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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 […]
SCIPP Postdoc Jennifer Ott Recognized for National Postdoc Appreciation Week
UC Santa Cruz has released an article honoring various postdoctoral scholars for their contributions in their respective fields and departments. Amon those honored is our own, Jennifer Ott, recognized for her significant role in Bruce Schumm’s Fast Sensors Group, as well as her participation in quality control of pixel-detector modules for the future upgrade of […]
New Primordial Black Hole Study from SCIPP Postdoc, Sarah Geller
SCIPP postdoctoral fellow, Sarah Geller, has co-authored a new study on primordial black holes. Theorists conceive that primordial black holes exert a gravitational force, which could account for at least some portion of dark matter in the universe. It is understood that primordial black holes do not “live” in our solar system, instead they travel […]
Jefferson Lab Photo by Emily Purdue
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 […]
WATCHEP Participates in Computational HEP Training Program
The first computational HEP traineeship summer school took place July 24-28 at Princeton University. Student trainees completed various workshops and activities including hands-on demos, big picture talks, research papers, and more. Read more here.
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 […]
Celebrating the 15 Year Anniversary of the Fermi Mission (#Fermi15)
SCIPP celebrates 15 years of looking into the gamma-ray sky with the Fermi satellite. The Fermi mission was launched on the 11th of June, 2008 into low-earth orbit, and it has been scanning the gamma-ray sky since then. Its findings have been published in over 5000 publications, including over 30 in Science or Nature. The Santa […]
SCIPP Student Samantha Contreras wins Prestigious Goldwater Scholarship
Congratulations to Samantha Contreras, a physics undergrad at UC Santa Cruz and a researcher for the ATLAS group at SCIPP, who was recently named a Goldwater Scholar by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. Read more about it here.
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/QuarkNet Particle Physics Masterclass 2023 was a success!
On March 4th, 2023, high school students from Santa Cruz county as well as the Bay Area traveled to UC Santa Cruz for the annual SCIPP/Quarknet Particle Physics Masterclass. Over 50 students were in attendance, working alongside SCIPP faculty to analyze data from the ATLAS experiment and experience what it is like to research Particle […]
UC Santa Cruz leads DOE program to train computational high-energy physicists
SCIPP faculty discuss the importance of training in computational high-energy physics and introduce the new Western Advanced Training for Computational High-Energy Physics (WATCHEP) research program. Click here to read the full article.
The origin of life’s molecular asymmetry: An astrobiology perspective
UCSC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow and SCIPP affiliate, Noémie Globus, alongside Roger Blandford, investigates how elementary particle interactions could lead to the handedness we see in biological molecules. Click here to read the full article.
Interview with a SCIPP Alumnus
James Bullock, current Dean at UC Irvine’s School of Physical Sciences and former SCIPP Ph.D. Student, answers questions about the James Webb Telescope as well as his experiences as an astrophysicist. Read the full article here.
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 […]
Graduate Division Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award for Giordon Stark and others
UC Santa Cruz strives to promote postdoctoral scholars that embody the mission and high standards of this university. This award recognizes postdoctoral scholars who show excellence in one or more of the following: exceptional research and/or creative activities, leadership, mentorship, and service. Postdoctoral scholars are individuals who have recently completed a doctoral degree and, under […]
Large Hadron Collider restarts after major upgrades
Large Hadron Collider restarts after major upgrades UC Santa Cruz physicists have been at the forefront of U.S. participation in the LHC and contributed to a major upgrade of the ATLAS detector during the shutdown Click on title or here for full article
Risa Wechsler named 2022 Physical and Biological Sciences Distinguished Graduate Student Alumna
Each year, UC Santa Cruz’s five academic divisions—Arts, Baskin School of Engineering, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Physical and Biological Sciences—selects one graduate student alumnus/a/i as their Distinguished Graduate Student honoree. The awards ceremony for the 2022 cohort will take place on April 23 of Alumni Weekend. Risa Wechsler has been named UC Santa Cruz’s Physical […]
Physical and Biological Sciences Division honors three prominent alumni
Digital NEST founder Jacob Martinez, chemistry teacher Michael Morgan, and astrophysicist Risa Wechsler are being honored by the UC Santa Cruz Division of Physical and Biological Sciences (PBSci) as the recipients of the PBSci Distinguished Alumni Awards. The division established the awards to honor graduates of the division who have gone on to extraordinary accomplishments […]
Physicist Michael Dine takes readers on a journey to the edge of reality in new book
Throughout his career, UCSC physicist Michael Dine has explored challenging questions at the forefront of theoretical research in particle physics and cosmology. In a new book, This Way to the Universe (Penguin Random House, February 2022), Dine draws on decades of personal experience to offer an expert’s guide to the stunning achievements of modern physics as well […]
