The National Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences awarded a $496,234 Project Grant to the University of Illinois under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.049). The grant will fund collaborative research to explore the formation and growth of supermassive black holes through variability and transients observations. Researchers will use data from the Young Supernova Experiment imaging survey to identify intermediate mass black holes and study...
The National Science Foundation awarded a $180,000 project grant to the University of Arizona under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.049) to support theoretical research on strongly gravitating systems such as black holes and neutron stars. The funding period is from June 1, 2023 to May 31, 2025. Specifically, the university will conduct research into novel gravitational phenomena that push the known laws of physics to their limits, with the goal of...
This $442,985 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences Program (CFDA 47.049) aims to uncover the growth mechanisms of supermassive black holes. The key objectives are to: 1) Determine the merger rates of supermassive black holes and relate them to gravitational wave observations; 2) Investigate the growth of supermassive black holes during their peak activity period (known as "cosmic noon") and its connection to accretion...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Physics awarded a $540,000 Project Grant to the University of Illinois from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2026. This award supports theoretical research in relativity and relativistic astrophysics under NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea program. The research addresses key topics including the physics of compact objects, the generation of gravitational waves and associated electromagnetic signals, the stability and evolution of...
This $160,000 federal Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program funds theoretical research on several topics in relativistic astrophysics and general relativity. The key research focuses include: (i) computing gravitational waveforms from black hole inspirals, (ii) demonstrating Hamiltonian two-body dynamics without dissipation, (iii) developing a comprehensive understanding of soft hair conservation laws on black...
This $120,000 Project Grant award, provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the CFDA program 47.049 Mathematical and Physical Sciences, supports fundamental research on gravitational astrophysics and computational methods to advance scientific understanding of neutron stars, black holes, gravitational waves, and the large-scale structure of the universe. The award will fund a series of research projects at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) focused on developing new...
This Project Grant award of $400,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports research on black hole spectroscopy to gain a deeper understanding of gravity and test the nature of black holes. The primary objectives are to: (1) build models for the amplitudes of linear and nonlinear quasinormal modes; (2) understand and alleviate ringdown modeling systematics in real data; (3) clarify the connection between ringdown and...
This Project Grant award, valued at $219,328.00, was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Federal Grant Program (CFDA 47.049). The grant will fund research to utilize powerful geometric concepts, known as classical surface theories, to deepen the understanding of gravity, black holes, and the fabric of spacetime. Key objectives include evaluating the quasi-local mass of binary black holes, defining angular momentum in general...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a 3-year, $500,133 Project Grant to the University of Arizona under the Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program. Through this grant, the research team will conduct a systematic study of the diverse outflows that occur during tidal disruption events, when a star is scattered into the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole. The researchers will use radio and millimeter observations to track the evolution of...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Astronomical Sciences Project Grant award to the University of Illinois provides $443,703 from August 2023 to July 2026 to measure the number densities and distributions of intermediate mass black holes in dwarf galaxies. The goal is to discover new dwarf active galactic nucleus candidates and make informed inferences on the origins of intermediate mass black holes, which has broad implications for galaxy evolution and interpreting gravitational...