David Nice

Research interests:  Observational astrophysicist whose primary research is on pulsars. These rapidly rotating neutron stars emit beams of radio waves, much as lighthouses emit beams of light. As a pulsar rotates, its beam sweeps past the Earth, hitting it with a pulse of radio waves, once per rotation of the pulsar. He and his collaborators use large radio telescopes such as the Green Bank Telescope, to observe pulsars for a variety of astrophysical studies.  He is part of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, which works on the detection and characterization of gravitational waves in the nanoHertz regime (timescales of many years) via its effect on pulsar timing. This effort is supported by a Physics Frontiers Center grant from the National Science Foundation and has involved more than twenty Lafayette students over the past ten years.  NANOGrav has found  evidence that the Universe is permeated by a “background” of gravitational waves, likely originating from distant pairs of massive black holes orbiting one another.

For further information, see his home page.