News

UC San Diego Distinguished Math Professor Named 2020 SIAM Fellow
The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) recently announced its 2020 Class of SIAM Fellows. Among the 28 new fellows is UC San Diego’s Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Ruth Williams, recognized for her contributions to the study of stochastic processes and their applications.

Chemistry, Biochemistry Professor Selected for 2020 Ernest Guenther Award
Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Tadeusz “Ted” Molinski has been selected by the American Chemical Society (ACS) to receive the 2020 Ernest Guenther Award in the Chemistry of Natural Products.

UC San Diego Students Share Knowledge that Leads to 11th Grader’s Science Fair Win
PhD student and undergrad leverage experience from their ongoing work to assist local high-school junior with her research project.

Coronavirus Massive Simulations Completed on Fronterra Supercomputer
Rommie Amaro, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is leading efforts to build the first complete all-atom model of the external component of the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus envelope.

Scientists Observe Superconductivity in Meteorites
Mark Thiemens, Ivan Schuller and James Wampler investigated a diverse population of meteorites. Among the 15 pieces of comets and asteroids studied, they found two with superconductive grains.

UC San Diego Physical Sciences Graduate Programs Rank among the Best
New and previous data from U.S. News surveys indicates UC San Diego graduate programs demonstrate broad strengths across disciplines. In addition to new engineering and medicine rankings; the social, physical and biological sciences, as well the arts and humanities are occasionally ranked by the publication, and consistently earn high marks from U.S. News.

Making Cell Modeling More Realistic
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a computational tool that makes modeling and simulation of complex cellular processes more true to life.

Astronomers Catch Rare Eclipse of a Double Brown Dwarf System
Astronomers working on “first light” data from a newly commissioned telescope in Chile made a chance discovery that led to the identification of a rare eclipse of two brown dwarfs. The result published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Scientists Look Deeper to See How RNA-editing Enzyme Evolved into a Genome Editor
A team of chemists and biochemists at UC San Diego used a combination of computational simulations and experiments to deepen understanding of the latest genome editing technology.

UC San Diego Faculty Members Win Department of Defense MURI Awards
Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Francesco Paesani was recognized for his project titled, “Unraveling the Mechanisms of Ice Nucleation and Anti-icing through an Integrated Multiscale Approach.”

New Telescopes Aim to Detect Extraterrestrial Intelligence
A team of astronomers led by UC San Diego physicist Shelley Wright is deploying a pair of telescopes that will constantly search the nighttime sky for signals from intelligent life in our galaxy.

Distinguished Professor Talks Carbon
Chemistry and Biochemistry’s Mark Thiemens discusses carbon and the usefulness of radiocarbon dating in a recent issue of Popular Mechanics.

American Astronomical Society Announces First Class of AAS Fellows
The American Astronomical Society (AAS), the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, has established a new accolade: Fellow of the AAS. Among its first class of fellows is UC San Diego Emerita Professor Margaret Burbidge, singled out as Inaugural Fellow.

Burbidge Visiting Professor Uses Physics of Mayonnaise to Develop Electronic Skin
For researcher Annie Colin, a Margaret Burbidge Visiting Professor at the University of California San Diego, the road to developing better electronic skin is all about the physics of mayonnaise.

Resetting the Biological Clock with Flip of the Molecular Switch
Researchers from UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz and Duke set out to understand circadian proteins at the molecular level to help scientists develop innovative therapies for fixing biological clock dysfunctions caused by inherited conditions, modern habits, shift working or aging. Details about their discovery are published in eLife.

Researchers Tackle the Flu with Breakthrough Virus Simulations
A team of researchers from the University of California San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh offers a new approach for developing treatments for pandemic Influenza A (pH1N1).

UC San Diego Physicist Named 2020 Cottrell Scholar
Assistant Professor of Physics Elena Koslover receives 2020 Cottrell Scholar Award.

Advice from ‘The Center’: Look for the Opening
With a mission to provide learning beyond the classroom and knowledge beyond a degree, the Division of Physical Sciences’ Student Success Center officially opens its door.

UC San Diego Biochemistry Touches the Fashion World
Recent chemistry and biochemistry graduate Jinghan Zong shares her story about how science informs her fashion designs.

Innovative Telescopes Set to Detect New Signals from Deep Space
UC San Diego’s Shelley Wright led the design and installation of two, first-of-a-kind telescopes—poised to image the entire observable sky in the current search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)—in the Astrograph Dome at Lick Observatory, owned and operated by the University of California Observatories (UCO). The project also included researchers from UC Berkeley, Harvard, the SETI Institute and more.

UC San Diego Faculty Members Named 2020 Sloan Research Fellows
Six UC San Diego researchers have been named to receive prestigious 2020 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships. Considered among the most promising researchers working today, the new UC San Diego Sloan fellows are part of a cohort of 126 early career scientists selected in the U.S. and Canada.

UC San Diego Astronomers to See More Stars with “2020 Vision”
UC San Diego Assistant Professor of Physics Quinn Konopacky is leading an effort to upgrade the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) with nearly $1 million in new funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation. Support for these upgrades will transform GPI into an enhanced imaging system for the new decade.

Large Amounts of Oxygen Detected in Ancient Star’s Atmosphere
An international team of astronomers from UC San Diego, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and the University of Cambridge have detected large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere of one of the oldest and most elementally depleted stars known as “J0815+4729.”