2022 Quarknet Particle Physics Masterclass was a success!
High school student visitors and SCIPP researchers participated in the 2022 Quarknet Particle Physics Masterclass on March 5. Students learned about the fundamental forces and particles, and they analyzed data from the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Students also visited a working cloud chamber detector and joined a videoconference with researchers from Fermilab and Berkeley Lab. […]
NERSC AY 2022 DOE Mission Science Allocation Award
Two astrophysics research groups that SCIPP senior member Joel Primack leads received major awards of supercomputer time from the DOE-funded National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The computing these groups are doing at NERSC simulates galaxy formation in the context of the modern standard LambdaCDM theory of cosmology, dark […]
James Webb Space Telescope Joins the League of Super-Telescopes
See below text or click here for article on webpage. — by Joel Primack | Jan 25, 2022 The following is a guest blog post from Joel R. Primack, Distinguished Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Primack served as Sigma Xi’s president in 2018–2019. The James Webb Space Telescope is now successfully assembled, […]
SCIPPer Steve Ritz is now the Rubin Observatory Project Scientist
See below text or click here for article on webpage. Dear Colleagues, Since my appointment as Director of Rubin Construction I’ve been working with the team to set up further appointments in the Director’s office (pending formal NSF approval). For the position of Deputy Director for Rubin Construction for AURA/NSF I am honored to announce […]
SCIPP postdoctoral researcher Giordon Stark is featured in Physics Today magazine, describing his work to improve the experiences of deaf/hard-of-hearing scientists and the interpreters who support them.
Deaf scientists thrive with interpreters and technology:
Though still underrepresented in STEM, deaf and hard-of-hearing scientists are excelling in their fields and developing ways to more seamlessly communicate with their colleagues.
SCIPP and Physics PhD student, Yuzhan Zao, receives Graduate Instrumentation Research Award
Funding from the American Physical Society program supports graduate student Yuzhan Zao’s research on silicon detectors for particle physics experiments.
Congratulations Yuzhan!
Higgsinos under the microscope
Recent results from higgsino searches by the ATLAS collaboration have made their way into the CERN Courier. The existence of higgsino particles, predicted by theories of supersymmetry, could provide an explanation for the cosmological dark matter. SCIPPers Matthew Gignac, Bruce Schumm, and Giordon Stark contributed to the development of the disappearing track search and the overall combination of results.
SCIPP Member, Postdoc Jeff Dror: Axions could be the fossil of the universe researchers have been waiting for
SCIPP Member and Physics Professor Michael Hance latest recipient of the UCSC faculty’s Excellence in Teaching Award. Congratulations, Mike!
SCIPP Member and Physics Professor Michael Hance latest recipient of the UCSC faculty’s Excellence in Teaching Award. Congratulations, Mike!
Congratulations to the 2021 Deans’ and Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Award winners in SCIPP!
DEANS’ UNDERGRADUATE AWARDS: Dean’s Awards are granted to fifty of the most excellent undergraduate research theses or projects (ten from each academic division) completed at UCSC during the academic year. Each Dean’s award project will receive $100 for outstanding achievement in their division. CHANCELLOR’S UNDERGRADUATE AWARDS: Fifteen Chancellor’s Awards are granted to the most outstanding […]
SCIPP Member and Distinguished Professor of Physics, Steve Ritz, receives Accessibility Champion award!
https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/05/accessibility-champion.html
SCIPP Member Bruce Schumm was quoted in a Salon article about new results from a particle physics experiment called Muon g-2.
Why some physicists are skeptical about the muon experiment that hints at “new physics” The Muon g-2 experiment could upend the Standard Model of physics — but some think it may be a fluke. Here’s why
SCIPP and Physics Graduate Student, Heather Mentzer, was just selected again to receive a Bruce Lane Memorial Scholarship. Congratulations Heather!
https://retirees.ucsc.edu/scholarships/brucelanescholarship/
Please join us in welcoming Professor Tesla Jeltema as the new SCIPP Associate Director!
Tesla’s research experience in astrophysics and her leadership in international collaborations will be important as a number of astronomical survey projects ramp up. She will also focus on strengthening our SCIPP outreach and mentoring activities. Please welcome Tesla to this new role.
SCIPP Member and Distinguished Professor of Physics, Steve Ritz, is this years winner of the divisions Outstanding Faculty Award.
This award is the divisions highest honor for faculty achievement, recognizing combined excellence in research, teaching, and service. Congratulations Steve!
New Higgs boson measurement from the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN.
https://atlas.cern/updates/briefing/studying-Higgs-decay-b-quarks
March 3, 2021: Shiva Abbaszadeh, SCIPP Member and assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz has been awarded the Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) for her outstanding contributions to high-resolution direct-conversion radiation detectors for medical imaging applications.
January 15, 2021: Please join us in welcoming Professor Tesla Jeltema as the new SCIPP Associate Director! Tesla’s research experience in astrophysics and her leadership in international collaborations will be important as a number of astronomical survey projects ramp up. She will also focus on strengthening our SCIPP outreach and mentoring activities. Please welcome Tesla to this new role.
January 10, 2021: Please join us in welcoming Professor Jason Nielsen as the new SCIPP Director! Check out the Santa Cruz Sentinel article: “Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics undergoes leadership transition.”
January 8, 2021: SCIPP Member and Distinguished Professor of Physics, Steve Ritz, is this year’s winner of the division’s Outstanding Faculty Award. This award is the division’s highest honor for faculty achievement, recognizing combined excellence in research, teaching, and service. Congratulations Steve!
December 1, 2020: New Higgs boson measurement from the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN. SCIPP members Carolyn Gee and Jason Nielsen contributed to the measurement of the Higgs boson decay to bottom quark pairs.
