Astronomy
Master of Science
Department of Physics & Astronomy
The Department of Physics & Astronomy at UBC is noted for the excellence of its research and its high academic standards and integrity. We are one of the largest departments, and can offer a wide range of pure and applied research opportunities for students. Each year, our faculty bring over $20 million in research grants. This enables us to maintain world-class research laboratories and computational facilities, attract distinguished post-doctorate researchers, and support highly skilled engineers and technicians whose expertise is critical to our research.
We host a full range of presentations and seminars including many on current and emerging topics and technologies, and invite nationally and internationally renowned scientists to participate. We have weekly seminar series on Astronomy, Particle Physics, Condensed Matter, Biophysics, and Theoretical Physics. At our facilities at Vancouver General Hospital, TRIUMF, and AMPEL, seminars are held regularly for faculty and students.
Graduate Degree Programs
Research Supervisors
| Name | Research Interests |
|---|---|
| Aronson, Meigan | heavy-ferromagnetic compounds; charge density waves; magnetic nanoparticles |
| Berciu, Mona | Electronic and magnetic properties of condensed matter and supraconductivity; Physical sciences; condensed matter theory; polarons, bipolarons; strongly correlated systems |
| Boley, Aaron | Astronomy and Astrophysics; Planet formation, protoplanetary disk evolution, formation of meteorite parent bodies |
| Bonn, Douglas Andrew | Condensed matter, high temperature superconductors, microwave measurements, crystal growth |
| Bryman, Douglas | Particle physics, experimental; Experimental Particle Physics; Applied physics; physics |
| Burke, Sarah | Scanning probe microscopy, organic materials, nanoscale materials, surface physics, photovoltaics |
| Choptuik, Matthew | Theoretical physics, Relativity/Computational Physics |
| Damascelli, Andrea | Electronic and magnetic properties of condensed matter and supraconductivity; Electronic Structure of Quantum Materials |
| Dierker, Steve | Physical sciences; Collective dynamics of condensed matter systems; Dependence on reduced dimensionality, strong interactions, disorder, and mesoscale structure |
| Folk, Joshua | Physical sciences; 2D materials and Vanderwaals heterostructures; Quantum electronics; Thermodynamics of quantum systems; Strongly correlated phenomena; Topological phenomena; Quantum transport |
| Franz, Marcel | Condensed matter theory |
| Gay, Colin | Experimental subatomic physics, Beyond Standard Model physics, Extra dimensions |
| Gladman, Brett | Astronomy, Planetary Science, meteorites, astrobiology, Solar system formation and evolution |
| Hallas, Alannah | Condensed matter experiments; Solid state chemistry; Quantum materials; Materials design and discovery; magnetism; Disorder; superconductivity |
| Halpern, Mark | Cosmology, Cosmic background radiation, history of star formation, measuring the geometry and contents of the Universe, satellites, balloon-borne telescopes, the physics of music, Physics of music, Cosmic Microwave Background, Physical Cosmology, Star formation history |
| Hasinoff, Michael | Low-energy particle physics |
| Hearty, Christopher | Particle physics, experimental; Experimental Particle Physics; e+e- collider; Physics beyond the Standard Model; Dark sector; dark matter |
| Heyl, Jeremy | Astronomical and space sciences; Physical sciences; Astrophysics; Black Holes; Neutron Stars; quantum phenomena; Quantum-Field Theory; Stellar; Stellar Physics |
| Hickson, Paul | cosmology, galaxies, telescopes, adaptive optics., Astronomy, astrophysics, Galaxies, clusters, instrumentation, adaptive optics |
| Hinshaw, Gary | cosmology, cosmic background radiation, Cosmology, Measuring diffuse background radiations |
| Jones, David | Atomic, optical and molecular physics,Ultrafast Optics, Spectroscopy |
| Karczmarek, Joanna | Physical sciences; Emergent spacetime and gravity; Matrix models; Noncommutative geometry; String theory |
| Kunimoto, Michelle | exoplanet detection, characterization, and demographics |
| Leslie, Sabrina | |
| Lister, Alison | Particle physics, experimental; Large Hadron Collier (LHC); ATLAS experiment; Search for physics beyond the standard model; top quarks; dark matter; Machine Learning; Long-lived particles |
| Madison, Kirk | Condensed matter, atomic, molecular and optical physics |
| Man, Allison | Cosmology and extragalactic astronomy; galaxy formation and evolution |
| Marziali, Andre | Teaching methods, pedagogy, Robotics in education, Nanotechnology, Engineering Physics, Genomics, Biophysics, Genomics Technologies |
| Mattison, Thomas | Subatomic physics, Particle & Nuclear Physics, Applied Physics |
| McIver, Jess | General relativity and gravitational waves in astronomical and space sciences; Gravitational wave astrophysics; Multi-messenger astronomy; Characterization of large-scale physics instrumentation; data science |
| McKenna, Janis | Physical sciences |
| Michal, Carl | Soft condensed matter; Development and applications of spectroscopic and structural techniques; Solid-state NMR; NMR and MRI of brain tissue; NMR methods and instrumentation; Biological and functional materials |
| Milner, Valery | Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics; Ultrafast Quantum Coherent Control; Ultrafast Spectroscopy |
| Oser, Scott | Physical sciences; dark matter; Elementary Particles; neutrinos; particle physics; statistical methods for physics; gravitational wave astronomy; LISA |
| Plotkin, Steven | Biophysics theory and computation |
| Potter, Andrew | Condensed matter theory, Atomic, molecular, and optical theory, Quantum information science and quantum computing, Topological phases of matter, Strongly correlated quantum materials, Quantum dynamics, thermalization, and localization, Quantum criticality |
| Rahmim, Arman | Clinical oncology; Medical physics; Physical sciences; Image Reconstruction; Machine learning and radiomics; medical physics; Molecular imaging; Quantitative Imaging; Theranostics |
| Reinsberg, Stefan | Medical physics, MRIs |
| Rottler, Joerg | Physical sciences; Condensed Matter and Materials Physics; Nanomaterials; Polymers; Soft Matter; Solids |
| Rozali, Moshe | String theory, high energy physics, quantum field theory, cosmology and classical gravitational physics |
| Schleich, Kristin | Theoretical physics, general relativity |
| Scott, Douglas | Astronomical and space sciences; Physical sciences; Cosmology; Science and Knowledge |
| Semenoff, Gordon Walter | Particle physics theory (including aspects of field theory and string theory); Physical sciences; Moedal experiment, Large Hadron Collider, CERN; String theory, quantum field theory, statistical mechanics; Theoretical and mathematical physics, the physics of elementary particles, condensed matter physics |
| Sigurdson, Kris | The Universe, Cosmology, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Particle Physics, Astrophysics, Cosmic Microwave Background, Cosmic 21-cm Fluctuations, Radio Astronomy, CHIME |
| Sossi, Vesna | Medical Imaging, Brain imaging |
| Stairs, Ingrid | pulsars, gravity, general relativity, radio astronomy, radio pulsars, pulsar searches and long-term timing, Radio astronomy |
| Stamp, Philip C | Theoretical physics, strongly-correlated condensed matter systems, quantum magnetism, decoherence, quantum information, gravity |
| Unruh, William | black holes; cosmology; quantum computers; theory of gravity |
| Van Raamsdonk, Mark | elementary particle theory, high energy theory. , String theory, quantum field theory, quantum gravity |
| Van Waerbeke, Ludovic | astrophysics, cosmology, dark energy, universe, gravitational lensing, galaxy, galaxies, Cosmology, dark matter, galaxy formation, structure formation |
