The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center (PFC) has been awarded the prestigious Bruno Rossi Prize from the American Astronomical Society (AAS), as announced at 245th annual AAS conference last week in National Harbor, MD. The NANOGrav Collaboration shares the 2025 prize with their PFC co-directors, Drs. Maura McLaughlin (West Virginia University) and Xavier Siemens (Oregon State University).
The prize was awarded to the Collaboration for finding evidence of the stochastic gravitational wave background, the first direct indication of the existence of binary supermassive black holes. NANOGrav’s mission is dedicated to exploring the low-frequency gravitational wave universe through radio pulsar timing. Additionally, they work with other collaborations around the globe as an international partner in the International Pulsar Timing Array.
In June of 2023, the team announced to the world that after 15 years of data collection and observation, they found key evidence for low frequency gravitational waves with periods of years to decades. The team collected data from 68 pulsars that collectively function as cosmic clocks to form a type of Galaxy sized detector called a Pulsar Timing Array.
The Collaboration is made up of over 190 scientists from the United States and Canada. There are currently over 30 faculty, staff and students from West Virginia University active in the NANOGrav Collaboration.
The Bruno Rossi prize is an annual award presented by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society for “a significant contribution to High Energy Astrophysics, with particular emphasis on recent, original work”. The award is named in honor of the Italian American experimental physicist Bruno Rossi, who made significant contributions to the field of high-energy astrophysics.
“The Rossi Prize is a true testament to Maura McLaughlin and Xavi Siemens’ vision and leadership over many years in the field of pulsar timing arrays,” stated NANOGrav Member and Chair, Dr. Stephen Taylor of Vanderbilt University.The most transformative of our work is yet to come.
Maura McLaughlin
On the collaboration’s contributions to the field, Taylor continues “...the fact that it was awarded to all of NANOGrav recognizes the incredibly hard work of everyone in the collaboration, the groundbreaking evidence we’ve found for a cosmic background of gravitational waves, and the promise of exciting discoveries to come.”
McLaughin notes the honor of co-leading the award-winning collaboration with “it is just as much a prize for everyone in the collaboration as it is for us. The most transformative of our work is yet to come.” Siemens agrees. He states “this was the result of the efforts of hundreds of people for the past twenty years. We’re only just getting started.”
hal/01/24/25