November 12, 2020: SCIPP Member, Physics Professor David M. Smith, elected as President-Elect of the Atmospheric and Space Electricity Section of the American Geophysical Union. Congratulations David! 
October 23, 2020: UCSC Scholar Profile for new SCIPP postdoctoral fellow, Jeff Dror!
September 30, 2020: The Report of the Office of Science Workshop on Basic Research Needs for HEP Detector Research and Development is out, with contributions from multiple UC Santa Cruz SCIPPers.
September 29, 2020: SCIPP Deputy Director for Theory, and Physics Professor, Stefano Profumo, has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in recognition of his exceptional contributions to physics. Citation: For incisive contributions to the development of astroparticle physics. In particular, for work addressing many aspects of dark matter theory and detection, including direct and indirect detection, as well as collider searches. Congratulations Stefano! 
September 8, 2020: SCIPP Member, Steven Ritz, quoted in SLAC news article announcing the first images from the complete focal plane of the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera!
August 6, 2020: SCIPP Member, Stefania Gori was quoted in a Scientific American story about new findings from the Large Hadron Collider.
June 1, 2020: SCIPP Member, David A. Williams, in UCSC news: Detection of Crab Nebula shows viability of innovative gamma-ray telescope. New prototype telescope opens doors for future discoveries at the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array.
February 21, 2020, Video: My Life as a Particle Physicist, in American Sign Language, by SCIPPer Giordon Stark!
February 17, 2020: SCIPPer Giordon Stark was an Instructor at the recent IRIS-HEP analysis preservation boot camp!
December 3, 2019: SCIPP Member Giordon Stark is featured in Symmetry Magazine! Check out the article: ” A matter of interpretation“. 
November 8, 2019: SCIPP Member and UC Santa Cruz Physics Professor David Smith is featured in the latest inquiry@UC Santa Cruz Research Magazine! Check out the full story,“Waiting with GODOT Studying the physics of lightning requires fortitude…and patience”. By Anil Ananthaswamy.
August 28, 2019: APS has just announced that SCIPP Member and UC Santa Cruz Physics Professor Joel Primack is the 2020 recipient of Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize! Congratulations Joel!
July 17, 2019: Breakthrough Listen launches new optical search with VERITAS Telescope Array! SCIPP physicist David Williams will help lead effort using four 12-meter telescopes to search for nanosecond flashes of light from extraterrestrial civilization. 
June 9, 2019: SCIPP Members Prof. Robert Johnson and Grad Student Sarah Mechbal launched AESOP-Lite in May 2018. Just released is a short movie of Roger the Koala making his stratospheric journey in hopes of finding the ubiquitous cosmic rays. Music by SCIPP graduate student Sarah Mechbal, and her band Salmon Hammock. 
May 31, 2019: SCIPP member and Physics Professor Michael Dine joins panel on string theory at World Science Festival!
May 1, 2019: SCIPP Graduate students Jacob Pasner and Duncan Wood joined a group of 68 Particle Physicists from collaborations across the United States to advocate to Congress for continued support of the field. The diverse group included representatives from the USLUA, SLAC and Fermilab and was able to contact all 538 offices of Congress to deliver the funding ask of the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5).
April 3, 2019: SCIPP Member, and UCSC Astronomy/Astrophysics Professor, Constance Rockosi, quoted in two articles as the DESI/Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument lenses see first light! LBL article,“Dark Energy Instrument’s Lenses See the Night Sky for the First Time“
, and Symmetry Magazine article”DESI lenses see first light“!
Congratualtions to SCIPP Grad Student, Ben Lehmann, for winning a place as one of the 10 finalists in the UCSC Grad Slam! Come support Ben at the UCSC Grad Slam which takes place on Friday, March 8, 5:30-8:00pm at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center.
Friday, February 1, 2019: SCIPP Outreach in the QuarkNet Friday Flyer! Spotlight on the SCIPP University of California Santa Cruz QuarkNet Center SCIPP is the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, the particle physics research institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Their main work in QuarkNet in the past few years has been to run great ATLAS masterclasses. The “SCIPP center” is headed up by mentor Jason Nielsen and administrator Vicki Johnson. Teachers in the group participate in many ways, including those masterclasses. Last November, SCIPP center teacher Jonathan Rockman lead his students in World Wide Data Day.
SCIPP Member, Jacob Pasner, in Symmetry Magazine: The farmer physicist: A graduate student looks for belonging inside and outside academia, 01/22/19 By Sarah Charley.
SCIPP Member, David A. Williams, in the UCSC News: Scientists to inaugurate a new type of gamma ray telescope at Whipple Observatory The prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) is designed as a pathfinder telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array.
Congratulations to SCIPP Grad Student, Jacob Pasner, for his winning lightning round talk at this year’s USLUA meeting! A brief statement from Jacob: I’m very excited for the opportunity to represent SCIPP and ATLAS this coming March as a particle physics advocate to US congress representatives. I’d like to thank the USLUA for offering me this opportunity, my advisor Dr. Jason Nielsen for his continuing support and Dr. Giordon Stark for nominating me to give this Lightning Round Talk.
