University of California, Santa Cruz’s Tesla Jeltema Honored by the American Physical Society

Tesla Jeltema, associate professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a member of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, was selected to receive the 2020 Mentorship Award from the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society.

The award recognizes Dr. Jeltema “for her dedication to mentoring young physicists through hands-on, heartfelt, and effective engagement with diverse students at all levels, demonstrating how particle physics can be an inclusive and productive environment.”

Dr. Jeltema, whose research addresses cosmological questions such as the nature of dark matter and dark energy and the evolution of galaxies, founded the university’s Women in Physics and Astrophysics group in 2011 and serves as its faculty adviser. Over the past six years, in addition to supervising five Ph.D. students and two visiting graduate students, she was the research supervisor or senior thesis adviser for 17 undergraduate students, of which 16 were from groups underrepresented in physics.

Dr. Jelteman joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2011 and was promoted to associate professor in 2017. She is a graduate of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she majored in physics. She holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.