News

UC Santa Barbara training helps propel U.S. physics team to global victory

2025-09-24

The U.S. Physics Team and their coaches are welcomed to the Oval Office to celebrate their international victory. (Official White House Photo)

Honored at the White House for a historic five-gold-medal victory in Paris, the U.S. Physics Team's success was forged in a final, intensive training session on the UC Santa Barbara campus.

Award-winning research unifies mortality modeling

2025-09-19

A figure from the award-winning paper illustrates how the model predicts and compares mortality improvement rates across different countries, ages and cancer types, highlighting cross-national trends. (Image courtesy of the Annals of Actuarial Science)

UC Santa Barbara’s Ian Duncan to lead world’s largest actuarial society

2025-09-18

His election brings new distinction to the university’s renowned actuarial science program and its role in shaping the future of the profession.

Professor Brenda Major Wins Psychology’s Prestigious William James Fellow Award

2025-09-12

The distinguished professor emeritus is celebrated with the Association for Psychological Science's highest honor for her five decades of paradigm-shifting research on stigma, discrimination and resilience.

UC Santa Barbara, UCLA’s BioPACIFIC MIP earns renewed NSF support to accelerate AI-driven biobased materials innovation

2025-08-20

Photos by Juan Manuel Urueña Vargas, Jeff Liang, and Marc Roseboro

Gary Horowitz awarded Dirac Medal for contributions to theoretical physics

2025-08-13

UC Santa Barbara physicist honored for landmark advancements in gravity and string theory

Gary Horowitz, a distinguished professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara, has been awarded the 2025 Dirac Medal by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), a prestigious honor recognizing his groundbreaking work in gravitational physics and string theory.

New Method for Synthesizing Carbohydrates Paves Way for Biomedical Advances

2025-08-12

Chemistry professor Liming Zhang has solved a decades-long challenge in his field, discovering a way to reliably synthesize some of biology’s most complex molecules.

The new technique, developed in Zhang’s lab, enables precise control over the construction of short-chain carbohydrates, called oligosaccharides—a feat that has challenged scientists for decades.

Cosmic Airbursts More Common Than Previously Thought, Study Finds

2025-08-08

New research led by James Kennett, emeritus professor of Earth Science, suggests that high-energy cosmic impacts that explode above ground may be a more frequent and widespread destructive force than the crater-forming strikes traditionally studied. 

In a series of four recently published papers, Kennett and his collaborators present compelling evidence for these “touchdown airbursts” from various locations across the globe.