Michael Riordan Awarded 2025 Abraham Pais Prize

SCIPP member Michael Riordan has been awarded the 2025 Abraham Pais Prize for History of Physics by the American Physical Society. Michael was cited “For important contributions to the history of post-World War II physics, including the discovery of quarks, the invention and development of the transistor, and the search for the Higgs boson; and for making […]




UCSC Student Story, “Magnetically Drawn to Science”

Christian Cagnino, a former Astrophysics student at UCSC is interning at Jefferson Lab through the DOE’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program. Cagnino’s research, titled “Understanding the Characteristics of Magnetrons with Magnetic Field Trimming,” explores the potential of Magnetrons as alternative radio frequency sources for particle accelerators, but the implications are far-reaching overall. Mainly, Cagnino […]


Rubin Observatory Achieves Major Milestone with Reflective Coating of the 8.4-Meter Primary/Tertiary Mirror

Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a new astronomical facility under construction, funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) & the US Department of Energy (DOE). The facility has reached a new milestone recently, on April 27, 2024, when the 8.4-meter primary/tertiary mirror was successfully coated with protected silver. This paves the way for the […]


AESOP-Lite Experiment Launched in Collaboration with the University of Delaware

On January 9, 2024, the AESOP-Lite experiment launched on NASA’s largest balloon (60 million cubic feet) from the NASA Long Duration Balloon (LDB) site located on the Ross Ice Shelf close to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. AESOP-Lite is a collaboration between Robert Johnson of the UCSC Physics Department/SCIPP and the Bartol Research Institute at the […]


SCIPP Researchers Elected to Lead Large International Collaborations in Astrophysics

SCIPP researchers Amy Furniss and Tesla Jeltema have been elected to leadership positions in the VERITAS and DESC collaborations, respectively. Furniss, a new Associate Teaching Professor in the Physics Department, will serve as spokesperson for the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS), a high-energy gamma-ray observatory with approximately 100 collaborators. VERITAS is made […]


SCIPP Hosts Inaugural BASICS Meeting

The first Bay Area Strings, Information and Cosmology Symposium (BASICS) took place on October 13-14 in Santa Cruz. Over 70 theorists from the greater Bay Area and beyond were in attendance. The meeting featured talks by representatives from Berkeley, Davis, Stanford, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. The topics covered a wide range in fundamental theory, […]


SCIPP Outreach Visit to Santa Cruz High School

SCIPP researchers visited the Santa Cruz High School AP Physics classes on October 26, 2023 to introduce students to particle physics research. Students gained hands-on experience with the “Big Analysis of Muons in ATLAS,” and learned about potential careers in physics and astrophysics. The class began with an overview of the particle zoo and the […]


Shiva Abbaszadeh receives $3.7M grant from DOE for Energy Earthshot Initiative

Earlier this year, SCIPP faculty member Shiva Abbaszadeh (Electrical and Computer Engineering) won a three-year $3.7M Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Earthshot award with a proposal to resolve the paradox of rhizosphere effect on soil carbon cycle. Abbaszadeh’s proposal “addresses the core mission of the Energy Earthshot by understanding how plant roots affect soil organic […]



Howard Haber’s New Book

Congratulations to SCIPP faculty member Howard Haber, whose book, From Spinors to Supersymmetry, has just been officially published by Cambridge University Press. Co-authored alongside Herbi Dreiner and Stephen Martin, the book gives an insight into supersymmetry and spinor techniques within quantum field theory. Containing numerous practical calculation examples and exercises, this book aims to provide […]




Altmannshofer and Haber named Outstanding Referees by APS

Congratulations to SCIPP faculty Wolfgang Altmannshofer and Howard Haber for being honored as Outstanding Referees by the Americal Physical Society. The Outstanding Referees Program recognizes scientists based on their manuscript review reports for the APS journals over the course of a career. Fewer than 0.2% of APS members are recognized each year. Michael Dine was named Outstanding […]






SCIPP Scientists building world’s largest digital camera

The most powerful digital camera ever built, now being assembled at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, will create a vast panorama of space by taking snapshots of 20 billion galaxies — more than twice as many as there are people on Earth. “The discovery potential is fantastic,” said Steve Ritz, project scientist for […]


Higgs Boson Anniversary

Several articles, interviews, and a special feature on the occasion of this anniversary. In these articles renowned theorists and experimentalists remember crucial moments from the times leading to the discovery and also provide a look ahead. Includes the article, “Higgs Boson Physics – The View Ahead” written by SCIPP faculty member, Howard Haber. Click here […]