June 10, 2026
June 10, 2026 —
UC San Diego’s astronomy department will graduate its first cohort of undergraduates this year. When it was launched in 2023, the department wanted to capitalize on the rich history of space research and teaching at the university while also rethinking the needs of modern-day students.
June 10, 2026
June 10, 2026 —
Early biological systems that could generate guanosine‑triphosphate (GTP) from prebiotic chemicals would gain a crucial advantage toward self‑replication. Now researchers from the UC San Diego report a version of an RNA enzyme (ribozyme) that makes GTP synthesis more efficient than its predecessor.
June 3, 2026
June 3, 2026 —
Drug delivery and diagnostic imaging often lack specificity, but a new “TRACE” method lets specially‑caged compounds stay inert until a target cell’s enzymes quickly remove the cage, potentially allowing for more precise drug delivery and sharper diagnostic imaging.
May 19, 2026
May 19, 2026 —
UC San Diego’s School of Physical Sciences held an astronomy and astrophysics salon, hosted by chemistry alumna Candace Kohl at her Del Mar residence. Among the attendees were donors, members of the San Diego Astronomy Association, community members, faculty, students and university administrators.
April 24, 2026
April 24, 2026 —
Researchers observed turbulence in a pure environment without external interference. They discovered a sharp front separating turbulence from non-turbulent fluid, agreeing with earlier theory. However, their data about turbulence decay were not consistent with other theories.
March 18, 2026
March 18, 2026 —
Base editing is still a new technology. Alexis Komor is working to improve its efficiency, while lowering unwanted bystander edits. This occurs when a base editor not only edits the desired nucleobase, but edits surrounding bases as well. Komor’s lab has developed a way to minimize bystander edits.
March 16, 2026
March 16, 2026 —
If you think “instantaneous” happens in a second, you should meet Haiwang Yong. An assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California San Diego, Yong uses ultrafast spectroscopy to observe the motion of atoms and electrons in femtoseconds, equal to 10-15 of a second.
February 19, 2026
February 19, 2026 —
Each molecule has its own unmistakable tone, but the voices of individual molecules are so faint that traditional infrared spectroscopy can only detect the collective chorus of millions of molecules at once. Now researchers at UC San Diego have found a way to hear a single molecule sing.
February 17, 2026
February 17, 2026 —
UC San Diego faculty members Valentina Di Santo, Fleur Ferguson, Mattia Serra and Hao Zhang have been named 2026 Sloan Research Fellows. The four scientists represent UC San Diego’s Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI), the School of Physical Sciences and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
February 9, 2026
February 9, 2026 —
Blood vessels in the brain are highly interconnected yet the mechanisms that regulate flow are not well studied. To learn more, UC San Diego Professor of Physics David formulated a mathematical model to predict the impact of a change in a single vessel on the flow through all the other vessels.
