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Composite headshots of M. Scott Shell and Beth Pruitt
Photo Credit
Matt Perko; courtesy
M. Scott Shell, left, and Beth Pruitt, right

A prestigious career honor for two elite engineers

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dune plant and dune fence
Photo Credit
Karina Johnston
Beach bur, a native plant that helped to form dunes on a section of Santa Monica Beach in Los Angeles

Dune restoration could increase the resilience of Southern California's urban beaches to sea level rise
concept of attaching radical molecule to aromatic compound
Photo Credit
Courtesy Image

A ‘toolbox of biocatalysts’ improves control over free radicals
walking on shore on left glitching on right
Photo Credit
Amelie Funk

Climate science is catching up to climate change with predictions that could improve proactive response
Diatoms under the microscope.
Photo Credit
Elif Bayraktar via iStock
Diatoms are one of the largest groups of phytoplankton, which serve as a foundation of the ocean’s food web.

Important groups of phytoplankton tolerate some strategies to remove CO2 from the ocean
colorful concept of a cell stress landscape
Photo Credit
Max Wilson

First map of a cellular stress memory landscape paves the way for better understanding of cell stress-related disease processes
Illustration of a transmitter assembly, including electronic and photonic integrated circuits
Photo Credit
Courtesy image
In this image of the newly developed transmitter assembly, the small, brownish chip on the left is the electronic integrated circuit (EIC), and the larger, black-and-gold chip on the right is the photonic integrated circuit (PIC). The long structure on the left side of the PIC is the modulator, which converts the electrical signal into an optical one. Light gets coupled into and out of the chip through the fibers on the right side of the PIC. Everything is mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB), with gold wire bonds connecting the chips. Data flows from left to right, where the incoming electrical signal gets amplified by the EIC, converted to an optical signal by the PIC, and sent out via fiber to its destination.

Student-led holistic co-design of photonics, electronics and packaging enables faster, more-efficient data transfer
an orange garibaldi with a scientific diver in the background
Photo Credit
Chris Honeyman
A research diver conducts periodic monitoring of a kelp forest marine protected area

Multiple ecosystems in hot water after marine heatwave surges across the Pacific
An AI-generated illustration of an engineer at a laptop, looking at a robot
Photo Credit
Courtesy photo
An AI-generated image depicts engineers working on an AI-enabled robot.

GauchoAI team takes second place in Amazon’s Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge
A thinning forest on a hill.
Photo Credit
Lee Anderegg
A forest community changes as trembling aspen succumb to drought in southwestern Colorado.

Forests can adapt to climate change, but not quickly enough
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US Physics Team trains at UC Santa Barbara
This artist’s impression shows two tiny but very dense neutron stars at the point at which they merge and explode as a kilonova.
Photo Credit
University of Warwick/Mark Garlick
Multi-messenger astronomy enabled scientists to observe merging neutron stars for the first time in 2017 (artist’s impression).

UC Santa Barbara and Las Cumbres Observatory partner to lead the future of multi-messenger astronomy
Burning hillside at Sedgwick Preserve
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
A flame torched hillside at Sedgwick Reserve is the site of a prescribed burn.

Taming Fire: Controlled burns can be a boon to our landscape
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