#UCSB is poised to join a group of collaborating partners in a new era of battery prototyping. The network of collaborating entities also includes UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, the Volta Foundation, the Catalyst Innovation Group & Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: https://ow.ly/hlQb50YVQbj

100+ whales were struck and killed by ships off the U.S. West Coast between 2015-2024, alone. A workshop co-hosted by #UCSB's Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory brought together experts from science, policy and industry to get a sense of this worldwide problem 🐋 https://ow.ly/gbxw50YWHpb

A new multi-venue exhibition highlighting the past and present of muralism in Santa Barbara County features a strong contribution from UC Santa Barbara, with students and alumni from the College of Creative Studies (CCS) taking on large-scale, public-facing work. https://ow.ly/UwXC50YWHw3

A team of three students will represent #UCSB on the global stage at the World Finals of the International Collegiate Programming Contest 🏆 After placing 16th at the North America Championship, the team automatically qualified for World Finals. Full story: https://ow.ly/J2jo50YVjho

Two @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social faculty members, a @uclaupdates.bsky.social physicist, and a @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social Nobel laureate were awarded the "Oscar of Science"—the 2026 Breakthrough Prize—honoring their incredible contributions to advancing science. https://bit.ly/4d1ZHPB

Developed by #UCSB NCEAS researchers, the Wildfire Resilience Index is the first tool to measure social & ecological wildfire resilience simultaneously, at 90-meter resolution, across 700+ million pixels spanning the western U.S., Canada, & Alaska. It's free & open-access. https://ow.ly/AWl850YVCE3

#UCSB is now offering a Bachelor of Arts degree in comparative literature to qualified students incarcerated at CSP-Corcoran. It's the first B.A. in literary studies to be offered by a UC in a California prison. Full story: https://ow.ly/xxly50YV8PO

More kelp, more impact: #UCSB marine scientists are exploring the connection between land and sea—through kelp. When kelp washes onto the beach, it provides nutrients to the sandy ecosystems, impacting different invertebrate groups based on the amount of kelp. Full story: https://ow.ly/6gpw50YUM2c

"Can we take the grackle successes and apply them to threatened species, see if it helps them survive in human-modified environments?" Cool writeup and video short on #thegrackleproject and #manyindividuals

UC Santa Barbara’s Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life has been awarded a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support its work on the repatriation of Indigenous ancestors and cultural objects. Full story: https://ow.ly/GXj450YTEfE

An international team including UCSB researchers looked into the different uses of land, revealing that strategic planning would enable progress toward global biodiversity and sustainable development goals simultaneously 🌿 Full story: https://ow.ly/qoZY50YTgqE

To minimize the 50% of students across the country who switch out from their engineering major before graduating, UCSB's Integrated Networking, Scholarship and Peer Interaction for First-Year Engineers (INSPIRE) program provides support, seminars, guidance and mentorship💡 https://ow.ly/wmIb50YS5Hj

#UCSB researchers from the Materials Department have uncovered the elusive quantum mechanism that explains decades-old experimental puzzles💡 This discovery opens the door to engineering more stable devices with longer lifespans. Full story: https://ow.ly/apC750YRhy0

Congrats to Karen Szumlinski on the 2026 Distinguished Teaching Award from @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social 🏆 From neuro research to K-6 outreach as "The Brain Lady," she's a force for science. 🧠 Full award announcement: tinyurl.com/Szumlinski-A... #Neuroscience #UCSB

Have you ever been enjoying a meal outside when a black bird with yellow eyes comes to grab your food? That is likely a grackle, the focus of #UCSB researchers 🐦‍⬛ Studying grackles' success in human-modified environments could be the key to survival for endangered species: https://ow.ly/Trug50YRhtP

"Infinite Variety: The Many Lives of Shakespeare's Texts" is a new exhibition at the UCSB Library exploring the many afterlives of Shakespeare’s art, tracing a lineage from a single scrap of his handwritten text to 21st-century digital media 🖋️ https://ow.ly/rrTG50YR9qr

For the first time in the journal’s history, a #UCSB professor sits at the helm of Sociology of Race & Ethnicity: "UCSB has a long and important history of scholarship on race" said Professor Waverly Duck, "It feels fitting for the journal to be based here." Full story: https://ow.ly/fo6950YPuSb

