Department of Physics

Mengyu Yan, physics postdoctorate and Mitchell Kaiser, chemistry graduate student are developing a tool that uses electromagnetism to destroy viruses and bacteria.

Gray Rybka, associate professor of physics, explains how scientists are detecting dark matter.

Two CAS students — Keyan Gootkin (astronomy and physics) and Karen Zhang (microbiology and biochemistry) — are among 396 students who have been named Goldwater Scholars for 2020.

Senior Keyan Gootkin, who is majoring in astronomy and physics, has been awarded the prestigious 2020 Goldwater scholarship.

Physics Professor Gray Rybka explains research into the size of dark matter axions.

Leslie Rosenberg, physics professor, weighs in on new dark matter experiments.

Associate professor of physics, Gray Rybka, discusses how new technology that creates "atom waves" could impact the field of physics.

Gerald Miller, physics professor, discusses the history of how what we know about the atom was discovered.

A satellite smaller than a loaf of bread will, if all goes well, launch this weekend on its way to low-Earth orbit. It will be the first student-built satellite from Washington state to go into space.

Professor Ann Nelson, who held the Kenneth K. Young Chair of Physics and was a tireless advocate for diversity in the field, died from a fall while backpacking in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness on August 4, 2019. Professor Nelson was a brilliant theoretical physicist who specialized in particle physics and cosmology and had been at the University of Washington since 1994. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was a recipient of the J.J. Sakurai prize for theoretical particle physics from the American Physical Society.

Lukasz Fidkowski, an assistant professor of physics at the UW, is one of the winners of a 2020 New Horizons in Physics Prize from the Breakthrough Foundation. 

The theoretical particle physicist Ann Nelson, who died on August 4 at age 61, was a font of brilliant ideas and a champion of ending discrimination in the field.

Celebrate the accomplishments of the 2019 Summer Institute in the Arts and Humanities undergraduate researchers, attend Bulrusher - directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, and more!

Christopher Phillips, a research specialist in the Department of Physics, explains why there will be ideal conditions for stargazing in August. 

From becoming an accomplished physicist to summiting mountains, Dr. Nelson spent her life focused on the next goal — and on giving others a hand along the way.