News/Events

Featured at the 241st Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Dr. Jason E. Ybarra led a session dedicated to discussing neurodiversity in astronomy, specifically addressing the challenges and opportunities in the field.

The Department of Physics at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez (UPRM) received a 3-year award from the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for Research and Education in Physics (NSF PREP) Program for the total amount of $520,646. This award will fund a partnership between UPRM Physics and the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center (PFC). The Principal Investigator (PI) of this research and educational partnership is Dr. Henri Radovan (UPRM Physics), while the participating NANOGrav institutions include West Virginia University (co-PI and NANOGrav PFC co-Director Dr. Maura McLaughlin), University of Central Florida/Arecibo Observatory (co-PI Dr. Benetge Perera), Rochester Institute of Technology (co-PI Dr. Michael Lam), and Franklin & Marshall College (co-PI Dr. Fronefield Crawford). Other senior personnel at UPRM Physics include Dr. Erick Roura.

From the depths of space, astronomers have detected a “heartbeat.”  

The Southeastern Universities Research Association honored Dr. Maura McLaughlin, Director of the Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology with the SURA Distinguished Scientist Award. 

Caitlin Witt, has been awarded the prestigious CIERA-Adler Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chicago, Illinois.

Astronomers have been surprised by the closest source of the mysterious flashes in the sky known as fast radio bursts. Precision measurements with radio telescopes reveal that the bursts are made among old stars, and in a way that no one was expecting. The source of the flashes, in nearby spiral galaxy M 81, is the closest of its kind to Earth.

Honored for their innovative work in the field of fast radio bursts utilizing the CHIME radio telescope, the international CHIME/FRB team will receive the 2022 Berkeley prize for its dramatic progress on fast radio bursts (FRBs).  

An international team of astronomers, including members of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), has announced the results of a comprehensive search for ripples in the fabric of space-time – known as gravitational waves. The team searched for low-frequency gravitational waves, which can originate from supermassive black hole binaries residing in galaxies or from events occurring soon after the formation of the universe in the Big Bang. Detecting these low-frequency signals will open a brand-new window in the gravitational wave spectrum and help scientists enhance their understanding of the evolution of galaxies, their central black holes, and the early universe.