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Lily Collins presents David Gross with his Breakthrough Award
Photo Credit
Lester Cohen/Getty Images Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize
Lily Collins and David J. Gross, 2026 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics winner speak onstage during the 12th Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at Barker Hangar on April 18, 2026 in Santa Monica, California.

UCSB’s David Gross wins Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

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man in wild sea grass
Photo Credit
Courtesy
UC Santa Barbara physics researcher Skyler Palatnik

Designing lightweight optics to detect signs of life beyond our solar system
A man in a lab coat and mask works in a laboratory lit by blue light
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
A researcher works in the lab of Ania Bleszynski Jayich

Using mechanical inputs to enhance quantum states in sensors
A visualization of a magnetar with tilted accretion disk and energetic polar jets.
Photo Credit
Joseph Farah and Curtis McCully of LCO
A spinning magnetar twists space-time itself, causing the disk of material around it to wobble and produce the ultra-bright flashes of this peculiar kind of supernova.

UCSB researcher bridges the worlds of general relativity and supernova astrophysics
researchers at an optical table
Photo Credit
Matt Perko

UCSB’s Eddleman Quantum Institute announces new round of funding to accelerate quantum research
Woman wearing a lab coat, glasses and blue gloves drips liquid into a test tube
Photo Credit
Matt Perko

UCSB among the world’s most influential research universities for science impact
A pair of comets partially melt as they collide in an inset image, lower right, with the system’s young star and accretion disk in the background.
Photo Credit
Thomas Müller (MPIA/HdA)
Scientist imagine the scene when two comets collided in the Fomalhaut system, only 25 light years from Earth.

Astronomers discover huge dust clouds from violent collisions around nearby star
composite image of pictures of Nobel prize-winning physicists
Photo Credit
Matt Perko, with material from © Nobel Prize Outreach. Photo: Clément Morin

UCSB physicists accept Nobel Prizes in Sweden
photo of detector being lowered
Photo Credit
Courtesy Image
The MicroBooNE detector being installed at Fermilab

MicroBooNE experiment finds no sign of light sterile neutrinos
Phoito-illustration of Boris Shraiman in front of a blackboard.
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
Boris Shraiman

Boris Shraiman points a physicist’s eye on biological quandaries
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UCSB joins NSF's National Quantum Virtual Laboratory
Newton's cradle

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigators awards to UCSB experimentalists opens the door to new insights and innovations
illustration of two scientists
Photo Credit
Illustration Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach
UCSB physics professors John Martinis, left, and Michel Devoret

UCSB physics professors John Martinis and Michel Devoret win 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics
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