Introduction to the U. C. Irvine Department of Physics and Astronomy

The U. C. Irvine Campus and Community

In a well planned new community, fifteen minutes from the beach, two hours from mountains for hiking or skiing, and in a smog-free atmosphere, lies the UCI campus. It's core is a beautiful, spacious park, surrounded by new buildings. Adjacent is the new "Marketplace" with budget-minded restaurants, shopping and entertainment. The world renowned climate of southern California has cooling ocean breezes in Irvine in the summer, warming desert winds in the winter, and plentiful sunshine. The campus housing is new and well designed, and the campus is adjacent to new apartments shared by students. Parking is available and the campus is a center for bus service. Irvine is one of the safest cities in the country.

The department is at a pleasant size for giving excellent attention to students. We are housed in a new, modern spacious building with newly equipped teaching labs, new lecture rooms, and new instructional computing equipment.

Undergraduate Education

We have about 20-30 undergraduate majors in each year's class, and upper division classes number about 25 in required courses and smaller in electives. Graduates have gone on to the nation's best graduate schools. Physics courses are taught by our experienced faculty, with occasional quarters of first year courses taught by highly popular, experienced lecturers. We have a strong program of lecture demonstrations, labs and advanced lab experiments. We have a new 24" CCD telescope for astronomy. We also have a new Pentium and Sun based computer lab. Students are taught Fortran and Mathematica, and computer lessons are becoming integrated into the curriculum. Graduate students are taught C and Mathematica.

Freshmen and sophomores will enjoy small classes in the new introductory sequence, Physics 7, which is offered exclusively to our majors. Undergraduate research is encouraged for capable students both in the honors program, which culminates in a thesis, and in the normal program as well. Several publications have resulted from this. Summer and part- time jobs in the research groups have been available for some students.

The Society for Physics Students (SPS) have their own club/study room and provide a supportive social environment. They sponsor talks about research subjects in which they are interested. They also tutor and have baseball games.

Graduate Education

The graduate program is enhanced by small classes and a small student to faculty ratio. The graduate class size averages about 15 so classes are small. We have had national need fellowships for first year support, and for fees in later years. Teaching assistantships are available to others. Our many research contracts provide support for thesis research students. We have thirty-six active research faculty, including six recent emeritus professors who have taken advantage of an early retirement plan, but are devoting more time to research, and who can supervise graduate students. Our custom of having each faculty member develop their own major line of research provides a great diversity of research areas for the size of our department. With only about 85 graduate students, this provides a close working environment between students and faculty. Before students begin research, they often attend a weekly Friday "pizza" lunch, where members of the department informally talk about their fields of research and their own work.

Our own research labs are on the technological forefront. We also make use of all high energy physics labs in the U. S. in elementary particle experiment. The astronomy group is a basic part of the new Keck double telescope group, and makes use of many other astronomical facilities. Several faculty use supercomputing centers in their work

Several faculty have received outstanding awards, and many have the distinction of being elected Fellows of the American Physical Society. Several serve or have served on major national science committees, or on major laboratory program committees. See faculty honors and awards, and University and Professional Service.

Please see the department research, the research groups, and the faculty listings for more details on our research areas. See the graduate brochure and the graduate fellowships for more information about our graduate program.

Dennis Silverman, djsilver@uci.edu