{"id":41616,"date":"2025-06-03T12:35:05","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T19:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=41616"},"modified":"2025-06-03T12:35:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T19:35:06","slug":"18-million-donation-takes-campus-theoretical-physics-research-to-a-new-dimension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/18-million-donation-takes-campus-theoretical-physics-research-to-a-new-dimension\/","title":{"rendered":"$18 million donation takes campus theoretical physics research to a new dimension"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailycal.org\/users\/profile\/Allison%20Chow\">Allison Chow | Staff<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Jun 2, 2025 (DailyCal.org)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/dailycal.org\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/1\/50\/1508cb85-d5f4-4263-8461-ca0bf372d604\/683d1c5449542.image.jpg?resize=400%2C258\" alt=\"physics_Yasunori Nomura_courtesy.jpg\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>The endowment comes at a time when research across the country is suffering from federal funding cuts. The donation\u00a0will expand the hiring of postdoctoral researchers and foster innovative conversations on advancing theoretical physics.\u00a0Yasunori Nomura | Courtesy<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The Leinweber Foundation donated $18 million to the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, renaming it to the Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The total donation of $90 million is shared between UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Institute for Advanced Study, according to Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics Director Yasunori Nomura.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis magnitude of a donation is really a game changer,\u201d Nomura said. \u201cA large number of people have been supporting Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, and we\u2019re also grateful for those types of people who made us survive until now. And now, we have this Leinweber donation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The institute functions as a collaboration between faculty, postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate students. This collaboration will help bridge generational gaps in research while advancing new discoveries in theoretical physics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The endowment comes at a time when researchers across the country are losing&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailycal.org\/news\/campus\/uc-berkeley-researchers-report-nih-funding-freeze-despite-ongoing-litigation\/article_38b1b530-f4d1-11ef-bc2e-c7f78b9bf2ac.html\">funding<\/a>, and will greatly benefit hiring postdoctoral researchers as well as discussing new ideas with members of the institution, Nomura explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the endowment, Nomura added the Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics is continuously&nbsp; funded by government grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy along with donations from the community.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The institute plans on studying the major components of theoretical physics which include quantum mechanics, quantum gravity, cosmology, particle physics, condensed matter physics and mathematical physics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s about developing separately and benefitting from interaction between the four major components in theoretical physics,\u201d campus mathematics and physics professor Mina Aganagic said. \u201cWhile many disciplines do research based on specializations, in recent decades, these different areas in physics have come together to interact, and I think that\u2019s really wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nomura said the donation will also be used to start the Leinweber Physics Fellows, a postdoctoral program consisting of four postdoctoral researchers to join thecurrent team of 15 postdoctoral researchers and more than a dozen faculty members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The postdoctoral fellows will be scouted in the next two years, Nomura said, and the selected candidates will be the \u201cbest of the best\u201d due to the highly selective nature of the Leinweber Physics Fellows program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a major gift to science at Berkeley and having such support,\u201d Aganagic said. \u201cThe donors view the importance of science very, very highly, and just reminding people of it, the timing could not be better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Leinweber Foundation donated $18 million to the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, renaming it to the Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics.&nbsp; The total donation of $90 million is shared between UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Institute for Advanced&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/18-million-donation-takes-campus-theoretical-physics-research-to-a-new-dimension\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41616"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41617,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41616\/revisions\/41617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}