News and Events

12/16/08	Study of Galaxy Clusters Detects Growth-Stifling Dark Energy A study of galaxy clusters independently confirms that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace.
12/10/08	Dimmest Star-Like Objects Discovered The two faintest star-like objects ever found, a pair of twin "brown dwarfs" each just a millionth as bright as the sun, have been spotted by a team led by MIT physicist Adam Burgasser.
12/09/08	Lights, Camera, Render: Visualizing the Universe A red plume of hydrogen gas streams in three dimensions across a movie screen that almost spans the width of a dark conference room. Within the plume a brilliant white spot forms. The spot expands and quickly explodes into an orange and red cloud. Soon this cloud dissipates and a new bright dot grows elsewhere on the screen. In less than a minute, the movie has told the story of a young galaxy forming.
11/12/08	President Bush Honors U.S. Recipients of the 2008 Kavli Prize President George W. Bush and his Science Advisor, Dr. John Marburger honored the first U.S. recipients of the Kavli Prize in an Oval Office reception at the White House this afternoon.
11/11/08	MEDIA ADVISORY: President George W. Bush to Receive U.S.Laureates of 2008 Kavli Prize On November 12, 2008, President George W. Bush will receive in the White House three U.S. laureates of the 2008 Kavli Prize.
11/11/08	Light Triggers a New Code for Brain Cells Brain cells can adopt a new chemical code in response to cues from the outside world, scientists working with tadpoles at the University of California, San Diego report in the journal Nature this week.
10/17/08	European Research Council Supports NTNU Kavli Institute Research Into Higher Brain Functions The Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has been awarded a grant of NOK 20 million (over 3 million US) from the European Research Council (ERC) – funds that will support research aimed at describing and explaining to the smallest detail how a so-called higher brain function works mechanistically.
09/24/08	Fernström Prize to Norwegian Research Couple Animals can find their way back to good feeding places and we humans do not get lost on our way to and from the store because the brain is capable of storing information about spatial location. But where does this occur, and how do these internal maps work? Edvard and May-Britt Moser are conducting research in this field at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. They will now share the Erik K Fernström Foundation's Nordic prize of SEK 1 million.
09/15/08	KIPAC Director Blandford to Chair NAS Decadal Survey Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology Director Roger Blandford will chair the next National Academy of Sciences decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics, Astro2010.
09/09/08	INAUGURAL KAVLI LAUREATES HONORED IN OSLO CEREMONY In a ceremony at Oslo Concert Hall, seven pioneering researchers in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience were honored as the first Kavli Prize laureates, receiving a gold medal and scroll from His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon Magnus.
09/03/08	GLAST Observatory Renamed for Fermi, Reveals Entire Gamma-Ray Sky The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and NASA announced today that the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) has revealed its first all-sky map in gamma rays. The onboard Large Area Telescope's (LAT) all-sky image—which shows the glowing gas of the Milky Way, blinking pulsars and a flaring galaxy billions of light-years away—was created using only 95 hours of "first light" observations, compared with past missions which took years to produce a similar image. Scientists expect the telescope will discover many new pulsars in our own galaxy, reveal powerful processes near super-massive black holes at the cores of thousands of active galaxies and enable a search for signs of new physical laws.
08/28/08	A Clash of Clusters Provides New Clue to Dark Matter A powerful collision of galaxy clusters has been captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. This clash of clusters provides striking evidence for dark matter and insight into its properties.
08/26/08	Inaugural Kavli Prize Ceremony and Symposia: September 8-11 The inaugural year of The Kavli Prize will be celebrated in Norway with a special ceremony that features H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon Magnus presenting the prize to the seven Kavli laureates. Acclaimed scientists in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience will give lectures throughout the week.
08/18/08	Polchinski Shares Prestigious Dirac Medal Joseph G. Polchinski, professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) and a permanent member of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), has been awarded the 2008 Dirac Medal by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).
