physical sciences

UCI astrophysicist faces the universe’s darkness with help from those around her and from the stars above her

Using three observatories on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi, astronomers at the University of Arizona have discovered the second-most distant quasar ever found. As part of an international effort to confirm and study the newly discovered object, a team at UCI and UC Santa Barbara used the Keck II 10-meter telescope to perform a spectroscopic analysis. The […]

Gift will fund research institute devoted to quantum science

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument aimed its robotic array of 5,000 fiber-optic eyes at the night sky for the first time recently to capture images showing its unique view of galaxy light. Mounted on a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, DESI was designed to explore the mystery of dark energy, which […]

UCI has posted a new podcast episode featuring an interview with the recently appointed dean of the School of Physical Sciences, James Bullock. Arriving at UCI in 2004, Bullock established a reputation as a leading researcher in astronomy and cosmology. He served as chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy prior to being named […]

Astronomers at UCI and Texas A&M University have obtained the most detailed view yet of an inner cold gas disk around a distant supermassive black hole. Studying the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 3258 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array – a powerful radio telescope array in the high desert of northern Chile – the scientists […]

Irvine, Calif., May 23, 2019 — The University of California, Irvine has received a multimillion-dollar gift from The Beall Family Foundation, led by Donald R. and Joan F. Beall. The largest portion of the gift will go to the campus’s entrepreneurial and innovation platform, UCI Applied Innovation, which will be renamed UCI Beall Applied Innovation. […]

Noted cosmologist is currently chair of Department of Physics & Astronomy

Physicist joins 34 other UCI faculty members in the prestigious organization

The American Physical Society has awarded Toshiki Tajima, UCI’s Norman Rostoker Chair in Applied Physics, the 2019 Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators. APS highlighted his fundamental contributions to the invention and realization of laser wakefield acceleration in plasma physics. Applications include ultrafast radiolysis for research in radiation chemistry, brilliant X-rays […]