While Ximena Cid was growing up, her family marched alongside Cesar Chavez and farm workers advocating for Chicano civil rights. “My parents raised us in a very social-activist family,” says Cid, whose mother is Chicana and Native-American Yaqui, and her father was born in Mexico. When Cid embarked on an education in the sciences, she was keenly aware of her ethnic difference; there were not many people of color pursuing physics, and there were certainly very few women of color in her classes. She was the first person of Latin-American or Native-American decent to graduate with a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas, Arlington. In the decade since, Cid, an assistant professor ... Read More
Physics
Physics Professor John Price Receives Fourth DOE Grant to Continue Proton Research
John Price, professor of physics at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) has received a three-year, $235,000 grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) for his ongoing experimental nuclear physics program in proton research: “Photo- and Electroproduction of Multiply-Strange Hyperons at CLAS.” This is the fourth grant Price has been awarded from the DOE for the program since 2007. The funding covers Price’s and his students’ research costs, including travel to the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, VA, where the research has been carried out since 2006. “This is a significant sized grant for us. It enables us to do the research while ... Read More
CSUDH professors’ team among 5 teams honored with ‘Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics’
California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) physics faculty Ken Ganezer, Jim Hill, and William Keig were among 1,377 researchers on five teams honored with the “Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics” on Nov. 8 for their study and findings regarding neutrino oscillation. The $3 million prize was accepted by the five team leaders at an Academy Award-style ceremony attended by many Hollywood stars and broadcast nationally on FOX. The prize money will be shared among all members of the teams. Hill, chair of CSUDH’s Academic Senate, Ganezer and Keig were part of the team led by Takaaki Kayita and Yoichori Suzuki, which conducted its research at the Super-Kamiokande (Super-K) ... Read More
A Loving Family Legacy
Despite having earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from Cal Tech as a young man and having enjoyed a successful career in the aerospace industry, Philip Johnson was retired and in his 50s when he began attending California State University, Dominguez Hills in the late 1970s. By all accounts, Johnson was an enthusiastic participant in academic pursuits within the CSUDH physics department, where he dedicated himself to both learning everything he could and sharing his own considerable knowledge with others. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics in 1980. “Phil was what you might call a renaissance man, well-versed in many fields: literature, philosophy and history,” wrote Keith ... Read More
Going Underground to Understand the Universe
By Laurie McLaughlin A half-mile underground, an enormous steel tank is filled with 50,000 tons of water surrounded by light-detecting devices. It serves partly as a giant target for cosmic particles—like protons, electrons, and neutrons—raining down on Earth from the sky. One type of particle, the neutrino, has been somewhat of a mystery to physicists until recent decades, but its activity helps explain how the sun and stars continue to shine. “We don’t realize it, but trillions of neutrinos travel through our bodies every second,” said California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) professor of physics James Hill, who has been studying this very tiny phenomenon for more ... Read More