08/14/08	Tiny Cellular Antennae May Trigger Neural Stem Cells The tiny cilia found on brain cells of mammals may play a critical role in relaying molecular signals that spur creation of neurons in an area of the brain involved in mood, learning and memory.
07/08/08	MIT Reports Finer Lines for Microchips MIT researchers have achieved a significant advance in nanoscale lithographic technology, used in the manufacture of computer chips and other electronic devices, to make finer patterns of lines over larger areas than have been possible with other methods.
06/27/08	GLAST - Watcher of the Skies: Observations by KIPAC DIrector Roger Blandford After its launch into orbit, KIPAC Director Roger Blandford discusses the importance and expectations of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope.
06/17/08	Looking for New Light: How Researchers at KIPAC are Trying to Shed Light on Asteroids Researchers now report that they can use this gamma ray radiation to infer the number of small asteroids in different groups of small solar system bodies. However, they will have to wait to test their ideas until the new Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), launched last week by NASA, returns data.
06/06/08	Measuring a Pulsar's Smoothness In one of the first significant scientific findings from a huge collaborative effort to detect gravitational waves, the team operating the Laser Interferometer Gravity-wave Observatory (LIGO) is reporting this week that the pulsar at the center of the Crab Nebula must have an extremely smooth surface.
05/02/08	Kavli Grant Establishes Endowment to Support KIPAC Fred Kavli and The Kavli Foundation have made a pledge of $7.5 million to KIPAC the for an endowment that will support the institute's s research programs, including fellowships for graduate students and young researchers.
04/22/08	First Kavli Awards to Open World Science Festival The naming of the first Kavli honorees will begin the World Science Summit, a single-day, invitation-only event at Columbia University designed to lead off the World Science Festival.
04/17/08	Fred Kavli Professor Michael Prather to Head New UC Irvine Environment Institute UC Irvine Kavli Professor Michael Prather will head a new research institute dedicated to the study of how the environment and society interact.
04/10/08	Finding Art From Science, Nano Photographs Join Exhibit at Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art is featuring a nanoscale picture by Michael Rouke, professor at the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at the California Institute of Technology, and his research team.
03/14/08	Team of Scientists Goes Deep, Armed with World's Best Detectors of Dark Matter A half-mile down in an old iron ore mine in Minnesota, incredibly sensitive detectors have been waiting for a particle of dark matter, an invisible substance that may form the skeleton of galaxies, to make itself known.
03/14/08	Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech Celebrates New Facility The Kavli Nanoscience Institute (KNI) at Caltech recently celebrated the completion of its new cleanroom facility -- a facility that includes nanotechnology-based platforms allowing scientists to detect a multitude of proteins in the body at one time.
02/28/08	MIT to Lead Development of New Telescopes on Moon NASA has selected a proposal by an MIT-led team to develop plans for an array of radio telescopes on the far side of the moon that would probe the earliest formation of the basic structures of the universe. The agency announced the selection and 18 others related to future observatories on Friday, Feb.15.
02/01/08	TU Delft Launches Bionanoscience Initiative
01/25/08	KIPAC Researcher Awarded Rossi Prize Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University researcher Steve Allen has been awarded a share of the 2008 Rossi Prize by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).
01/08/08	Physicist Hirosi Ooguri Awarded for Novel Research on Black Holes Hirosi Ooguri, the Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, is a co-recipient of the first ever Leonard Eisenbud Prize for Mathematics and Physics, awarded by the American Mathematical Society (AMS).
12/11/07	MIT Instrument Finds Surprises at Solar System's Edge The Voyager 2 spacecraft's Plasma Science instrument, developed at MIT in the 1970s, has turned up surprising revelations about the boundary zone that marks the edge of the sun's influence in space.
11/08/07	Mysterious cosmic rays linked to galactic powerhouses The Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory in South America has produced its first major discovery -- tracing the rain of high-energy cosmic rays that continually pelts the Earth to the cores of nearby galaxies.
