Program: Science

This project, conducted by the University of California (UC) San Diego, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, supports transfer students from San Diego area community colleges into UC San Diego and San Diego State University astronomy programs. It has the goal of improving transfer success and progress toward graduate studies and STEM careers through a regional …

ForwArd Search ExpeRiment (FASER) (including FASERnu) is designed to search for new, yet undiscovered, light, and weakly-interacting particles and study the interactions of high-energy neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider. The project is being conducted by the University of California Irvine and has been supported by the Foundation since 2019 through three grants. These grants …

This project, led by the San Francisco State University Department of Physics and Astronomy, aims to improve the San Francisco State planetarium, which has provided a rich training ground for hundreds of STEM educators and served an estimated 100,000 SF State students, community groups, members of the public, and school children since its opening in …

The Keck Planet Finder (KPF) is the world’s most advanced high-resolution spectrometer for visible wavelengths. KPF was specifically designed for Keck Observatory as a critical complement to NASA’s existing planet-hunting telescopes, which survey thousands of exoplanets in search of worlds like our own. The projects supported by these grants are a collaboration between the University …

“Skipper” Charge Coupled Devices (Skipper CCDs) are a promising type of detector technology for astronomical observations. The Skipper detector technology projects address several areas of development: increasing electronic readout times for the devices, creating larger detector array sizes, improving quantum efficiency (particularly in the blue and ultraviolet wavelengths), and performing on-sky technology demonstrations. The projects …

The Helheim Glacier Hydrology research collaboration focuses on how water accumulates and flows on the surface, within, and beneath a large glacier in Southeast Greenland. The projects supported by these grants are a collaboration between Georgia Tech Research Corporation, University at Buffalo, and Dartmouth College. These grants are for the application of radar techniques to …

Paleo Weather: A New Paradigm for Examining Extreme Events in Past Climates (Paleo Weather) and Deep2Weather: Emulators for Paleoclimate Weather Simulation (Deep2Weather) aim to study extreme weather events in past warm climates to improve our understanding of future extreme events caused by climate change. They will address critical questions about the relationship between climate change …

This project, conducted by the University of California Santa Barbara Department of Physics, is a tabletop experiment that aims to transform our understanding of the Universe. The team is looking for the presence of new fundamental particles by searching for time symmetry violation in a molecule. If found, this will provide key evidence for new …