Congratulations to @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social Gluck Professor of Theoretical Physics Lars Bildsten, Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, for his election as a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences! news.ucsb.edu/2026/022527/... #kitp #aaas #ucsb #astrophysics 🌟 🧪

Exciting news: Three distinguished #UCSB faculty members have been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences: Oceanographer Alice L. Alldredge, astrophysicist Lars Bildsten and engineer (and chancellor emeritus of UCSB) Henry T. Yang. Full story: https://ow.ly/YGGy50YOGYl

A new #UCSB’s Environmental Studies Program study reveals that "clean" beauty labels often leave consumers guessing, particularly women of color. Researchers analyzed 150 products marketed as clean for textured hair, finding that 90% were a moderate risk to human health: https://ow.ly/xVvh50YOCNR#UCSB’s

Did you know UCSB has a teaching aquarium? The REEF brings hands-on experience to marine and environmental sciences, with local creatures and seawater from just a few steps away at Campus Point🦈🪸 Full story: https://ow.ly/inUr50YOfY5

Roughly half of #UCSB students bike daily. But what happens to the waste that these bikes create? For decades, old tires at the A.S. Bike Shop were thrown out. That is until students Sophia Long and Virginia Such launched TREAD, a new tire recycling program 🚲 Full story: https://ow.ly/wlO250YN9IY

Could the next big antibiotic or cancer therapy be found on the nearest coral reef? 🪸 UCSB researchers have found that reefs are home to a vast array of previously unknown bioactive metabolites. "There's a huge treasure trove of genomic potential." Full story: https://ow.ly/UgTU50YNGZT

Cheer on #UCSB in the UC-wide Grad Slam championship on April 22! UCSB Grad Division 2026 champion Kaylee Laub will compete against fellow grad students from other University of California campuses for the ultimate title and cash prize. https://ow.ly/IY0c50YNax2

Congratulations to UC Santa Barbara's David Gross, who just won the 2026 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, for a lifetime of groundbreaking contributions to theoretical physics—from the strong force to string theory. Full story: https://ow.ly/ZzyO50YMjzv

Scientists at @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social are studying ocean health and coastal resilience—research that helps protect California communities. California Science and Health Research Bond Act #SB895 supports this vital work. Urge your lawmakers to invest in UC research. https://bit.ly/4bMH03k

Congratulations to UC Santa Barbara's David Gross, who just won the 2026 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, for a lifetime of groundbreaking contributions to theoretical physics—from the strong force to string theory. Full story: https://ow.ly/ZzyO50YMjzv

#UCSB researchers are close to uncovering the neural circuitry that translates stimulus to action 🧠🪰 They found that inhibitory neurons actively generate and coordinate the rhythmic limb movements required for grooming in fruit flies: https://ow.ly/hxnw50YK4vN

#UCSB professor and artist Shana Moulton brings her surreal, hyper-saturated vision of wellness and everyday life to campus on April 21 as part of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s (IHC) Humanities Decanted series. Full story: https://ow.ly/r44o50YIlCm

From misleading info to fake news, #UCSB's Julia Morse studies how information disorder impacts global politics. "It may or may not matter whether a behavior technically violates international law. It matters who wins the contest over public perceptions of behavior." 🔗 https://ow.ly/aiw150YIVfQ

Congrats! With her three-minute presentation "Reimagining Climate Solutions Through Speculative Designs," #UCSB graduate student Kaylee Laub won the 2026 Grad Slam championship event. Laub has been invited to represent UCSB at the systemwide UC Grad Slam in Sacramento: https://ow.ly/MIlY50YIloQ

We may soon be able to detect signs of life beyond our solar system, thanks to #UCSB's Skyler Palatnick 🌌 His innovation, when combined with conventional technologies, can also create compact optics to be used in NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory mission. Full story: https://ow.ly/fSkT50YH5fb

Big news from our department! 🚀 Prof. Daniel Blumenthal and his group, in collaboration with @UMassAmherst, have demonstrated a chip-scale stabilized laser for trapped-ion quantum systems. 🔗https://bit.ly/4vgq7Wt @ucsbengineering.bsky.social @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social

