News/Events

Dr. Dustin Madison, a postdoctoral researcher in the WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, will begin a tenure track position at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, in August of 2021.  In his new position as an assistant professor, he will be working with undergraduate students on projects related to gravitational waves and pulsars along with NANOGrav related projects.  In his new appointment, he hopes to focus on outreach initiatives.  Looking forward to new opportunities, he states “I would like to start some outreach initiatives focused on bringing high school students from the San Joaquin Valley into STEM degree programs at Pacific or elsewhere, maybe with an emphasis on training future physics and math teachers.”

West Virginia University researchers are part of a team that was recently awarded $17 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the renewal of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center (PFC).

Over a period of time, between 2018 and 2019, researchers made the discovery of 535 new fast radio bursts, adding great excitement to field of cosmology and astrophysics. The discovery was made using the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) radio telescope in Canada.  The scope of this discovery is immense given that only 150 fast radio bursts (FRBs) had been previously discovered, in all. 

The large stationary radio telescope CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, has detected 535 fast radio bursts between 2018 and 2019, during its first year of operation. West Virginia University engineer Kevin Bandura explained FRBs are a key to understanding the universe a little bit more.

Caitlin Witt, a Graduate Research Assistant, in Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, was recently awarded the STEM Completion Grant which is sponsored by the WVU Office of Graduate Education and Life.

Greg Walsh, a Graduate Research Assistant in Physics and Astronomy, and also the Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, has been awarded a fellowship from the NASA WV Space Grant Consortium (WVSGC).  The NASA WVSGC is a group of West Virginia academic institutions with industrial partners under the sponsorship of NASA.  One of the primary components of its mission is to help build research infrastructure at its member institutions, along with awarding competitive seed grants to members.