Coming online in 2025, the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory's enormous, unrelenting eye on the sky will create the biggest, most data-rich movie ever made — a 10-year, high-precision chronicle of trillions of cosmic events and objects across space and time.

A UC Davis theoretical physicist studying the quantum nature of matter and a mathematician investigating the complexity of large datasets are the recipients of grants totaling more than $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER).

A mathematician, a linguist, a chemist and a physicist are among this year’s cohort to receive Incentives for Large Grant Awards from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis. The Incentives for Large Grant Awards program provides faculty with up to $80,000 in support over two years to pursue large grants over $1 million.