Research, teaching and public engagement in Physics at UW–Madison
Could there be more particles like the Higgs boson? For the first time, the CMS experiment has searched for the decay of the Higgs boson into two more Higgs-boson-like particles with unequal masses. Written by: Ashling Quinn ’23 and Anagha Aravind (physics PhD student), originally published by the CMS Collaboration Some theories suggest that the Higgs …
This post is adapted from the L&S teaching mentor website L&S announced their 2026 Teaching Mentors, including physics PhD students Sam Kramer and Benjamin Beyer. Kramer earned the additional honor of being named a Lead Teaching Mentor. The L&S Teaching Mentors are the heart of our college level Teaching Assistant (TA) Trainings. They are exceptionally passionate …
The Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium (WSGC) recently announced its 2026 Spring Awardees, including several UW–Madison physics students. WSGC award winners are Wisconsin students, educators, faculty, and research teams conducting NASA-aligned research, STEM education, and aerospace outreach across the state. These awards strengthen Wisconsin’s STEM workforce pipeline through hands-on research, outreach programming, academic advancement, and national …
This post is modified from one posted by the Graduate School Thirty-two exceptional graduate students, including physics PhD student Lekshmi Thulasidharan, have been selected as recipients of the 2025-26 Campus-Wide Teaching Assistant Awards, recognizing their strengths and commitment surrounding the craft of teaching. UW–Madison employs over 2,400 teaching assistants (TAs) across a wide range of …
The latest results combined weak lensing and galaxy clustering and incorporated four dark energy probes from a single experiment for the first time. This story is amended from one published by Fermilab, which includes information about the full results published by the DES collaboration The Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration — including scientists at the …
All celestial bodies — planets, suns, even entire galaxies — produce magnetic fields, affecting such cosmic processes as the solar wind, high-energy particle transport, and galaxy formation. Small-scale magnetic fields are generally turbulent and chaotic, yet large-scale fields are organized, a phenomenon that plasma astrophysicists have tried explaining for decades, unsuccessfully. In a paper published …
This post is adapted from the DOE’s announcement regarding the Computational Science Fellows Congrats to physics PhD student Gage Erwin on being named a U.S. Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellow! The 2025-2026 incoming fellows will learn to apply high-performance computing (HPC) to research in disciplines including machine learning, quantum computing, chemistry, astrophysics, computational …
This story, featuring physics graduate student Shivani Lomte, was originally published by the CMS collaboration The CMS Collaboration hunts for Higgs bosons recoiling against dark matter particles Dark matter is one of the most perplexing mysteries of our universe, accounting for roughly 27% of its total energy. Dark matter does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, …
Physics PhD students Sam Kramer, Michelle Marrero Garcia, and Isaac Barnhill were recently named to the L&S Teaching Mentors program. The L&S Teaching Mentors are the heart of L&S’s Teaching Assistant (TA) Trainings. They are exceptionally passionate and knowledgeable teachers with proven track records for teaching excellence who work closely with the L&S TA Training and …