Faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and students in the Astrophysics group at UC Irvine are engaged in research in diverse areas of astronomy and astrophysics. Current research areas include cosmology and particle astrophysics, observational and theoretical studies of galaxy evolution, dark matter, black holes, quasars, and galaxy clusters, climate and habitability of exoplanets, and the design of optical telescopes and instrumentation.
Affiliated Research Centers and Facilities
The UC Irvine Center for Cosmology unites astrophysicists and particle physicists carrying out theoretical, observational, and experimental research on the composition, origin, and fate of the Universe, the fundamental physics governing it, and the evolution of galaxies and structure in the Universe.
UC Irvine is a member of the University of California Observatories (UCO) multi-campus research unit. UCO manages Lick Observatory at Mt. Hamilton (near San Jose, California) and coordinates UC's partnerships in the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project. UCI astronomers carry out observational projects at Keck and Lick, and play active roles in technical and science planning for TMT.
From 2009-2014, UCI was also the headquarters of the Southern California Center for Galaxy Evolution (CGE), a multi-campus UC research center funded by the UC Office of the President.
Additionally, astronomers at UCI carry out observational research using NASA facilities including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and international ground-based facilities including the Gemini Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. UCI astronomers also collaborate in the eBOSS, DESI, and LSST surveys of the large-scale structure of the Universe, designed to probe the nature of cosmic acceleration.
Seminars and events
The Astrophysics group hosts a weekly seminar series during the academic year. Astrophysics seminars are held tuesdays at 4:00 pm in NS2 1201.
On Tuesday and Thursday at 2pm in FRH 2153 we hold an informal discussion of recent papers on the arXiv. We use the Vox Charta portal to organize the discussions.
Astrophysics Personnel
| Faculty and research areas: | |
| Kevork Abazajian | Dark matter, precision cosmology, neutrino physics, galaxy formation theory |
| Aaron Barth | Supermassive black holes, quasars and active galactic nuclei |
| James Bullock | Galaxy formation theory and simulations, dark matter, near-field cosmology |
| David Buote | X-ray astronomy, dark matter, massive galaxies, and galaxy clusters |
| Gary Chanan (Emeritus) | Optics and wavefront sensing for segmented-mirror telescopes |
| Michael Cooper | Galaxy evolution, large multiwavelength surveys, data reduction and analysis pipelines |
| Asantha Cooray | Theoretical cosmology, infrared surveys and galaxy evolution |
| Manoj Kaplinghat | Dark matter, dark energy, gravitational lensing, and near-field cosmology |
| David Kirkby | Observational cosmology, large surveys, dark matter and dark energy |
| Simona Murgia | High-energy astrophysics, observational cosmology, dark matter, dark energy |
| Paul Robertson | Exoplanet discovery and characterization, stellar activity, instrumentation |
| Aomawa Shields | Exoplanet theory, climate and habitability of planets orbiting low-mass stars |
| Tammy Smecker-Hane | Galaxy evolution, stellar populations, astronomy education, UCI Observatory |
| Virginia Trimble | History of science and scientometrics, binary star astrophysics |
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Postdocs Sheldon Campbell
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Graduate Students Bela Abolfathi |