10/17/07	By the Light of the Moon The gently glowing moon is more than just a pretty ball in the sky—for gamma-ray astronomers, the moon could become a unique target for calibrating instruments such as the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), thanks to researchers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).
10/05/07	Kavli Institute Director Eric Kandel Receives 2007 National Academies Best Book Award
10/04/07	Shedding Light on a Cosmic Mystery A Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) astrophysicist and his collaborators may have finally solved the long-standing conundrum about the origin of cosmic rays.
09/13/07	Stars Caught in Bizarre Death-Dance MIT Kavli astronomers played a key role in discovering what NASA calls one of the most bizarre objects in space: a star "skeleton."
09/10/07	The Kavli Prize Begins Call for Nominations and Announces Prize Committees Press Conference Held at BA Festival in York Announces Call for International Prize Honoring Scientists for Outstanding Research in Astrophysics, Nanoscience and Neuroscience.
08/14/07	New Kavli Neuroscience Institute Established in Norway The Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Becomes the Fifteenth Kavli Institute Worldwide.
07/18/07	Charles M. Vest Receives National Medal of Technology Kavli Board Director and President Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Will Receive National Award in White House Ceremony.
06/25/07	Scientists Call for Global Push to Advance Research in Synthetic Biology Forecasting a Revolution in Science, the 'Ilulissat Statement' Concludes an International Meeting of Renowned Researchers at the Inaugural Kavli Futures Symposium.
06/18/07	Dr. Hirosi Ooguri Appointed as Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics Ooguri First to Hold Newly Endowed Professorship
06/07/07	Kavli Physics Institute in Beijing Inaugurated During Ceremony at China Inauguration Follows Groundbreaking for Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University.
05/23/07	Inauguration of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China on May 26th The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China at the Chinese Academy of Sciences will be inaugurated on May 26th at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
04/11/07	Henry T. Yang, Chancellor of UC Santa Barbara, Joins Board of Directors Chancellor Since 1994, Many Honors Include National Academy of Engineering Membership and Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
11/01/06	The University of Cambridge and The Kavli Foundation Create a Pioneering New Research Center to Examine the Very Beginnings of the Universe The University of Cambridge and the Kavli Foundation announced today their intention to establish a new institute to probe the beginnings of the cosmos. Located at the University of Cambridge and led by Professor George Efstathiou, the Kavli Institute for Cosmology will be supported by a multimillion dollar endowment from the Kavli Foundation, which is dedicated to advancing scientific knowledge "for the benefit of humanity."
09/26/06	Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology Established at Harvard University The Kavli Foundation and Harvard University have agreed to establish the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology (KIBST). The endowment from the Kavli Foundation will help to boost Harvard University's research efforts at the interfaces of biology, engineering, and nanoscale science. In particular, the gift will fund postdoctoral research fellows and support a lectureship series dedicated to "nano-" or small-scale science.
08/07/06	Jeff Elman, Co-Director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at the University of California at San Diego, Wins Prestigious Rumelhart Prize Psycholinguistics and artificial neural networks pioneer Jeff Elman – distinguished professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego and acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences – has been named the seventh recipient of the David E. Rumelhart Prize.
06/23/06	Fred Kavli Awarded Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for Outstanding Service Honor Presented at Ceremony in Oslo
06/18/06	The Kavli Foundation Establishes Two New Scientific Institutes in China
04/26/06	Fred Kavli Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2006 AAAS Fellows Class Includes Scholars, Scientists, Artists; Civic, Corporate and Philanthropic Leaders
03/17/06	For the Record: Remarks of Fred Kavli at Building Dedication for Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, SLAC/Stanford University Dedication of the Fred Kavli Building at Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, SLAC/Stanford University. For the speech given by Fred Kavli, go to: http://today.slac.stanford.edu/feature/Kavli speech.asp
12/31/05	News Archives: 2005 and earlier News and information from earlier.