Two WVU graduate students were recently awarded the O.Rex Ford Scholarship for Physics. Caitlin Witt and Brent Shapiro-Albert were chosen for this prestigious award based on academic excellence.
Caitlin works with Dr. Sarah Burke-Spolaor studying supermassive black hole binaries and doing gravitational wave searches with NANOGrav (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves).
Brent works with Dr. Maura McLaughlin studying various aspects of pulsars. He also works closely with NANOGrav. His research involves using pulsar timing arrays to help detect nanohertz gravitational waves. Brent also studies the effects of the interstellar medium on the pulsar signals and is trying to characterize and mitigate the noise in the pulsar timing data due to these effects.
Congratulations Caitlin and Brent!