KITP News Archive

Dr. Stuart Parkin presents "The Spin on Electronics! The nanoscience and nanotech of spin currents"
[Flyer] [Public lecture page]

What happens when you fall into a black hole? In a September 25, 2013 Kavli Foundation Science Spotlight, four theoretical physicists involved in KITP's recent "Fuzz or Fire" workshop, including KITP Permanent Member Joseph Polchinski, answered audience questions about the latest theories on this exciting question.

[Press Release]

Fred Gluck, best known for his legendary performance at the helm of the leading international management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, has given $1 million to endow the chair of the director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). David Gross, who came from Princeton University in 1997 to serve as director of the Institute, is the first Frederick W. Gluck Professor of Theoretical Physics.

An article appearing on August 13, 2013 in The New York Times has highlighted the intellectual puzzles associated with the quantum properties of black holes. This is the topic of a Rapid Response Program to be held at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics from August 19-30, 2013.

It's a summer course like no other at UC Santa Barbara or anywhere else. Spread between the lecture halls of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) and the labs in the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) on campus, the new Santa Barbara Advanced School of Quantitative Biology is abuzz with activity.

[UCSB Press Release]

Professor Eric F. Wieschaus presents "On Growth & Form of the Embryo: From Gene Expression to Tissue Mechanics"
[Flyer] [Public lecture page]

Physicists and biologists are working together to understand cooperation at all levels of life, from the cohesion of molecules to interspecies interactions.

Physicists and biologists don't usually mix, and when they do, things can get messy. But the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (KITP) is trying to change that. For more than 30 years, this prestigious research facility, which in 2007 was rated by a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as one of America's most influential research institutes, has been pairing the world's brightest physicists with scholars from diverse fields in an effort to answer a wide-range of scientific questions - most recently, the evolution of multicellular life.

[Read more]

Professor Joe Polchinski presents "Gravity and Quantum Mechanics - The Quest for Unification"
[Flyer] [Public lecture page]

While some theoretical physicists make predictions about astrophysics and the behavior of stars and galaxies, others work in the realm of the very small, which includes quantum physics. Such is the case at UC Santa Barbara, where theoretical physicists at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) cover the range of questions in physics.

[UCSB Press Release]

Joseph Polchinski, a permanent member of UC Santa Barbara's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) and professor of physics at UCSB, has been named one of three recipients of the 2013 Physics Frontier Prize from the Milner Foundation. With the award, Polchinski becomes a nominee for the foundation’s $3 million Fundamental Physics Prize, to be presented in 2013.

[UCSB Press Release] [Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation]

After an international search for a new director for the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at UC Santa Barbara, the search committee found the best person for the position was already in Santa Barbara: Lars Bildsten, professor of physics and a KITP permanent member. The baton was passed on July 1 from Professor David Gross, a 2004 Nobel laureate, who will remain at KITP as a permanent member.

[UCSB Press Release]

Interdisciplinary Biology at KITP receives new funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and launches, in collaboration with UCSB Biology and CNSI, a new initiative: the Santa Barbara Advanced School of Quantitative Biology.

Jean-Pierre Hébert, KITP Artist in Residence, is awarded the 2012 ACM SIGGRAPH Lifetime Achievement Award in Digital Art.

Professor Diana Kormos Buchwald presents "Worshipped Today, Scorned Tomorrow...: Albert Einstein and the Perils of Public Engagement"
[Flyer] [Public lecture page]

Images produced by the Planck satellite have revealed an enormous cloud of electrons traveling near the speed of light in the heart of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. These electrons interact with the Galaxy's magnetic field to produce a haze of microwave radiation seen by Planck.

[UCSB Press Release] [JPL Press Release] [ESA Press Release]

An international team of scientists, including astrophysicists from UC Santa Barbara, has discovered that a supernova that exploded in August –– dubbed the supernova of a generation –– was a "white dwarf" star, and that its companion star could not have been a "red giant," as previously suspected. The findings are published in two papers in the journal Nature this week.

[Read UCSB Press Release] [Read Caltech Press Release]

An international team of scientists has found the fastest-rotating massive star ever recorded. The star spins around its axis at the speed of 600 kilometers per second at the equator, a rotational velocity so high that the star is nearly tearing apart due to centrifugal forces. This confirms a prediction put forward by astrophysicist Matteo Cantiello, a postdoctoral fellow with UC Santa Barbara's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, who contributed to the discovery published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Read UCSB Press Release]

The Simons Foundation has made a generous award to the KITP to support scientists leaving their home institutions for extended visits to the KITP, and to participate in its activities.

To this end we are establishing the "Simons Distinguished Visiting Scholars".

On the 100th anniversary of the first Solvay Conference on Physics, the International Solvay Institutes have created a special "Solvay Centenary Chair," which has been granted to David J. Gross, Nobel laureate in physics, for his seminal contributions to particle physics and string theory.

[Press Release][Announcement from the International Solvay Institutes]

Professor Sean Hartnoll presents "From String Theory to Exotic Materials and Back Again"
[Flyer] [Public lecture page]