—   With the beginning of a new year, the start of the academic quarter, and the inauguration of a new President, it is natural to reflect on the past and to plan for the future. At UC San Diego Division of Physical Sciences, we have a great deal of pride in our past and what our Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Mathematics and Physics have accomplished in a short period. The Division shows no sign of losing its tremendous pace of academic and scholastic achievement, as evident in our growth, student success, and international recognition.

  —   An ice cream social hosted by celebrity scoopers from the Division welcomed new freshman the first week of the fall session.

  —   Policy makers and scientists usually inhabit different worlds. Yet, the scientific and technical issues confronting society are becoming increasingly complex, and the solutions more difficult to identify. The Science and Technology Policy Fellowship program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science helps bridge the gap between scientists and policy makers. One of this year’s fellows is Seth Cohen, an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at U.C. San Diego. This year he is in Washington D.C. on sabbatical from his research developing inhibitors for metal-containing enzymes that play a role in many diseases, including arthritis, cancer and heart disease. We caught up with him to find out what it is like to make the transition from research lab to policy arena.

  —   The Division of Physical Sciences at UCSD recently presented 22 undergraduate students with the 2008 Dean's Undergraduate Awards for Excellence. This award was established in 2005 to recognize undergraduate students who have demonstrated academic excellence and promise as researchers.

  —   Five faculty members from the University of California, San Diego have been awarded the distinction of “fellow” by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal, Science.

  —   University of California, San Diego Professor Roger Tsien, Ph.D., will share the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and Boston University School of Medicine, and Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York. The scientists are being honored for the discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) and seminal work to design and create fluorescent molecules that enter cells and light up their inner workings.

  —   UC San Diego physics professor Frank Wuerthwein never thought his work as a particle physicist would be front page news. But when the world’s largest particle collider turned on its beam of protons near Geneva on September 10, Wuerthwein began receiving text messages from people he hardly knew congratulating him on the accomplishment.

  —   Chemists at UC San Diego have measured for the first time the impact that dirty smoke from ships cruising at sea and generating electricity in port can have on the air quality of coastal cities.

  —   Tiny particles in air called aerosols create smog, seed clouds, and control how much of the sun's heat makes it through the atmosphere, yet these particles are the least understood aspect of climate research. Now, UC San Diego and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are working together to tackle the role of aerosols in climate change --specifically how aerosols from pollution, oceans and wildfires contribute to shifting weather.

  —   Mexico City once topped lists of places with the worst air pollution in the world. Although efforts to curb emissions have improved the situation, tiny particles called aerosols still clog the air. Now, atmospheric scientists from UC San Diego and six other institutions have sorted through the pall that hangs over the city to precisely identified the aerosols that make up the haze and charted daily patterns of changes to the mix.

  —   Jeffrey Bennett’s career has veered a bit from his original course of study at UC San Diego. A biophysics major, he has taught math and astronomy and published numerous textbooks, along with a series of children’s books about astronomy. But his most recent book, Beyond UFOs, which looks at the impact on our society if extraterrestrial life were discovered, has brought him back to his biology roots.

  —   For Steve and Sue Hart their interests in mathematics started at a very early age. Their paths crossed while in graduate school in the Math department at UCSD.