Welcome to the IMPS Webpage!

The Inter[Stellar+Galactic] Medium Program of Studies (IMPS) at UC Santa Cruz is a research collaboration with focus on the gas in and outside of galaxies in both the local and distant universe. The program brings together cutting-edge observational projects on the Keck, Lick, and Hubble Space Telescope Observatories and theoretical studies of hydrodynamics and radiative transfer with emphasis on large-scale numerical simulations. The group consists of faculty, postdoctoral researchers, PhD students, and undergraduate researchers from the UCSC Physics Department, Astronomy and Astrophysics Department, and the UCO/Lick Observatory. The program also has established collaborations with similar international groups. This website provides an overview of the program, our research interests, publications, data products, and current research opportunities.

September 12, 2014

NEWS: IMPS searching for New Postdoc(s)

The IMPS program will be hiring at least one and as many as three postdocs for 2015. Please spread the word.


View Job Ad

October 16, 2014

NEWS: IMPS collaborators at MPIA published the first megaparsec-resolution IGM map at z>2

IMPS collaborators team led by Khee-Gan Lee, a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (Germany), has managed to create a three-dimensional map of a large region of the far-flung cosmic web nearly 11 billion light years away, when the Universe was just a quarter of its current age.

View Full Story

June 30, 2014

NEWS: Douglas Lin wins 2014 Brouwer Award

Astrophysicist Douglas Lin wins 2014 Brouwer Award Douglas N. C. Lin earns recognition for outstanding contributions to the field of dynamical astronomy.


View Full Story

May 21, 2014

NEWS: Enrico wins fellowship at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute Astrophysicist

Professor Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz at IMPS is among a select group of fifty artists and scholars chosen for the Radcliffe Fellows Program.



View Full Story

January 19, 2014

NEWS: Distant quasar illuminates a filament of the cosmic web

IMPS astronomers discovered a distant quasar illuminating a vast nebula of diffuse gas, revealing part of the cosmic web.


View Full Story

January 15, 2014

NEWS: Piero Madau wins Dannie Heineman Prize

Piero Madau, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at IMPS, has been chosen to receive the 2014 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics.



View Full Story