Mathematical & Physical Sciences

Hong Joo Ryoo '24 on the Intersection of Philosophy and Physics

July 24, 2025

Hong Joo Ryoo is a UC Berkeley alum, having completed a quadruple major in Math, Physics, Philosophy and Cognitive Science in 3.5 years. He is currently pursuing a dual graduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, working toward a PhD in Physics and a Masters in Philosophy as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow. At Berkeley, he was a recipient of the SURF and Rose Hills Fellowships, and was also a member of the Arts & Humanities Dean's Leadership Team. His work centers an interdisciplinary approach, situated at an intersection between physical and philosophical...

“I was totally hooked:” How astrophysics changed Andrea Antoni’s life

July 17, 2025

Andrea Antoni didn’t take a traditional path to graduate school — if one exists for computational astrophysicists. On her last day of high school, she gave birth and became a single, working mother.

While volunteering at her child’s school, she met other mothers who worked in computer science and electrical engineering. She felt those careers represented practical ways to get an education and earn money. So, in her 30s...

L&S Commencement Moments - Spring 2025

June 16, 2025

Cal Memorial Stadium crowd during Commencement with grad cap with "Cal" script in foreground. Overset with text "College of Letters & Science - Commencement Memories 2025 "

Photo Credit: Keegan Houser/UC Berkeley

CIQC’s Impact in Action: Building Quantum Careers in Mathematics

June 24, 2025

Behind the scenes of NSF’s CIQC is a powerful story of workforce development: mathematicians without any prior exposure to quantum science are emerging as leaders in a rapidly expanding field, thanks to a training model that’s both rigorous and deeply interdisciplinary.

Headshot of Lin Lin, wearing glasses and a black shirt in front of an ivy leaf background“I had never worked on quantum computation before 2019,” says Lin Lin,...

With lasers and magnets, Shimon Kolkowitz pushes time to new boundaries

May 22, 2025

How do you house equipment so sensitive to external factors that a building’s windows and elevators affect its results? For Shimon Kolkowitz, the Roger Herst Professor of Physics, you spend a year and a half overseeing a state-of-the-art lab renovation that will enable some of the world’s most precise measurements.

Hitoshi Murayama awarded 2025 Particle Physics Medal

June 11, 2025

Man wearing glasses standing outside in a dark coat

Hitoshi Murayama, professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), has been awarded the 2025 Particle Physics Medal by the...

UC Berkeley Undergrads Use Machine Learning — and Sharp Eyes — to Discover a New Asteroid

June 11, 2025

This article originally appeared on the UC Berkeley Physics website on May 30, 2025.

ULAB diagram featuring circular lines of varying colors against a black background

An image of the asteroid’s orbit when compared to other planets in our...

Model Authority: Professor Madison Douglas

March 24, 2025

Permafrost is a major actor in the slow-motion disaster movie of pollution, climate change, and environmental degradation. It contains vast amounts of carbon. As our planet warms permafrost thaws, releasing greenhouse gases that enter a feedback loop which accelerates climate change. How bad is this feedback? We still don’t know. We still need to understand the different character and history of permafrost that makes it vulnerable to rapid thaw and erosion.

Geomorphology is the area within Earth Sciences that studies what is happening at or...

Leinweber Foundation and UC Berkeley establish $18 million endowment to fund theoretical physics research

May 28, 2025

The University of California, Berkeley, a world leader in theoretical physics since J. Robert Oppenheimer planted the seed nearly 100 years ago, will share with four other institutions the largest gift ever to the field — $90 million.

The gift from the Leinweber Foundation in Michigan will establish four Leinweber Institutes for Theoretical Physics at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UC Berkeley, and the Leinweber Forum for Theoretical and Quantum...

The race to perfect the quantum computer is on, and UC is helping America hold its lead

May 16, 2025

Three people in white lab coats peer into a very large, delicate, gold-colored machine.Even if you’ve never set foot inside a physics classroom, you probably have a pretty solid grasp of the laws governing how objects move and behave.

Throw a basketball against a wall and it bounces off. If a coin flipped in San Francisco comes up heads, that won’t cause a coin flipped in Los Angeles to come up tails. If you’re...