October 19, 2018: SCIPP Member, Giordon Stark, was quoted in a recent write-up about CERN!
September 17, 2018: SCIPP Member and UCSC Physics Professor, Howard E. Haber, APS Physics Viewpoint: Higgs Decay into Bottom Quarks Seen at Last. Two CERN experiments have observed the most probable decay channel of the Higgs boson—a milestone in the pursuit to confirm whether this remarkable particle behaves as physicists expect.
August 28, 2018: SCIPP Members, and LHC scientists detect Higgs bosons decaying into bottom quarks! See the UCSC News item here: UC Santa Cruz physicists made important contributions to the discovery, which confirms the fate of the vast majority of all Higgs bosons produced in the LHC
July 12, 2018: David Williams, SCIPP Member, adjunct professor of physics at UC Santa Cruz, and a member of the VERITAS collaboration, quoted in UCSC news story: “VERITAS supplies critical piece to neutrino discovery puzzle Potential connection between blazar and neutrino detection by IceCube observatory marks a new advance in multi-messenger astrophysics”. 
June 11, 2018: Perspectives on 10 Years of Discovery with Fermi: By capturing the most energetic light in the sky, the spacecraft continues to teach us about the mysteries of the universe. By Peter Michelson, and SCIPP Members, William Atwood and Steven Ritz.
June 11, 2018: Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), At Last GLAST: Image Credit: NASA, DOE, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Collaboration. Explanation: Rising through a billowing cloud of smoke, a long time ago from a planet very very close by, this Delta II rocket left Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s launch pad 17-B at 12:05 pm EDT on June 11, 2008. Snug in the payload section was GLAST, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope. GLAST’s detector technology was developed for use in terrestrial particle accelerators. So from orbit, GLAST can detect gamma-rays from extreme environments above the Earth and across the distant Universe, including supermassive black holes at the centers of distant active galaxies, and the sources of powerful gamma-ray bursts. Those formidable cosmic accelerators achieve energies not attainable in earthbound laboratories. Now known as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, on the 10 year anniversary of its launch, let the Fermi Science Playoffs begin.
June 8, 2018: Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is the Fermi Science Playoffs image, in honor of Fermi’s upcoming 10-year launch Anniversary, next Monday, June 11, 2018! Fermi Science Playoffs Image Credit: NASA, DOE, International Fermi LAT Collaboration, Jay Friedlander (Goddard Spaceflight Center) 
May 21, 2018: SCIPP Member, Professor David Smith, and SCIPP alumni graduate students, Dr. Greg Bowers and Dr. Nicole Kelly, in the UCSC News with ADELE, “Lightning in the eyewall of a hurricane beamed antimatter toward the ground“. !
May 13, 2018: AESOP-Lite, the cosmic rays experiment SCIPP Members, Professor Robert Johnson, and Graduate Student Sarah Mechbal, have been working on, with a group at the University of Delaware, should** be launching from Esrange, Sweden at 0000 UTC (3.00pm PST) for a 5 days flight to Northern Canada. It is possible for everyone to watch the live stream (already going) provided by the Swedish Space Corporation, and to track the trajectory of our payload across the stratosphere.
**There is always a chance the launch may get moved to another date if the winds pick up. Please check the website for more information! Wish them luck!
SCIPP Graduate Student Christian Johnson was a panelist, with other astrophysics luminaries, at the recent Silicon Valley Comic Con!
April 23, 2018: SCIPP Member, Professor Joel Primack, in the UCSC News: “Face recognition for galaxies: Artificial intelligence brings new tools to astronomy: A ‘deep learning’ algorithm trained on images from cosmological simulations has been surprisingly successful at classifying real galaxies in Hubble images”. 
Congratulations to SCIPP Member, Physics Professor, and Project Lead, Bruce Schumm, for the Winter/Spring 2018 Launchpad grant award! Prof. Schumm, and fellow PI’s Simone Mazza and Hartmut Sadrozinski, applied for funding for their project Radiation Hardened AC-Ultra-Fast Silicon Detector (UFSD) through “Launchpad” which is part of the UC Santa Cruz SPLICE program, funded by the State of California Assembly Bill (AB) 2664 innovation and entrepreneurship program.
February 21, 2018: SCIPP/Physics Graduate Student, Christian Johnson, quoted in the UCSC News about the recent paper, Novel search strategy advances the hunt for primordial black holes. Also, be sure to check out his Grad Slam Presentation: Searching for Primordial Black Holes !
February 15, 2018: SCIPPer and UCSC Astronomer, Alexie Leauthaud, wins Sloan Research Fellowship!
December 18, 2017: Two new ATLAS news releases that feature exciting results from our SCIPP ATLAS group including SCIPP Members Prof. Mike Hance, and Graduate Student Sheena Schier!
Squeezing sleptons at the LHC and Searching for supersymmetric Higgs bosons on the compressed frontier
November 20, 2017: SCIPP Member and UCSC Physics Adjunct Professor Emeritus, Terry Schalk, elected 2017 AAAS Fellow! Congratulations, Terry!
