REU Site: Computational and Data Science in Astrophysics

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This award will support research experiences for eight undergraduate students per year in the area of computational astrophysics. This is a new Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site which will serve students throughout the US, but will recruit heavily for regional Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the southeast. The students will have the opportunity to acquire programming and data management skills while engaging in research projects related to modeling, simulating, and analysis of data from high-energy astroparticle physics. Students will also receive extensive professional development mentoring over the ten-week period of the summer. The projects available to the students include studies of core-collapse supernovae, dark matter annihilation, outflows from active galactic nuclei, neutron stars, and X-ray transients. The focus will be on the computational modeling of these systems and the connection with observational data. The professional development experience will include understanding scientific computation, science communication, scientific writing, and preparing for careers in STEM fields. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.