UC Merced features interdisciplinary research, connecting physics research to chemistry, life sciences and engineering. Our collaborative faculty work with students on a broad range of research topics.
For a list of which faculty are recruiting PhD students, see our Graduate Studies page.
* Emeritus faculty
Deceased: Roland Winston (experimental solar energy research and atomic, molecular, and optical physics)
Prof. Brian Utter performs experimental soft matter research, but does not advise graduate students.
Affiliate Faculty
The physics group also includes affiliate faculty from other UC Merced graduate groups. Physics students may also carry out their physics graduate research with these groups.
Experimental:
- Mehmet Z. Baykara: atomic force microscopy and surface physics (Mechanical Engineering)
- Sarah Kurtz: solar energy (Materials and Biomaterials Science and Engineering)
- Jennifer Lu: functional material synthesis (Materials and Biomaterials Science and Engineering)
- Victor Muñoz: biophysics (Bioengineering)
- Alex Noy: biomaterials (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
- Anand Bala Subramaniam: biomaterials (Bioengineering)
- Tao Ye: bio/nano interfaces (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
Theory (primarily):
- Venkattraman Ayyaswamy: plasma physics (Mechanical Engineering)
- Mike Colvin: biomolecular simulation (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
- Arvind Gopinath: biophysics (Bioengineering)
- Hrant Hratchian: theoretical chemistry (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
- Shilpa Khatri: fluid dynamics (Applied Math)
- Henrik Larsson: theoretical chemistry and computational AMO physics
(Chemistry and Biochemistry)
- Elizabeth Nowadnick: computational materials physics (Materials and Biomaterials Science and Engineering)
- Aurora Pribram-Jones: theoretical chemistry (Chemistry and Biochemistry)
- Tomas Rube: computational biology (Applied Math)
For some recent research highlights see our
homepage (older research highlights
here).
