Astronomy and Astrophysics

The research performed by this group focuses on gravitational waves, pulsars, black holes, fast radio bursts, star formation, galaxy evolution and formation, theoretical astrophysics, and the contents and dynamics of our own Milky Way Galaxy. 

Our faculty members contribute to two world-leading gravitational wave collaborations, LIGO and NANOGrav. The proximity of the Green Bank Observatory to WVU makes it a unique resource for training students, doing outreach, and networking with other scientists.

Associated Faculty

• Prof. Loren Anderson | Research Interests: Anderson's research focuses on Galactic HII regions, the zones of ionized gas surrounding young massive stars. HII regions are one of the primary mechanisms that inject energy into the Galazy. They are relatively rare by have a large impact on their surroundings. Among other projects, Anderson also created the most complete catalog of Galactic regions using WISEtelescope data. He is using this catalog to trace global massive star formation in our Galaxy. He is following up on objects in this catalog with radio observations in the HII Region Discovery Survey, using the Green Bank Telescope, Arecibo Observatory, the NRAO Very Large Array (VLA), and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA).
• Prof. Sarah Burke-Spolaor | Research Interests: Burke-Spolaor researches dynamic phenomena: binary supermassive black holes, cosmological sources of radio impulses, pulsars, and radio jets. The bult of her work is on low-frequency (nanoHertz) gravitational wave detection via pulsar timing, searches for binary supermassive black holes to understand their evolution, and transient radio-emitting phenomena.
• Prof. Emmanuel Fonseca | Research Interests: Fonseca works as a radio astronomer with a specific focus of observing transient signals from neutron stars. In collaboration with colleagues around the globe, he uses these observations to discern fundamental aspects of physics in extreme environments. His specific area of research is radio-transient astronomy, with particular focus on radio pulsars and fast radio bursts.
• Prof. Duncan Lorimer FRS | Research Interests: Lorimer is interested in compact objects (black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs) which he students using radio pulsars: rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron stars. His research revolves around surveys for radio pulsars and what they tell us about the population of neutron stars. This work is carried out with many collaborators and uses some of the classic radio telescopes around the world. Of particular interest are young, energetic pulsars and binary systems where the orbiting companion is a white dwarf, a main sequence star, another neutron star, and (perhaps soon!) a stellar-mass black hole. Prof. Lorimer is also the co-discover of the first fast radio burst (FRB), for which he was awarded the 2023  Shaw Prize in Astronomy.
• Prof. Maura McLaughlin | Research Interests: McLaughlin's main research interests involve studying neutron stars and their environments through radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray observations. Neutron stars are amazing physical laboratories for general relativity, studies of the interstellar medium, high-energy particle and plasma physics, and studies of stellar evolution. A significant research aim, as Co-Director of the  NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, is to use neutron stars to detect and characterize low-frequency gravitational waves through timing an array of ultra-precise millisecond pulsars. She is also a member of the  International Pulsar Timing Array collaboration, which aims to form an incredibly sensitive pulsar timing dataset through the combination of data from the world's largest radio telescopes. Her work with the  Pulsar Science Collaboratory involves West Virginia high-school students in her research. McLaughlin is also the co-discover of the first fast radio burst (FRB), for which she was awarded the 2023  Shaw Prize in Astronomy. She currently serves as Chair of the WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy.
• Prof. Sean McWilliams | Research Interests: McWilliams is a theoretical astrophysicist; specifically, a gravitational wave astronomer, numerical and analytical relativist, and data analyst. His research focuses mainly on understanding the dynamics of compact binaries, which are systems composed of any combination of black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs. Through numerical simulations and/or analytical modeling, he estimated the behavior of two of these highly dense, tightly orbiting bodies. Such systems stretch Einstein’s theory of general relativity to its limit. McWilliams is the Director of the WVU Center for Gravitational Waves and Astronomy.
• Prof. Jason Ybarra | Research Interests: Ybarra's research interests include galactic star formation, protostellar outflows, physics education, and the history of astronomy. In past projects, they studied how star formation progresses through the Rosette Molecular Cloud by analyzing the stellar and gas content of embedded clusters. As a graduate student, they co-discovered the first observational evidence of a precessing jet carving out a protostellar envelope. Dr. Ybarra's postdoctoral work at the Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM-Ensenada) involved characterizing mid-infrared emission from star-forming regions, studying protostellar outflow interactions, and developing astro-statistical methods. Ybarra is the Director of the WVU Planetarium and Observatory.