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.”
Currently, he is working to develop some new techniques that will hopefully prove useful for NANOGrav in analyzing their upcoming data set and searching for a stochastic background of gravitational waves.
While at West Virginia University, he led research projects on fast radio bursts in collaboration with graduate and undergraduate students which further broadened his research on gravitational wave bursts with memory. This experience, he anticipates, will guide his academic research projects in the future.
In his spare time, he enjoyed taking advantage of the trails along the Monongahela and out in Cooper’s Rock while in Morgantown where he become a semi-serious runner over the last three years. Running, as an exercise habit, is something he hopes will stick with him for the rest of his life.
Dr. Madison’s new academic position also reflects a return to his
upbringing. He grew up about 40 miles
from Stockton, CA., and looks forward to a homecoming and the start of a new career.
Congratulations and best wishes!