Did you know we have a nationally ranked game design program at UCSB? According to The Princeton Review, UCSB's undergrad program in game design studies is one of the top 50 in the U.S., coming in at #28 overall & #4 on the undergraduate West list: https://ow.ly/3hmX50YF7jH

With $5,000 on the line for the winner, graduate student researchers across a variety of disciplines at UC Santa Barbara will compete at the campus’s 2026 Grad Slam championship event on April 9. The competition will be livestreamed: https://ow.ly/Xrmg50YBSVL

Before she was a National Champion, she was a Gaucho 💙💛 #UCSB Women's Basketball alum and former assistant coach Cori Close has led the UCLA Bruins women all the way to the top, bringing home their first-ever NCAA championship title. A full-circle moment and a championship legacy. 🏆

Most people think of diamonds as high-end adornments. Not #UCSB physicist Ania Bleszynski Jayich. Professor Jayich sees diamonds, which she grows in the UC Quantum Foundry, as a potentially powerful foundation for quantum sensors 💎 Full story: https://ow.ly/4uYN50YEymQ

In a new study, #UCSB’s Madeleine Gross and Jonathan Schooler found that people who viewed artistic film shorts showed measurable increases in creative thinking—and that even passive exposure to everyday art could stimulate cognitive benefits: https://ow.ly/M6Gc50YE12I

The now-classic 1976 film "Network" is a critique of mass media's impact on the people who consume it and those who create it 📱 "It’s a remarkably prescient film." It screens on April 4 at the Carsey-Wolf Center. Admission is free, but reservations are recommended: https://ow.ly/r8nk50YE0rR

Last month, UCSB library launched the "AI in Action" series 🔬 The next event takes place April 9. "It aims to foster an open, interdisciplinary community exploring how AI can deepen understanding, expand access to knowledge and inspire new forms of scholarship." https://ow.ly/u33P50Yt3iF

#UCSB's Christopher Free found that large-scale food fortification programs currently prevent 7 billion cases of micronutrient inadequacies worldwide each year, and improving and expanding these low-cost programs could triple the impact: https://ow.ly/Fiiz50YBTPe

#UCSB and UMass Amherst researchers have demonstrated a tiny light laser, making progress toward portable quantum technology. By shrinking lasers and optical components that power quantum experiments, quantum circuits become compact and more accessible. Full story: https://ow.ly/51gB50YBRJ1

"It's not all doom and gloom. I'm actually cautiously optimistic." 💧 For #EarthMonth, listen to @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social Prof. Debra Perrone on @npr.org’s Short Wave podcast discussing the global groundwater crisis and how we can solve it. Listen (jump to 6:11): www.npr.org/2026/03/24/n...

Described as a backbone of feminist studies at UCSB, Eileen Boris helped build the department into the international powerhouse it is today. "Over the course of her prolific career, Eileen has been a troublemaker in the very best sense of the word." Full story: https://ow.ly/CT0A50YBp13

#UCSB's Shuji Nakamura has received a prestigious honorary degree from the University of Oxford. The inventor of the blue LED, which ushered in a revolution in energy efficient lighting all over the world, Nakamura was a co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics : https://ow.ly/fRCM50YzsBF

René Weber’s early experiments involving video games and brain scanners were once met with deep skepticism. But now the #UCSB professor has been named an inaugural fellow of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS). Full story: https://ow.ly/uwVv50YyUWB

A proud day for the UCSB Sciences. Congratulations to our four newest AAAS Fellows!

UCSB researchers have announced the discovery of a superluminous supernova, whose erratic behavior has confirmed a long-standing theory of stellar death 💫 "It's the first time General Relativity has been invoked to describe the mechanics of a supernova." https://ow.ly/uAwU50YswMb

A proud day for #UCSBScience. Congratulations to our four newest AAAS Fellows!

Four professors at UC Santa Barbara have joined the esteemed ranks of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 🏆 Since 1874, AAAS has recognized scientists, engineers and innovators for their achievements across disciplines. Full story: https://ow.ly/JElm50YzkeH