‘It’s a form of apocalypticism applied to science policy’ - The New Atlantis

Over the past year, researchers across the Faculty of Applied Science secured $97.5 million in research funding from Canadian and international partners, bringing the faculty’s five-year average to approximately $100 million annually. This sustained financial stability provides a strong foundation for researchers to think big, take bold risks and develop workable solutions to some of society’s most pressing global challenges. The newly released 2025/26 Applied Science Research Report highlights how collaborative nursing, architecture, landscape architecture, planning and engineering initiatives across UBC’s Vancouver and Okanagan campuses are generating tangible economic impacts and helping to guide national and provincial priorities. “I see the role of our Faculty as turning knowledge into possibility—driving innovation, strengthening productivity and building Canada’s future prosperity.” – Dr.

Congratulations to Zoya Abbasi and Jaden Saïd, winners of the 2026 Applied Mathematics, Modeling and Computational Science (AMMCS) prizes at this year’s AMMCS International conference. AMMCS aims to promote interdisciplinary research and collaboration involving mathematical and computational sciences within a larger international community, and highlight recent advances in applied mathematics, modeling and computational science. The interdisciplinary international conference started in 2011 and was hosted in Waterloo this year.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

Milky Way’s first microblazar candidate sits 12,000 light-years away, offering a rare ground-level lab for studying relativistic jetsA black hole 12,000 light-years away is firing a jet of plasma almost directly toward Earth. At that distance, no known or expected danger to Earth has been identified by the researchers or the institutions involved. What astronomers have actually found is rarer and more interesting than a threat. Researchers have identified IRAS 18293-0941 as a compelling candidate for the Milky Way’s first microblazar, a class of object that gives astrophysicists a close-up laboratory for studying some of the most violent physics in the galaxy. What Astronomers FoundThe discovery centers on a binary system whose black hole expels plasma jets at close to three-quarters the speed of light, pointed almost directly toward Earth. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a black hole that completes a full orbit roughly every 11.38 days. Material drawn from the companion star feeds the black hole, and some of that matter gets expelled outward as opposing jets traveling at approximately three-quarters the speed of light. Terminology matters here.

Forests that stood on Mozambique's coast thousands of years ago now lie beneath shallow seas, and they have become fish-filled "peat reefs" with marine life comparable to coral reefs, researchers report in Scientific Reports. A team from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory, led by Mario Lebrato, documented the submerged peat in the Bazaruto Archipelago in the Western Indian Ocean. BCSS, founded in 2017, describes itself as Africa's first permanent ocean observatory. Working with universities and institutions in the U. K., U. S. and Canada, the team believes it has carried out the first ecological study of peat reefs anywhere in the tropics. Old forests, new seafloorRadiocarbon dating shows the peat formed between about 300 and 5,000 years ago, and chemical analysis indicates it came mostly from coastal land plants and trees. Some samples contain up to 40% organic carbon by dry weight. Lebrato said the coastline has very little natural hard seabed, mostly shifting sand. As rising seas expose the old peat layers, they create rare solid habitat where marine life can settle, hide and feed.