ScienceNews article, “Excess antielectrons aren’t from nearby dead stars, study says The finding keeps open the possibility that the particles come from dark matter” from observations from the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC, released today! SCIPP member, Michael Schneider, spends much of his time in the field at the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC. The news was widely distributed! (Link to all press releases here)
- SCIPP members Nicolo Cartiglia, Hartmut Sadrozinski and Abraham Seiden were looking for an opportunity to market their recent invention “AC-coupled Ultra-fast Silicon Detectors (AC-UFSD)” which is along the lines of decade-old expertise of cutting-edge instrumentation pursued by SCIPP. (https://officeofresearch.ucsc.edu/ipmgmt/irp/index.html)
- They applied for funding through “Launchpad” which is part of the UC Santa Cruz SPLICE program, funded by the State of California Assembly Bill (AB) 2664 innovation and entrepreneurship program.( https://officeofresearch.ucsc.edu/iatc/commercialization-/services/launchpad-poc-grant-prog.html)
- Since external matching funds were needed, the SCIPP researchers wrote letters to former colleagues asking for help, and Brad Hubbard-Nelson, a former postdoc researcher who had worked at SCIPP on instrument development which ultimately was used to discover the Higgs Boson, responded with a generous gift to UCSC, which allowed the University to offer a Proof-of-Concept Grant in the amount of $15,000 to the SCIPPers. The expected impact of the invention is described briefly here (http://scipp.ucsc.edu/~hartmut/2017/Description%20and%20Impact%20of%20US%20patent%20No.pdf)
Congratulations to SCIPP Member, Professor Michael Dine, who has been selected as a 2018 recipient, together with Ann Nelson, of the APS Sakurai Prize “for groundbreaking explorations of physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, including their seminal joint work on dynamical super-symmetry breaking, and for their innovative contributions to a broad range of topics, including new models of electroweak symmetry breaking, baryogenesis, and solutions to the strong charge parity problem.” Michael adds, “I am very gratified at being included in this illustrious group, which includes, of course, our own Howard Haber.” (SCIPP Member, Professor Howard Haber, was a 2017 recipient of the APS Sakurai Prize.) The prize will be presented at the APS April Meeting on Sunday April 15.
October 1, 2017: ATLAS celebrates its 25th anniversary! Discover the history of the Collaboration and join the celebration with SCIPP!
ATLAS hunts for new physics with dibosons. Article in CERN Courier includes work done at SCIPP by SCIPPers Natasha Woods, Hass AbouZeid, and Professor Mike Hance! 
SCIPPers swim for charity: On Saturday, 9/16, twenty-one SCIPPers, ex-SCIPPers and their families participated in two teams in the annual Aquathon to raise awareness and funds for Abilities United, the not-for-profit agency that provides services to children and adults with developmental and physical disabilities. Our A-team, the Physics Aqua-Slugs, swam 104 laps and placed second overall, leaving many “professional” teams in its wake. Our team “Priya’s Rhymers” excelled in the following BBQ. 
What a great conference we hosted at SCIPP/UC Santa Cruz this week. In collaboration with CERN, TWEPP-17 was a success! Thank you to all participants!
Congratulations to SCIPP Members, Hartmut Sadrozinski(UCSC), Abraham Seiden (UCSC), and Nicolo Cartiglia (INFN Torino), awarded US Patent No. 9,613,993 B2, granted Apr. 4, 2017 for “Segmented AC-coupled readout from continuous collection electrodes in semiconductor sensors”!
SCIPP Member, Professor and Physics Department Chair Robert Johnson, new article in wired.com: ““!
SCIPP Member, Professor and Physics Department Chair Robert Johnson, in the news with the pCT (Proton Computed Tomography/proton CT) Project! 
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has restarted after its Extended Year-End Shutdown. The ATLAS experiment captured first collisions on May 23.
SCIPP Member and Physicist Anthony Aguirre to be honored for his appointment as endowed chair in physics of information! 
December 2016: Just announced! SCIPP Member and Distinguished Professor, Joel Primack, has been elected as President-elect of Sigma Xi. Congratulations Joel!
November 2016: Article published this morning on the Symmetry Magazine website, entitled, “Q&A: What more can we learn about the Higgs?”, in which four physicists, one of which is SCIPP Member Howard Haber, discuss Higgs boson research since the discovery with Angela Anderson of Symmetry Magazine (a joint Fermilab/SLAC publication). 
October 2016: Alan Litke (SCIPP) and David Feldheim (MCD Biology) have been awarded an NIH grant for interdisciplinary neuroscience research using their novel, comprehensive measurements of visually-evoked brain activity. The bulk of the credit for the experimental work goes to SCIPP postdoc Shinya Ito, with important technical contributions from Forest Martinez-McKinney and Serguei Kachiguine.
October 2016: SCIPP Member, Howard Haber wins Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Physics!( APS Announcement)
August 2016: SCIPP Members, Jason Nielsen, Peyton Rose, and Jacob Pasner, have had their work with ATLAS Higgs analysis make an appearance in this Physics Briefing article.
August 2016: SCIPP Member, Regina Caputo, interviewed for phys.org article, “NASA’s Fermi mission expands its search for dark matter”
July 2016: SCIPP physicist and founding director Abe Seiden has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the US ATLAS Collaboration. The award, which recognizes outstanding service to ATLAS and/or US ATLAS sustained over many years, was announced on June 27 at the ATLAS Week meeting in New York City.
