All the feels, and then some, were on display during UC Santa Barbara’s annual commencement festivities, which celebrated more than 6,700 students. Congrats, grads!
From farmworker fields in California to war in Vietnam to a doctoral degree in history, Fabros is UCSB’s oldest Ph.D. recipient.
Read more about his story
17.7 million Americans live in communities too road-poor to evacuate safely.
Read more about the threshold
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. For graduates, especially. Commencement season has arrived.
Read more about commencement
Wildfire, drought and insect infestations are causing forests to emit more greenhouse gasses than carbon-credit systems currently account for.
Read more about the risks
The oldest eukaryotes that have been found lived exclusively on the seafloor and already used oxygen. The discovery overturns certain long-held assumptions about the group while corroborating others.
Read more about the discovery
The assistant professor of computer science has received a prestigious Early CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his project to advance watermarking.
Jia-Ching Chen will spend a year in Taiwan on a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to study geopolitical intersections of energy transition and environmental governance.
Read more about Chen’s research
Friday, May 8
A screening of the 1981 landmark adaptation by Luis Valdez features accompaniment by a live orchestra.
Thursday, May 7
Ahilan T. Arulanantham of the UCLA School of Law discusses the role of race discrimination in immigration and refugee policy.
With the Grackle Project, researcher Corina Logan is trying to understand how the highly social birds adapt to a variety of human-made environments.
Read more about grackles
For the first time in the journal’s history, a UCSB professor sits at the helm of Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, a flagship publication and the most widely read outside the discipline.
Read more about Duck’s work
New research suggests that for consumers with textured hair, the “clean” label may not always equal “chemical-free.”
Popularly known as the “Oscars® of Science,” the award honors scientists whose discoveries are significantly driving growth of human knowledge.
Read more about the prize
n a media environment where creating content and spreading false or misleading material is easy, perception is everything. Political scientist Julia Morse examines how these dynamics play out in the international arena.
UC Santa Barbara’s Top News & Featured Events
April 9, 2026
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Daniel Blumenthal in his lab
To advance quantum technology, miniaturization is the name of the game
Daniel Blumenthal’s research group is working to shrink large lasers, optical components and quantum optical light-matter experiments down to the size of a deck of cards.
Researchers in Ania Bleszynski Jayich’s lab use a mechanical resonator to enable greater entanglement for potentially more powerful sensors.
Read more about the diamonds
The organization has elected Shelly Gable, David Morrison, Javier Read de Alaniz and Kelly Caylor to its 2025 class of fellows.
Led by UCSB researchers, a pioneering, multi-campus initiative brings natural history collections into the era of AI, big data and networked databases.
Read more about the Big Bee Project
Researchers join an international effort to better understand early biological influences on neurodevelopment.
At a partnership summit hosted by the nonprofit REACH, leaders from across Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties convened on campus with an eye toward collaboration and innovation.
The Santa Barbara County Active Transportation Dashboard brings together bike and pedestrian safety data to reveal patterns, trends and hotspots for collisions and near-misses across the county.
The first comprehensive museum survey of the Vietnamese American artist brings together more than 70 works spanning 25 years of research-driven practice.
Read more about the exhibition
With a new NSF award, computer science associate professor Prabhanjan Ananth will study the foundations of quantum computing as a cryptographic tool.
New research co-authored by Roark Chao demonstrates a new micro–light-emitting diode design that improves both efficiency and beam directionality.
The book by Mario T. García, a distinguished professor of Chicano/a studies and of history, is the first comprehensive text on Rupert García’s life and art.
Researchers have mapped out methods for assessing its societal benefits, an effort that could lead to more effective uses of remote sensing technology while increasing benefits to people at large.
A new bio-inspired molecule captures solar energy and releases it as heat on demand, outperforming lithium-ion batteries.
The campus ranks first among U.S. public universities, third among all U.S. institutions and seventh worldwide for scientific impact.
While social media addiction hasn’t been officially recognized as a mental health condition, it shows up in brain scans, according to Kylie Falcione, a graduate student at UCSB’s Media Neuroscience Lab.
“In today’s environment, it’s a community win that our writing and work in Chicano literature is recognized at this level,” said Arce, who will formally receive the award Thursday, Feb. 4.
Read more about Arce’s writing
The iconic looks for the 1995 classic comedy, created by costume designer Mona May, helped define a generation and solidified fashion as a key character in the story.
The English professor discusses how AI judgement, good or bad, can reflect knowledge and social values when implemented in our personal, work and public life.
The growing border between forested and urban areas is causing an alarming uptick in human cases of yellow fever, a disease that had become rare in South America.
Marine science professor Bob Miller helped create the first framework to identify and compare marine blackouts, which can severely impact kelp forests, seagrass beds and other light-dependent marine life.
Humidity worsens the impacts of heat exposure during pregnancy, quadrupling its effect on child health. By focusing on temperature only, we may be underestimating the true impacts of extreme weather.
While searching for exoplanets, scientists observe the first-ever impacts between large objects in a nearby star system.
Read more about the discovery
Scientists overcame storms and bureaucratic setbacks to investigate the ocean’s carbon cycle, revealing more about how tiny organic particles, known as marine snow, transport carbon.
The $3.8 million grant supports professors Tamara Afifi and Nancy Collins in their research goals: extending lifespan and improving quality of life.
In a ceremony full of splendor, music and admiration, professors Michel Devoret and John Martinis, alongside their mentor, UC Berkeley physicist John Clarke, on Dec. 10 officially received their Nobel Prizes from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.
The Art, Design & Architecture Museum hosts a celebration of the late artist’s legacy and his impact on the Chicano Art Movement in California.
Slated for summer 2028, in the runup to the Paralympic Games in Los Angeles, the team’s Preparation Camp at UCSB is expected to be one of its largest ever.
The East Campus project won approval from the UC Regents in their November meeting, while the San Benito project, under construction since May, is on track for completion in 2027.
The Art, Design & Architecture Museum revisits the visionary 1970s collective Environmental Communications, whose multi-media documentation of Los Angeles reimagined the city as a living ecosystem — and reshaped how we see the built environment today.
Read more about the exhibition
UCSB researchers contribute to an international account of extreme droughts and water temperatures in the Amazon basin.
Thousands of rare and uniquely American songs from the Jazz Age and the Great Depression are available for free listening.
In his new book, the anthropologist redefines aging as an evolutionary achievement, challenging a youth-obsessed culture to see the later decades of life as vital to our collective survival.
Leonardi’s new book focuses on how people use innovative tools to organize more effectively, increase efficiency and improve knowledge sharing within organizations.
