A West Virginia University astrophysicist has been named a 2020 Highly Cited Researcher by Web of Science, one of the world’s top research awards. Maura McLaughlin, the Eberly Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, is one of 123 scholars recognized in the category of space science for research from 2009 to 2019. During this time, she authored or co-authored 192 articles that have been cited more than 13,000 times.
Underrepresented minority (URM) students have long been
underrepresented STEM fields, and the situation in physics and astronomy is
particularly critical, with only 6% of
PhDs awarded to Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students. Responding to the national
need to diversify these programs, the American Physics Society (APS) created a Bridge Program which has the dual
goals of increasing the fraction of PhDs awarded to URM students to the same
fraction as for bachelor’s degrees and improving the culture of graduate
education for all students, with particular emphasis on URM students.
The department is pleased to welcome our new class of 13 first
year graduate students, four of who are on university fellowships: Aleksandra Abova-Volkova, Joseph Benigno,
Victoria Blackmon (DuBois Graduate Fellowship), Graham Doskoch (University
Provost Fellowship), William Eshbaugh, Joe Kulikowski, Tyler Matheny, Amanda
Nemeth (University Provost Fellowship), John Pace (STEM Fellowship), Hasith
Perara, Andres Tellez Mora, and Braden Warr. This cohort is working in all our research
areas and comes from Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Texas, Finland, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and, of course, West
Virginia.