The award citation reads as follows: “Abe has been Level 3 manager for Si strips, Level 2 manager for the entire Si system, and a long-time promoter of silicon tracking as well as leader of SCIPP and its significant ATLAS involvement. Abe went on to devote tremendous time and effort to the US program of R&D towards ATLAS upgrades.”
June 2016: Kfir Dolev, an undergraduate researcher at SCIPP, wins prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.
May 2016: The May edition of the CERN courier has the updated ATLAS root s plot with our new W,Z@13TeV results! SCIPP contributors are Graduate Student Alexander Law, Postdoctoral Researcher Chiara Debenedetti, and Professor Jason Nielsen.
April 2016: SCIPPer Joel Primack to receive the 2016 Leo Szilard Lectureship Award.
August 2015: Researchers at SCIPP will benefit from a new ultra-high-speed communications network funded by the National Science Foundation. (New York Times article)
June 2015: SCIPP Members at CERN working on ATLAS… “Setting Off To New Energy Horizons”
April 2015: SCIPPers, Abraham Seiden, Howard Haber, Jason Nielsen, and Stefano Profumo
quoted in Santa Cruz Sentinel News and San Jose Mercury News articles regarding the re-start of the LHC.
SCIPP Reunion and 35th Anniversary Celebration,
April 24-April 25, 2015.
Registration Deadline extended through April 12!
SCIPP Public Lecture on Particle Physics and Cosmology: Saturday April 25!
March 2015: HAWC to be inaugurated this week! U.S., Mexico to inaugurate facility to detect gamma rays, probe universe’s most energetic phenomena! March 2015: LHC to be turned on this month! UCSC News just posted a nice write-up about our SCIPP Physicists and their anticipation of new discoveries with the restart of the Large Hadron Collider! SCIPP Members have been at the forefront of U.S. participation in the LHC and contributed to a major upgrade of the ATLAS detector. 
March 6, 2015: Higgs boson a la carte? Check out the article in Fermilab Today that reports on Professor Howard Haber’s recent paper with Marcela Carena, Ian Low, Nausheen Shah and Carlos Wagner that was published last month inPhysical Review D.
2015: SCIPP Reunion and 35th Anniversary Celebration
April 24-April 25, 2015, Registration now open!
January 2015: LSST Camera receives DOE funding approval.
December 2014: SCIPP Member David M. Smith quoted in BBC article about NuSTAR.
Additional information about NuSTAR.
October 2014: SCIPP Member William Atwood invited to give the Manne Siegbahn Memorial Lecture in Stockholm, Sweden for his work on the Fermi-LAT Satellite program. At the lecture on October 16, 2014 he was presented with the Manne Siegbahn Medal honoring for recent break throughs and developments in experimental physics. The sponsor is the Royal Swedish Academy of Science through its Nobel Institute for Physics. Last year the award went to Joseph Incandela and Fabiola Gianotti, spokespersons for CMS and ATLAS honoring the discovery of the Higgs Boson. (Video)
August 2014: SCIPP Member Michael Dine is quoted in an article in Quanta magazine “At Multiverse Impasse, a New Theory of Scale Mass and length may not be fundamental properties of nature, according to new ideas bubbling out of the multiverse.“
August 2014: LSST is now officially starting!
July 2014: SCIPP QuarkNet Summer High School Students give their sample research data presentations to faculty! 
July 2014: SCIPP Director Steve Ritz testified this morning before the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Subcommittee on Energy. The hearing was titled “A Review of the P5: The U.S. Vision for Particle Physics After Discovery of the Higgs Boson”. P5 fact sheet.
June 2014:
Congratulations to SCIPP grad student Tia Plautz on her recent selection as a 2014-15 ARCS fellow!
Congratulations to SCIPP grad student Adam Coogan on his recent selection for the 2014-15 Elmer A. Fridley Scholarship in the Physical Sciences!
March 2014: SCIPP will be hosting a Special Screening of the film Particle Fever including Q&A with SCIPPers Alex Grillo, Howard Haber, Jason Nielsen, Stefano Profumo, Ryan Reece, and Sheena Schier atThe Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz! Q&A is immediately following the 7pm opening night showing on Friday March 14!
UCSC Story
March 5: Particle Fever receives rave reviews in New York Times today!
February 2014: SCIPP Member Alan Litke highlighted in Symmetry article, “A second chance at sight”
February 2014: The 48th Annual Faculty Research Lecture will be given by Distinguished Professors of Physics, and SCIPPers, Howard Haber and Abraham Seiden, on Tuesday February 11th, 2014 at 7pm in the Music Recital hall of the Performing Arts Complex. A reception in the lobby will immediately follow the lecture. Doors open at 6:30pm. This event is free and open to the public. 
January 23, 2014: Congrats to SCIPPer Piero Madau on the 2014 Heineman Prize!
December 25, 2013: SCIPP Higgs research included as part of the UCSC 2013 highlights in the Good Times article!
December 3, 2013: SCIPP Member, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, supercomputer lab for undergrads
November 22, 2013: SCIPP Research Collaboration project, HAWC/High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, article in nature.com!
