News

Spring Valley Group Stages Clean-Up In Tijuana River Valley
Chemistry and Biochemistry PhD student Adam Cooper is contributing to efforts to clean up the Tijuana River Valley. In an interview with KPBS, he discusses lab tests he has conducted on water samples from the valley and his concerns about the chronic, toxic exposure to the surrounding community.

‘Feel Good’ Brain Messenger Can Be Willfully Controlled, New Study Reveals
UC San Diego researchers and their colleagues have discovered that spontaneous impulses of dopamine, the neurological messenger known as the brain’s “feel good” chemical, occur in the brain of mice. The study found that mice can willfully manipulate these random dopamine pulses for reward.

Brian Leigh Recognized with Three University Honors
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Assistant Teaching Professor Brian Leigh has been honored with three awards from UC San Diego. The awards highlight Leigh’s contributions as an outstanding teacher, faculty member and community member.

Mayer Hall Recognized for Historical Contributions to Physics
The American Physical Society has designated UC San Diego’s Mayer Hall as a historic site in recognition of the groundbreaking accomplishments of UC San Diego physicists Walter Kohn and Lu Sham. Their development of the “Kohn-Sham equation” inside Mayer Hall became the foundation for the computation of material properties of electrons and nuclei.

Seven Physical Sciences Faculty Receive 2021 NSF CAREER Awards
Seven faculty members of UC San Diego’s Division of Physical Sciences have been named to the 2021 class of recipients in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. NSF CAREER Awards support early career development activities for those who most effectively integrate research and education.

Grad Student with Environmental Justice Goals Awarded NSF Research Award
Chemistry graduate student Ke’La Kimble has been awarded a prestigious fellowship from the NSF to support research on the detection of airborne viruses. Following her PhD, her plans include establishing a new science and education center back home in her native Louisiana as a step in the march toward environmental justice.

Diamonds Are a Physicist’s Best Friend
Physics condensed matter experimentalist Chunhui Rita Du leverages the imperfections in diamonds to investigate materials needed for a new era of computing and storage. New quantum materials are exotic substances that are allowing scientists to create novel technologies at previously unseen scales.

Chemistry Faculty Offer Returning Students Hands-on Lab Experience
Following the restrictive shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty took steps to get students safely back into the laboratory learning environment. They offered an optional in-person chem bootcamp in spring quarter for students to gain hands-on laboratory experience.

Celebrating the Class of 2021
New Physics PhD recipient Sean Bearden has completed a journey in education that started in a correctional facility and culminated in the awarding of the UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship for his research. “I was a nontraditional student who made it into one of the top doctoral programs in the country; I could not let the opportunity slip away. I knew a doctorate would change my life.”

Mathematicians Find Long-Sought Building Blocks for Special Polynomials
Math Professor Emeritus Benedict Gross comments in a new Quanta Magazine article on a solution for one of mathematician David Hilbert’s “unsolved problems.”

“It’s something we’ve been looking for a long time, and they’ve really made a big breakthrough. It’s completely different than what Hilbert had in mind. But that’s the way math is. You can never say how a problem is going to be solved.”

Interim Director Named for San Diego Supercomputer Center
Department of Physics Professor Frank Würthwein, an expert on experimental particle physics and a founding faculty member of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, has been named interim director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

A Textbook Case for Heeding Planetary Limits
Astrophysicist Tom Murphy has published a textbook, “Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet,” which takes a rigorous look at Planet Earth and the demands on its resources that will guide its future inhabitability.

Physical Sciences at 60
Triton magazine interviewed Katja Lindenberg, Brian Maple and Michael Sharpe, three of the division’s first professors, to reflect on the early days of the division and learn what is in store for the next 60 years.