About the UCSB Physics Department

Department Ranking

The UCSB Physics Department is universally regarded to be one of the premier physics departments in the world. We were ranked tenth in US in the well-known study by the National Research Councill in 1995. More recently, a study of research papers published from 1995 to 2005 showed UCSB as first in the world as measured by citations per paper, and fourth among US universities as measured by total citations. Our Department was ranked in the Top Ten Grad Schools in US World News & Report for 2008.

Faculty Awards

The strength of our Department is indicated by the many awards received by our faculty. These include the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Walter Kohn); the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Alan J. Heeger); the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics (Herbert Kroemer); the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics (David Gross); several memberships in the National Academy of Sciences; Newcomb Cleveland Prize by the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the Outstanding Young Investigator Prize from the Materials Research Society; Agilent Europhysics Prize; French Academy of Science's Grande Médaille D'Or; High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Physical Society; IUPAP Magnetism Prize; the Julius Lilienfeld Prize; the National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research; the Waterman Prize; the Balzan Prize; the Fritz London Award; two Oliver Buckley Prizes; the Ford Prize; Gravity Research Foundation prize from the Synergos Institute; the Max Planck Research Award; the Panofsky Prize; the Sakurai Prize and the Xanthopoulos Prize. Other honors have included two Packard Fellowships; several Sloan Foundation Fellowships; four Outstanding Junior Investigator Awards; and a Presidential Young Investigator Award.

Recent awards include:

• Edward A. Dickson Emeriti Professorship for 2007-08 - Daniel Hone
• 2007 American Physical Society's Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics - Joseph Polchinski
• 2007 Sloan Research Fellowships in Science and Technology - Sergei Gukov and Tommaso Treu
• 2007 American Physical Society's Polymer Physics Prize - Glenn Fredrickson, Professor of Chemical Engineering, UCSB
• New Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences - David Awschalom
• Eni Italgas Prize on Energy and Environment - Alan Heeger
• New Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science - David Awschalom
• 2006 Gruber Cosmology Prize - Philip Lubin
• John Bardeen Prize - Doug Scalapino

Faculty Service

Members of our Department have a very strong service record at the national level.

Michael Witherell is Chair of the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee (MPSAC); Lars Bildsten serves as committee member. Witherell also serves on the National Research Council's Beyond Einstein Program Assessment Committee.

Emeritus James Hartle and Gary Horowitz were members of the NRC Committee on Gravitational Physics, which Hartle chaired; from 2001-205, emeritus James Langer was Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences, and President of the American Physical Society in 2000.

David Gross was on NRC's Committee on Elementary Particle Physics in the 21st Century, which published its report in 2006.

Guenter Ahlers is a member of NASA's Life and Microgravity Science and Applications Advisory Committee, and of its Microgravity Research Advisory Subcommittee.

Claudio Campagnari is on the Office of High Energy Physics's Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5).