PIPages
Labs

David Kieda

University of Utah, UT·Astronomy & Astrophysics

Some of the most violent places in the universe, such as exploding stars and the regions around black holes, speed up particles to energies far beyond anything made on Earth. These sources give off gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light.

Fields

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Physics

Topics

gamma-ray astronomy

Cherenkov telescope

Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope

Grants
1 known grant, through Jul 2027

What they work on

  1. Combine VERITAS and HAWC gamma-ray observations with satellite, neutrino and gravitational-wave alerts to study high-energy sources and neutrino emitters such as PeVatrons.
  2. Observe the recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis using VERITAS gamma-ray data together with ultraviolet imaging from the VERITAS Stellar Intensity Interferometer, to study particle acceleration in a binary star system.
  3. Use the upgraded Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope to make VERITAS about nine times more sensitive above 10 TeV and map source shapes at high angular and energy resolution.

More about the research

By catching these gamma rays and combining them with other signals from space, researchers can study how such extreme environments work. They can also learn how stars, galaxies and chemical elements form and change over time.

Why it matters

This is basic science. It helps explain how cosmic particle accelerators work and where high-energy cosmic particles and neutrinos come from. That knowledge adds to our picture of how stars, galaxies and the elements formed. The rare nova observations offer data that become available only about once every 80 years.

Known grants

From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.

University of Utah Particle Astrophysics Research Group (VERITAS, HAWC, CTA, SWGO)

NSF · Aug 2024 – Jul 2027

Closest labs

Ke Fang

University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Astronomy & Astrophysics·Early-career

Search for PeVatrons, sources that accelerate protons above 1 PeV, by jointly analyzing high-energy neutrino data from IceCube and gamma-ray data from the HAWC observatory.

Rodolfo Barniol Duran

California State University-Sacramento, CA·Astronomy & Astrophysics

Build "meter-to-parsec" numerical simulations that follow neutron star–neutron star and neutron star–black hole mergers from the pre-merger state to the regions where observed light is produced.

Joanna Kiryluk

Stony Brook University, NY·Physics

Calibrate the newly installed IceCube Upgrade sensors and develop reconstruction algorithms that rebuild neutrino events, aiming to sharpen low-energy sensitivity and reduce systematic errors in the existing data.

The school

University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.

More about University of Utah

Reach out

A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.