Astrophysics and Cosmology
Fourteen full-time faculty members are joined by staff, postdocs, and students in research on astrophysics and cosmology. Major areas of research include:
- theories of the very early universe (Khoury, Trodden);
- approaches to cosmic acceleration, including modified gravity (Jain, Khoury, Madhavacheril, Sheth, Trodden);
- the properties of dark matter and dark energy, and their influence on the formation of galaxies (Bernstein, Devlin, Jain, Madhavacheril, Sako, Sanderson, Sheth);
- the nonlinear growth of structure in the Universe (Bernstein, Jain, Madhavacheril, Sheth);
- the evolution of galaxies through the epoch of reionization and into the recent era (Aguirre, Bernardi, Lidz);
- millimeter and sub-millimeter observations of galaxy clusters, and of star and galaxy formation (Aguirre, Devlin, Madhavacheril);
- observations of transient phenomena in the Universe (Sako);
- detection of planets and planet-forming systems around nearby stars (Blake, Devlin, Jain); and
- observations of the Solar System beyond Neptune (Bernstein, Blake, Sako).
We address these questions from many angles:
- developing new instrumentation in the optical, millimeter, and sub-millimeter regimes;
- observations from the radio through x-ray;
- analysis of large survey datasets;
- computation and simulation;
- and theory.
There is close collaboration between the astrophysics group and Penn researchers conducting laboratory and astrophysical studies of the nature of dark matter (Klein, Sanderson) and theoretical studies of gravitational and dark-sector physics (Khoury, Trodden). Many members of the department apply techniques from data science and machine learning to astronomical datasets (Bernardi, Jain, Madhavacheril, Sako, Sanderson).

Related Faculty

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Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences
Co-Director of the Penn Center for Particle Cosmology
bjain@physics.upenn.edu(215) 573-5330
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- Astrophysics and Cosmology
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Arifa Hasan Ahmad and Nada Al Shoaibi Presidential Professor of Physics and Astronomy
masao@sas.upenn.edu
215/898-8151
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Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics
Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, Co-Director of the Penn Center for Particle Cosmology
trodden@physics.upenn.edu215-898-7938
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News
Elon Musk Public Lecture: "Cosmic Inflation: My journey to the edge of science"
Professor Andreas Albrecht (University of California, Davis): In 1982, while a grad student at Penn, my advisor and I wrote a paper that has since become very famous.
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A new study details the inner workings of the Large Aperture Telescope Receiver, the cryogenic camera that will be installed at the Simons Observatory at 17,000 feet in northern Chile.
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Vijay Balasubramanian, Cathy and Marc Lasry Professor, was featured in a recent episode of the Netflix seri
Read MoreNEID spectrometer fully operational with help from Prof. Cullen Blake
The state-of-the-art NEID spectrometer at the WIYN Observatory is fully operational thanks to a team of scientists including
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Pedro Bernardinelli, Astronomy postdoctoral researcher and recent department PhD graduate, and Gary Bernstein, Reese W
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Events
Astrophysics Seminar: "TBA"
Nick Law (University of North Carolina)
Astrophysics seminar: "TBA"
Mike McElwain (NASA)
Astrophysics seminar: "TBA"
Fiona McCarthy (Cambridge and CCA)