November 2013: SCIPPer Bruce Schumm to speak at UCSC’s Institute of the Arts and Sciences will present its second LASER event!
October 18, 2013: SCIPPers Ritz and Haber quoted in article about the future of particle physics: Invigorated and unified,
US particle-physics community considers future directions.
October 18, 2013: SCIPP Members Howard Haber and Abraham Seiden chosen as the 2013 UCSC Founders Day Dinner
Faculty Research Lecturers for their highly distinguished research records and for playing major roles in the
successful search for the Higgs boson!
October 10, 2013: SCIPP Member and Adjunct Professor David Williams selected to lead US CTA effort. 
October 8, 2013: SCIPP scientists applaud Nobel Prize for Higgs discovery!
September 2013: Dark Energy Survey begins five-year mission to map southern sky in tremendous detail
August 2013: SCIPP Director Steve Ritz helped ensure Fermi mission’s scientific bounty.
August 2013: SCIPP hosts the 2013 Meeting of the American Physical Society(APS)Division of Particles and Fields(DPF).
Physicist Hitoshi Murayama to speak on ‘The Quantum Universe’ as the public lecturer during the SCIPP hosted DPF 2013!
July 2013: UCSC acquires powerful new astrophysics supercomputer system. SCIPP members Joel Primack and Piero Madau highlighted.
July 2013: LSST E-News: Steve Ritz – Managing Myriad Subtle CharacteristicsMay 2013: Congratulations to SCIPP Graduate Student, Paul Buzbee, winner of the 2013 UCSC Physical and Biological Sciences Chancellor’s Award! Thesis title: “Searches of RHESSI Datafor Weak Signals Associated with Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes”. Advisor: David M Smith.
April 2013: UCSC News highlights paper written by SCIPP Graduate Student, Amy Furniss(first author) and SCIPP Members,
David A. Williams and Joel Primack, “Distant blazar is a high-energy astrophysics puzzle”.
April 2013: SCIPP Member, David Smith, research highlighted in physicsworld.com article, “Dark lightning sheds light on gamma-ray mystery”. 
April 2013: HAWC in the BBC News, “Hawc gamma-ray telescope captures its first image”.
March 2013: SCIPP Member David Smith interview with KQED, “ Attack of the Killer Electrons! New Mission Searches for Mysterious Space Particles”.
February 7, 2013: SCIPP Member Alexander(Sasha) Sher awarded $2.5 million NIH grant to support research on retinal disease!!
SCIPP Member and Physics Professor Anthony Aguirre quoted in NYTimes: The Life of Pi, and Other Infinities. 
The Search for Fundamental Physics: Higgs Bosons and Supersymmetry A Symposium in Honor of Michael Dine and Howard Haber
January 4 – 6, 2013 (UCSC Story)(Santa Cruz Sentinel Story)
SCIPP Member and Physicist Tesla Jeltema honored by Silicon Valley Business Journal in a special “40 under 40” feature!
SCIPP Member and Physics Professor, Robert Johnson has been elected to Fellowship in the American Physical Society(APS) for 2013,
“For his leadership of the design and implementation of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) Tracker”!
(Physics Dept. Announcement)
SCIPP/Physics Grad Student, Omar Moreno is the first place winner of the Margaret Burbidge Award for Best Experimental
Research by a grad student! November 7, 2012: SCIPP Member Abraham Seiden to speak at SWISSNEX San Francisco, “Hunting for the Higgs Boson”!
SCIPP pCT collaboration in UC News! “New imaging technology being developed to guide treatment planning in proton cancer therapy”
September 18, 2012:SCIPP Member Sofia Chouridou in CERN news about ATLAS Virtual Visits!
September 18, 2012: SCIPP Member Rebecca Bernstein and the DECam team are on the SLAC front page!
July 2012: SCIPP Member David Smith co-author of article in Scientific American: “Thunderclouds Make Gamma Rays—and Shoot Out Antimatter, Too”
July 4, 2012: Search for Higgs boson reveals new particle!
May 17, 2012: SCIPP Member Sasha Sher and graduate student Richard Smith co-authored paper published in Nature Photonics
May 9, 2012: SCIPP Director and Physics Professor Steve Ritz wins Excellence in Teaching Award
January 2012: Amy Furniss and Melinda Soares are winners of student awards at the APS California meeting at SLAC! (Official UCSC Press Release!)
December 13, 2011: ATLAS experiment presents latest Higgs search status.
December 13, 2011: NASA’s Fermi Shows that Tycho’s Star Shines in Gamma Rays.
November 2011: ATLAS diphoton+MET search (a signature of gauge-mediated SUSY breaking or of universal extra dimensions) on the cover of this week’s EPJC!
October 28, 2011: SCIPP Members Jason Nielsen and Sofia Chouridou noted in CERN Courier article listing results from ATLAS group!
