Astrophysics Theorist

Kam-Biu Luk among six Berkeley researchers elected to National Academy of Sciences for 2026

April 30, 2026

The six new UCB faculty members of NAS

Clockwise from upper left, Gary Karpen, Janet Yellen, Kam-Biu Luk, Peter Bartlett, Russell Vance and Joshua Goldstein.

April 30, 2026

The National Academy of Sciences announced its newest members this week, among them six eminent UC Berkeley faculty members, including former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.

Membership in the academy, now held by...

Raphael Bousso One of Seven UCB Faculty Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

April 21, 2026

Panel with seven UC Berkeley faculty elected to AAAS for 2026

From left: UC Berkeley professors Doris Tsao, Raphael Bousso, P. David Pearson, Sarah Anzia, Kristin Persson, Michael Hutchings and Paolo Mancosu were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this week.

April 22, 2026

Berkeley Physics is pleased to announce that...

Ben Safdi Awarded New Horizons in Physics Prize

April 20, 2026

Benjamin Safdi

Associate Professor Benjamin Safdi has been awarded the 2026 New Horizons in Physics Prize by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. Photo: Keegan Houser

April 18, 2026

The Breakthrough Prize Foundation today announced the winners of the 2026 Breakthrough Prizes, honoring scientists whose discoveries are...

Astronomers capture birth of a magnetar, confirming link to some of universe’s brightest exploding star

March 11, 2026

Giant star exploding

Artist’s conception of a magnetar surrounded by an accretion disk that is wobbling, or precessing, because of the effects of general relativity. Some models of magnetars suggest that high-speed jets of charged particles emanate from the magnetar along its rotation axis. Image: Joseph Farah and Curtis McCully/Las Cumbres Observatory

A UC Berkeley theorist proposed that...

Martin White elected AAS Fellow

January 15, 2026

Professor Martin White

Professor Martin White at the podium.

Berkeley Physics is pleased to announce that Professor of Astrophysics Martin White has been elected as a fellow of the American Astronomical Society...

Anshuman Acharya

Post Doc

Anshuman is a computational astrophysicist focussed on studying the interplay between cosmological models and astrophysical processes, utilising novel statistical techniques (Simulation Based Inference, Machine Learning, etc.) and cosmological modelling.

He completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany, under the supervision of Benedetta Ciardi and Volker Springel, where he worked with the LOFAR telescope's Epoch of Reionisation Science Working Group. As a part of the group, he worked on multiple projects on improving the theoretical understanding...

If You Want to Go Far, Go Together: Professor Ben Safdi

January 3, 2025

Benjamin Safdi

Associate Professor Benjamin Safdi

Studying the physics of atomic particles takes a lot of room. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the biggest particle accelerator, is in a ring tunnel 27km (17 miles) long buried about two football fields deep underground. It serves as the factory, or artisanal manufacturer, of bespoke subatomic particles like quarks. But where is the design studio for these...

Closest supernova in a decade reveals how exploding stars evolve

August 29, 2023

Galaxies in space

The Pinwheel Galaxy, or Messier 101, on May 21, 2023, four days after the light from the supernova 2023ixf reached Earth.

Alex Filippenko is the kind of guy who brings a telescope to a party. True to form, at a soiree on May 18 this year, he wowed his hosts with images of star clusters and colorful galaxies — including the dramatic spiral Pinwheel Galaxy — and snapped...

A nearby supernova could end the search for dark matter

November 21, 2024

A highly magnetized neutron star

An artist's concept of a highly magnetized neutron star. According to current theory, axions would be created in the hot interior of the neutron star. UC Berkeley astrophysicists say that the strong magnetic field of the star will transform these axions into gamma rays that can be detected from Earth, pinpointing the mass of the axion. Image: Casey Reed, courtesy of Penn...

Martin White

Professor

Martin White received his B.S. in 1988 from the University of Adelaide and his Ph.D. in 1992 from Yale. After postdoctoral positions at the CfPA in Berkeley and an Enrico Fermi Fellowship in Chicago he became Assistant Professor of Physics and of Astronomy at UIUC. In 1998 he became an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Harvard before moving to Berkeley as a Professor of Physics in 2001.

Research Interests

I am a theorist and phenomenologist. While I originally trained in Particle Physics, in the last few years my interest has centered around the question of the formation of...