ready for ultra-fast communication and computation technology

An international team led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, has made a significant breakthrough in how to enable and exploit ultra-fast spin behavior in ferromagnets. The research, published in Physical Review Letters and highlighted as an editors’ suggestion, paves the way for ultra-high frequency applications.

Summer Physics Academy brings back an alumna to campus

Alumna Christina Manzano wore a different hat three weeks ago at UC Riverside when she attended the weeklong Summer Physics Academy organized by the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Manzano, a former graduate student of Gabriela Canalizo, a professor of physics and astronomy, now teaches college freshmen and sophomores at Mt. San Jacinto College, a...

With spin centers, quantum computing takes a step forward

Quantum computing, which uses the laws of quantum mechanics, can solve pressing problems in a broad range of fields, from medicine to machine learning, that are too complex for classical computers. Quantum simulators are devices made of interacting quantum units that can be programmed to simulate complex models of the physical world. Scientists can then...

How did a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way come to be?

Crater 2, located approximately 380,000 light years from Earth, is one of the largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. Extremely cold and with slow-moving stars, Crater 2 has low surface brightness. How this galaxy originated remains unclear.
Ken Barish

Ken Barish is named chair of UCR Academic Senate

Ken Barish has been elected chair of the UC Riverside Academic Senate. His two-year term begins on Sept. 1. Barish succeeds Sang Hee-Lee, who has been chair the past two years. In the role of chair, Barish will preside over the three Academic Senate meetings each year, act as its spokesperson, oversee administrative duties, and...

Physicists gain hands-on experience using cyclotron at UC Davis

Recently, a team of UC Riverside physicists led an experimental campaign at UC Davis, where they worked on a cyclotron, an apparatus that accelerates charged particles. The team, led by Barak Schmookler, an assistant project scientist in the lab of Miguel Arratia, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, bombarded photosensors with proton beams from...

Graduate students win Dissertation Completion Fellowship Awards

Graduate students Wayne Water Vigil Jr. and Giulia Alboreggia have each won a Dissertation Completion Fellowship Award. The award, given by the UCR Graduate Division, is given to doctoral students for up to two quarters. Wayne Vigil, Jr. Wayne Vigil, Jr. Vigil Jr. and Alboreggia are the first two graduates with doctoral degrees from the...

The UC Riverside Physics and Astronomy Department Presents: Frontiers of Cosmology Lecture

Please use this link to register for the event: https://forms.gle/ngZkKgTQuPUvYBvo6 FREE visitor parking is available in parking lot 6, use this link to register your license plate: https://www.offstreet.io/location/8O58863G Click the link to view the map; parking lot 6 is indicated by a red balloon: https://www.google.com/maps/place/33.9698125%2C-117.3275625

Honoring Barry Barish with a day rich in physics

The College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, or CNAS, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UC Riverside hosted a celebration on April 30 to honor Nobel laureate Barry Barish. Barish, a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy, received a National Medal of Science from President Joe Biden last year.

Physicists solve puzzle about ancient galaxy found by Webb telescope

Last September, the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, discovered JWST-ER1g, a massive ancient galaxy that formed when the universe was just a quarter of its current age. Surprisingly, an Einstein ring is associated with this galaxy. That’s because JWST-ER1g acts as a lens and bends light from a distant source, which then appears as...
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