News

Welcome 2019 New Physical Sciences Faculty

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...

2019 Welcome to Physical Sciences new student event

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...

Campus photo of UCLA Royce Hall

Awards and Fellowships

Fellowships Eugene Cota-Robles This four-year fellowship program, funded by the University of California Office of the President, the UCLA Graduate Division, and the home department, supports a limited number of students who are entering PhD programs and are interested in a career in college or university teaching and research. Applicants must complete both the Fellowship...

William Duke

Duke Conference

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....

Large Plasma Device at UCLA

A new discovery; elegance in electrostatic structures

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...

2018 Fall Science and Engineering Showcase

Organization for Cultural Diversity in Science

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 –...

Student Spotlight: Ken Zhao

Research on seafloor has great implications for sea levels Ken Zhao, a PhD candidate in UCLA’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS), published phenomenal research on seafloor effects on melting glaciers. In collaboration with AOS faculty members Andrew Stewart and Jim McWilliams, Zhao’s research focuses on the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and...

InSight lander illustration

Mars InSight Mission

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’...

Study by UCLA EPSS researcher illuminates behavior of chorus waves

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...

Ocean at sunset

The Real Debates of Climate Science: Does the Ocean Matter for Climate?

5th Annual Yanai Distinguished Lecture 2018 Presented by UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences The speaker Amy Clement is the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. She is an expert in climate modeling. In her...

Spotlight: Students translating research into public policy

Student Spotlight: Translating Research Into Public Policy David Gonzalez Graduate student Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. and Sacramento to discuss my research with policy makers. The trip to Washington, D.C. was training for the Switzer Foundation Fellowship. In Sacramento, I was to represent UCLA...

Campus photo of UCLA Royce Hall

Faculty Awards

Professors distinguished by the UCLA Academic Senate The UCLA Academic Senate has awarded two professors from the Physical Sciences Division for their incredible performance. Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Alexander Spokoyny was honored with the 2020-21 Distinguished Teaching Award, specifically for his undergraduate research mentorship. Additionally, Professor and Vice Chair for Astronomy and Astrophysics Alice...