The phenomenon of superconductivity is one of the most fascinating properties of electrons in solids. At low temperatures, electrons cooperate so strongly that they are able to move around without dissipating energy — behavior which is a clear manifestation of the laws of quantum physics. Physicists understand a great deal about superconductivity, but many questions…
New process helps scientists understand how planets form How the planets in the Solar System formed has long puzzled astrophysicists and planetary scientists. Although it has been agreed that planets grew from coagulation of smaller-sized objects, the details in terms of how, when, and where such accretion processes took place are far from being fully…
This fall, four new Physical Sciences faculty members will be joining the team of curious pioneers that is the Physical Sciences Division. This includes faculty from physics, statistics, astronomy, and mathematics. The division is excited to welcome these four and had a chance to learn more about a few of them. Anshul Kogar Kogar will…
How to Thrive in the Sciences at UCLA and Beyond: An event welcoming new students in the Physical Sciences Are you a freshman or first-year transfer student considering a major in Physical Sciences? Join Dean Miguel García-Garibay, UCLA alumni, faculty, and current students at a welcome event especially for you! How to Thrive in the…
Graduate Fellowships AICPA Fellowship The program ensures some classroom visible, diverse Ph.D. CPAs in the nation’s classrooms. The program awards $12,000 to support Minority CPAs that serve as role models for minority students in classroom and other settings that demonstrate a potential to become accounting educators. AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Research The program…
Math Conference to honor William Duke While any birthday is an exciting time for many, UCLA Department of Mathematics professor William Duke will be honored on his 61st by the Forschungsinstitut für Mathematik (FIM), also known as the Institute of Mathematical Research, with a conference bringing more than 200 mathematicians from around the world together….
There are tons of natural processes that we aim to understand, and postdocs Xin An and Jinxing Li, with Jacob Bortnik as their faculty advisor, recently found an explanation to one of these unknown phenomenons. Xin An, a recent UCLA graduate (PhD Space Physics, 2017) has worked with Bortnik since his PhD and now continues…
There have been many earnest efforts by academic organizations to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in higher-level education. Yet according to the latest edition of the National Science Foundation’s Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineeringreport, the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics – more widely known as STEM –…
InSight brings the first piece of UCLA to the surface of Mars As the NASA InSight Mars lander successfully touched down on Monday, November 26, 2018, UCLA faculty Chris Russell, Peter Chi, and Caroline Beghein were on the edge of their seats watching their work touch Mars. The InSight mission is focused on studying Mars’…
Million-fold increase in the power of waves near Jupiter’s moon Ganymede The planet Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field which forms the largest object in the solar physics. Observations of Jupiter’s magnetosphere in the 1990s provided a unique opportunity to understand how magnetic fields interact with particles and how moons of Jupiter can change the…