UCSB Office of Technology & Industry Alliances

Office of the Dean

UC Santa Barbara is an exciting place for students, faculty and researchers in Mathematics and the Sciences. The division of Mathematical, Life and Physical Sciences (MLPS), part of the College of Letters & Science, is home to world-renowned scientists and researchers, including four Nobel Prize winners (two in physics and two in chemistry). Our campus hosts 12 national research institutes, eight of them funded by the National Science Foundation. Our faculty and students collaborate on teaching and research with counterparts from the nationally-ranked College of Engineering and the pioneering Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, as well as from the Divisions of Social Sciences and Humanities and Fine Arts. This interdisciplinary work makes UC Santa Barbara a unique learning and research environment.

As one of only 63 institutions in the American Association of Universities (AAU), UC Santa Barbara is among the elite research universities of North America.

In addition to its Nobel prize winning faculty, our faculty have been received one National Medal of Science, a National Medal of Technology, and a Millennium Technology Prize. Thirty-five professors are elected members of the National Academy of Sciences; twenty-five are members of the National Academy of Engineering; and one has been elected to the Institute of Medicine. UC Santa Barbara's extramural funding comes predominately from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and it is among the top 25 institutions funded by the NSF.

Teaching is as much a part of the university's mandate as research, and even senior faculty supervise undergraduate research. In MLPS, our 10 academic departments offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in disciplines ranging from aquatic biology to zoology. In addition, innovative courses of study build on UC Santa Barbara's strengths in interdisciplinary work:

• Undergraduates may pursue a B.A. or B.S. in Environmental Studies, exploring social, cultural and scientific issues related to the environment and drawing on courses in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, or a BS in Hydrologic Sciences, providing students with the scientific training needed to understand and solve complex hydrologic problems at local, regional, and global levels;
• The Geography Department, one of the top-ranked programs in the country, offers undergraduate and graduate students the possibility to pursue interdisciplinary studies in a range of areas including measurement, modeling, and computation; the geography of transportation; human-environmental relations; ocean processes; terrestrial processes; climate; and cognitive and behavioral geography;
• The program in Marine Science, which brings together faculty from nine departments (Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology; Earth Science; Geography; Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; Chemical Engineering; Mechanical Engineering; Chemistry and Biochemistry; the Bren School; and Anthropology), offers M.Sc. and Ph. D programs;
• The Biomolecular Science and Engineering program offers M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, with course tracks in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Biophysics and Bioengineering. It aims to foster research at the interface between molecular/cellular biology and the physical/engineering sciences.

UC Santa Barbara offers a dynamic scientific community, world-class research and scholarship, and innovative courses and programs. Studying in MLPS, whether as an undergraduate or graduate, gives you outstanding preparation for careers in the sciences, industry, business or for continued academic research.