The National Research Council rankings of graduate programs has placed UH Mānoa Department of Physics and Astronomy in the top 12 of all US programs. The department has an extensive laboratory and classroom building, Watanabe Hall. It has about 37,000 square feet of research and teaching laboratories, shops, classrooms with special demonstration facilities, and student study rooms. The Institute for Astronomy building, located above the Mānoa campus, is a greatly expanded facility for research in astronomy and astrophysics.
Academic Programs
Latest News
Dr. David Eder received National Science Foundation (NSF) RAPID grant.
Affiliate graduate faculty Dr. David Eder and team received National Science Foundation RAPID award. The grant is for Maui College students to outreaching to the community and Maui organizations/government to collect information about wind conditions and fire propagation during the Lahaina fire in August, to tune and assess our high performance computing (HPC) wind/fire models. We can then use these models to explore how a rebuilt Lahaina would better survive the exact same very rare but extremely strong wind storm if a similar fire was launched again. This can aid in determining water resources needed, etc.
$7.2M Boosts Fundamental Physics Research at UHM
A four-year, $7,278,000 funding award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will help support ongoing high energy physics research at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The renewed funding will support six UH Mānoa faculty members, nine postdoctoral fellows, eight graduate research assistants and five undergraduate students doing research on various high energy physics topics. The principal investigator for the project is UH Mānoa Department of Physics and Astronomy Professor Thomas Browder.
Public lecture: The AMS Experiment on the International Space Station by Prof. Samuel Ting
This is a public talk, given on November 9, 2023 by Nobel Laureate Professor Samuel Ting at UH Manoa Campus Center. In his lecture professor Ting discuss unexpected results, based on 11.5 years of AMS data. From this lecture you learn about construction and maintenance challenges of the most sophisticated cosmic ray particle detector ever launched in space. Finally, professor Ting introduce our plans of detector upgrade which will allow to increase detector acceptance and measure fluxes of rare nuclei and positrons up to TeV energies.
Physics Professor Philip von Doetinchem has been selected as an American Physical Society (APS) Fellow
University of Hawai’i at Manoa Physics Professor Professor Philip von Doetinchem has been selected as an American Physical Society (APS) Fellow. APS, a nonprofit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics, made the announcement on October 19.
Physics Professor Peter Gorham received the 2023 Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) Instrumentation award for Experimental Particle Physics
University of Hawai’i at Manoa Physics Professor Peter Gorham and UCLA Professor David Saltzberg received the 2023 Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) Instrumentation award for Experimental Particle Physics. The award is for their research contributions in searches of highest energy astrophysical (PeV and EeV) neutrinos.
Gary Varner, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, passed away on July 14, 2023.
Professor Gary Varner joined the UH Mānoa faculty in 2005, however, his work with UH and the physics and astronomy department dates back to the early 1980s. Throughout his career, he made significant and critical contributions to numerous physics experiments worldwide.
“Gary was not only a brilliant scientist but also a caring individual, always extending support and kindness,” said friends and colleagues from the Physics and Astronomy Department. “We will forever cherish his important role in our endeavors.”