UTB-TSC to offer research-based physics program

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.05 million grant to UTB-TSC and its Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy to fund 10 scholarships in physics that include high-level research in astronomy.

“Essentially, we’re redefining what it means to be a student in physics and also developing a curriculum around this program,” said Fredrick A. Jenet, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College and director of the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy.

Jenet said the university is targeting the type of student who until recently has had to go out of the Rio Grande Valley to obtain the type of science education they were looking for.

“We intend to teach these students at a more advanced level,” Jenet said. “We’re hoping to bring in a talented group of students and have them be involved in research basically from the get-go.”

The research involves the radio telescope at the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, one of the biggest in the world. The telescope can be controlled remotely and in real time from the Arecibo Remote Command Center on the UTB-TSC campus.

Students scan the Milky Way for an exotic class of star known as a radio pulsar. Radio pulsars are stars that have reached a burnt-out state known as “super nova,” Jenet said. The proton mass left behind emits periodic signals that can be used to look for gravitational waves in space.

The research involves using radio pulsars to prove or disprove the existence of gravitational waves, Jenet said, adding that gravitational waves can be inferred from “all of our basic understanding of physics,” including Einstein’s theory of relativity.

“If our understanding of the way nature works is correct, gravitational waves have to exist,” he said. Jenet holds a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, academic home of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The scholarships are self-renewing for five years, meaning that if the program advances as planned UTB-TSC will be able to offer the 10 physics scholarships in each of the next five years.

Jenet, along with Andy Miller, a physics and astronomy instructor at Porter High School, and Adrienne Zermeno, a doctoral student in physics education at UTB-TSC, has been developing the program for the last three years.

Zemeno called the physics program at UTB-TSC “one of the best-kept secrets in Brownsville.”

“Nobody is aware that the physics department at UTB-TSC is playing such a critical role in gravitational wave astronomy,” she said.

Miller, who recruits high school students to the program from across the Valley, said many of them are surprised to learn such research is going on at UTB-TSC.

“It’s an opportunity for local students to get a specialized education, a high-level education in physics, but not too many kids in the area see UTB as a school for science education,” Miller said.

“We’re trying to create a program where you can get as good an education in physics as you can get anywhere in the country.