Searching for giga-Jansky fast radio bursts from the Milky Way with a global array of low-cost radio receivers. “We propose searching for Galactic FRBs using a global array of low-cost radio receivers. One possibility is the ~ 1 GHz communication channel in cellular phones, through a Citizens-Science downloadable application. Participating phones would continuously listen for and record candidate FRBs and would periodically up-load information to a central data-processing website which will identify the signature of a real, globe-encompassing, FRB from an astronomical distance.”

The precision of modern atomic clocks has formed the foundation of cutting-edge technologies in the 21st century. Atomic clocks have enabled centimeter-precision GPS, redefined the kilogram, and can pave the way forward for precision scientific measurements such as the world’s first direct imaging of supermassive black holes. We will develop and mature a Python interface for GRASP 2018, a popular FORTRAN code that calculates energy levels and oscillator strengths for atomic systems to characterize the properties of promising future clock systems.

Are there other planets out there in the universe that possess the physical conditions necessary to support life? Here, we pursue securing a publicly-available dataset describing current exoplanet discoveries, and employ data mining & machine learning to extract potential life-bearing candidates. This would involve examining the external data for objects lying within the “Goldilocks” zone - that region that represents orbital parameters in which liquid water would obtain.

Harvesting solar energy from the sun is important in powering spacecraft, telescopes, and other extraterrestrial vehicles. Additional challenges include the need for stability and durability to thermal and radiative stress. This work incorporates an overlap of physical chemistry, materials engineering, polymer design, and production of novel photovoltaic materials for potential application in spacecraft engineering. In particular, we are interested in the nanoscale engineering of graphene-based polymer networks as the basis for spacecraft energy needs.

We are involved in high-throughput data analysis for identification of near-earth objects (NEO's), which are extraterrestrial entities such as comets and asteroids that fly through Earth's neighborhood. Here, we employ data mining & machine learning to extract potential life-threatening candidates. This can be done by examining time-series image(s) of a region for changes in pixel value(s).

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, millisecond-duration radio transients of unknown origin originating from cosmologically-distant galaxies. They are extreme astrophysical phenomena: a single FRB can emit ∼ 10^39 W of power in under a millisecond, and generates electromagnetic fields strong enough to rip apart the vacuum of spacetime into electron-positron pairs. Since they are transient phenomena, it is extremely difficult to pinpoint the host galaxies for these events to understand more about what produces FRBs. However, a handful of events have been localized to host galaxies. We wish to understand the sizes, masses, and gas content of these host galaxies.