News Briefs
Jun 23, 2020
Toshiki “Toshi” Tajima is a physicist in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, and he’s one of our faculty who, over the last few months, retooled his scientific skillset to help stem the still-encroaching tide of the coronavirus pandemic. Recently, Tajima, along with a team of researchers from across campus and around the world, formulated an idea that they call a “nanobroom” — a devise made of carbon nanotubes that surgeons might one day insert into the lungs of a COVID-19 patient and…
Jun 23, 2020
This year, UCI granted degrees to 9,907 undergraduate students. And in a testament to the university's dedication to access and affordability, 47 percent of those bachelor’s degrees went to first-generation college students. In place of the large commencement event take normally takes place at the Bren Events Center, graduates were honored during virtual ceremonies.
Jun 13, 2020
Climate scientist Zack Labe came to UCI in 2015, and when he got to Orange County, where the sun never seems to set, he didn’t know there would be so much ice in his future. Labe, who graduated this quarter with a Ph.D. from the Department of Earth System Science, came to UCI from Cornell University with an bachelor’s in atmospheric sciences, and he spent his five years here modeling how ocean sea ice in the Arctic helps create the weather in places like North America, Europe and Asia.
Jun 11, 2020
Anomalies in the radioactive decay of beryllium-8 and helium-4 point to the existence of a new force of nature. That is the conclusion of a group of theorists in the US, who have scrutinized data from experiments carried out by nuclear physicists in Hungary over the past five years. Results from the two different isotopes agree on both the mass and interaction strength of the hypothetical boson that would carry the long-sought fifth force, the team found.
Jun 1, 2020
Irvine, Calif., June 1, 2020 – The melting of glaciers and ice caps in places as diverse as the Himalayas and Andes mountain ranges, the Svalbard island group and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago has the dual effect of raising global sea levels and depleting freshwater resources that serve millions of people around the world.
May 26, 2020
Not only can Blu-ray lasers replay the “Harry Potter” series 50 times over, they may possibly help kill the coronavirus.
May 22, 2020
Ideas can come from everywhere. They can ignite when one imagines, for instance, that there could be a connection between the light that a firefly creates and the cells in our bodies, or that there might be a way to better manage fires in the Amazon rainforest by fingerprinting the different varieties of fire that blaze there. Such ideas led eight of our School’s graduate students this year to win the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Student Research Fellowship — a research fellowship…
May 22, 2020
Nobody in Katy Rodriguez Wimberly’s family does anything similar to what she does for a living, so when she heard that she won UCI’s Latino Excellence and Achievement Award, she knew that one of the reasons why was due to how out of the ordinary it was for her to come to UCI to get her PhD.
May 20, 2020
Scientists who normally study how human activities impact the planet have been given a rare opportunity over the past few months to observe what happens when industry, transportation and other sources of carbon emissions are curtailed.
May 15, 2020
About ten years ago, teaching courses online was still in its infancy, and many people saw the practice as mostly “gimmicky,” explains Professor Philip Collins of the UCI Department of Physics & Astronomy. But that didn’t stop Collins from moving his classes online long before most others followed suit. He has worked to improve online course delivery ever since, and for his ongoing efforts Collins recently received the Excellence in Digital Learning Award from UCI.
May 14, 2020
Irvine, Calif., May 14, 2020 — A $1.5 million gift from philanthropist Roy Eddleman to the University of California, Irvine School of Physical Sciences will support the creation of a research institute focused on ushering in the future of quantum science.
Apr 24, 2020
WHAT DID THE 2010 EARLY CAREER AWARD ALLOW YOU TO DO?
The motility of electrons within a molecule is at the very heart of chemistry. Moving electrons drive molecular reactions and allow electrical conductance. Despite the fundamental nature of electron flow within molecules, it has remained extraordinarily difficult to measure the exact spatial and temporal electron dynamics in molecular systems.