Members of the School participate in an active and internationally recognised research program in Physics. Research areas include high energy astrophysics, atmospheric physics, high performance computing, geophysics, mathematical physics, medical physics, optics and photonics, particle and nuclear theory, and physical archaeometry.

The School hosts the Special Research Centre for the Sub-Atomic Structure of Matter and the National Institute for Theoretical Physics, and has strong links with the South Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing.