News/Events

NihanPol, a graduate student in Physics and Astronomy,was awarded the Vanderbilt Initiative in Data-Intensive Astrophysics (VIDA) prize postdoctoral fellowship in multi-messenger astrophysics at Vanderbilt University.VIDA research is focused on the burgeoning arena of astro-informatics, which confronts the challenges of Big Data analytics, often employs simulation-based methods and machine learning, and lives at the interface of astrophysics, data science, and statistics. At Vanderbilt, he will work with Dr. Stephen Taylor beginning August of 2020.

The First Gen Student Experience Virtual Conversation held on April 13, 2020, was led by the students in the WVU Honors Special Topics course titled "Ambassador for Change". Dr. Kathryn Williamson, the course leader and also GWAC faculty, organized the event which also included course co-leader Dr. Michelle Richards Babb, and Provost Maryanne Reed.Over 90 attendees, which included high school students and teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as university faculty, advisors, and staff shared personal stories and modern challenges in navigating the college experience as a first gen student.

The WVU Planetarium will be hosting two shows in celebration of the 50th anniversary ofEarth Dayon April 22, 2020.

Join groundbreaking scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell for a presentation on her accidental discovery of pulsars, or magnetized rotating neutron stars that emit pulsing radio waves, while a student at the University ofCambridge. Bell Burnell will also share stories of when other researchers nearly discovered pulsars. In recognition of the importance of her work,she received a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2018. Bell Burnell used the entirety of the $3 million prize to establish a scholarship for underrepresented students in physics research. This event is presented by the Department of Physics and Astronomyand the Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology.

The Conference for Undergraduate Women in Astronomy (CUWiA) will be held at West Virginia University on November 1-3, 2019.

West Virginia University researchers have helped discover the most massive neutron star to date, a breakthrough uncovered through the Green Bank Telescope in Pocahontas County.

Eight students from  West Virginia University’s  Eberly College of Arts and Sciences have been awarded undergraduate fellowships from the  NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium for the 2018-2019 academic year.