September 29, 2011: SCIPP Member Joel Primack is one of the authors of the recently announced three “Bolshoi” Supercomputer Simulations of the Evolution of the Universe. (UC-HiPACC Press Release) (UCSC Press Release)
September 27, 2011: SCIPP Member Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz featured profile – UC wide Research
August 29, 2011: Astrophysicists report first simulation to create a Milky Way-like galaxy. Supercomputer experiment supports cosmological model of a “cold dark matter” universe. UCSC astrophysicist and SCIPP Member, Piero Madau, coauthor of the paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, was quoted in the UCSC Article.(“Forming Realistic Late-Type Spirals in a LCDM Universe: The Eris Simulation” http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.6030)
August 24, 2011: SCIPP physicists working on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) have made the first measurement ever of the ratio of W boson and Z boson production in association with hadronic jets(ATLAS at CERN Article)! The results were presented by Sofia Chouridou at the PANIC11 conference and are available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.4908.
July 2011: Supersymmetry hunters from the SCIPP group working on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) have reported first results from a search for new particles from gauge-mediated SUSYbreaking in a diphoton + missing energy signature. The results are available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.0561.
July 12, 2011: Fermi LAT Second Catalog Released.: SCIPP Director quoted in BBC News article
June 29, 2011: At UCSC on July 6-8, we will have an in-depth review and planning meeting for R&D in the U.S. aimed at upgrades to the ATLAS detector now collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The upgrades aim at improving the capabilities of the detector in the search for new physics at the LHC. Approximately 25 physicists will be participating.
May 17, 2011: SCIPP Director Steve Ritz and others discuss the recent Fermi Symposium with the BBC
May 12, 2011: SCIPP researchers apply particle physics expertise to cancer therapy: NIH grant supports work on proton computed tomography to guide proton therapy for cancer treatment. (UCSC Article)
April 27, 2011: New book by Nancy Abrams and Joel Primack finds meaning in the cosmos.(Santa Cruz Weekly Cover Story) (UCSC Article)
April 19, 2011: SCIPP Member, Thomas Banks, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (UCSC Article)
April 5, 2011: SCIPP Seminar with Amy Furniss, “VERITAS Very High Energy Gamma-ray Observations of Galaxies”, 10:30am in ISB 102. (Complete SCIPP Seminar Schedule)
March 29, 2011: SCIPP Seminar today with UCO/Lick Observatory’s Fulai Guo, “Fermi Bubbles: the Origin and Implications”, 10:30am in 102 ISB. (Complete SCIPP Seminar Schedule)
November 18, 2010: World’s most precise new measurement of the top Quark Mass…
November 10, 2010: Fermi featured in New York Times article!
November 10, 2010: Astronomy Picture of the Day features Fermi results!
November 9, 2010: SCIPP Member, Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, named to Mexican Academy of Sciences!
November 1, 2010: Record luminosity for LHC!
September 28, 2010: UC Santa Cruz doctoral programs earn high marks in national review
September 1, 2010: SCIPP Member Stefano Profumo featured in New Scientist!
August 12, 2010: Fermi Detects ‘Shocking’ Surprise from Supernova’s Little Cousin
June 30, 2010: Abraham Seiden stepping down after 30 years as Director of SCIPP!
May 19, 2010: West Coast LHC Theory Meeting featured in UCSC News!
SCIPP will host the West Coast LHC Theory Meeting, Friday May 21, 2010!
March 18, 2010: Fermi LAT Featured Again in Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)!
March 17, 2010: The first ATLAS physics paper,”Charged-particle multiplicities in pp interactions at sqrt(s) = 900 GeV measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC” has been submitted to the archive (http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.3124v1) and to Phys. Lett. B.
February 24, 2010: Fermi LAT all-sky image featured on the top American Physical Society website!
January 20, 2010: Astronomy Professor & SCIPP Member Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz featured in this week’s Good Times Santa Cruz. In the first awards ceremony of its kind, Santa Cruz NEXT honors 4 individuals for their standout creative efforts.
UCSC is hosting the 5th Annual Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, 15-17 January 2010. [Conference web site]
December 7, 2009: Article from the CERN Courier, “Protons are back in the LHC”
November 30, 2009: CERN Press Release, “LHC sets new world record”
November 23, 2009: CERN Press Release, “Two circulating beams bring first collisions in the LHC”
November 9, 2009: SCIPP Member Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz & UCSC astrophysicists have developed supercomputer simulations of colliding white dwarfs, providing a new path to detonate “standard candle” type Ia supernovae. A new study published this month in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and featured in a Scientific American article.
November 3, 2009: SCIPP Member Michael DIne to guest on NPR’s, “On Point!”
September 15, 2009: SCIPP Member, UCSC physicist Anthony Aguirre highlighted in Discover and Astronomy magazine feature stories on the possibility that we inhabit just one of many ‘universes’ — and that we might actually be able to detect the presence of others. (Discover online, November 4, 2009)
August 2009: 30 Grads in 30 Days: Nina McCurdy
August 14, 2009: Fermi featured on the cover of SCIENCE Magazine and UCSC physicists and astronomers are coauthors of three major papers reporting scientific results from Fermi in this issue of the journal. … (UCSC Story) (complete article)
August 5, 2009: SCIPP Member Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz established John Bachcall Award…
July 2, 2009: NASA’s Fermi Telescope reveals a population of radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars
December 11, 2017: SCIPP Member, UCSC Professor Tesla Jeltema, in the news with a UCSC News article: Physicist Tesla Jeltema probes the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Jeltema has a leading role in the Dark Energy Survey, a major international collaboration that is gathering precise measurements of the evolution of cosmic structure.