Earlier this summer Sreetama Goswami completed her dissertation defense on the "Search for High-Energy Neutrino Emission from Hard X-ray AGN with IceCube". The solar system is saturated in neutrinos, yet they are almost undetectable. This means observers look for an overabundance of the particle in a particular direction. Dr. Goswami's work uses archival IceCube neutrino data and Swift-BAT Spectroscopic Survey (BASS) x-ray data to determine if there is a correlation between x-ray AGN activity and neutrino detections. 

IceCube is a large collaboration. Dr. Goswami says this has been one of her favorite parts of the job, as it allows for lots of travel to conferences and the opportunity to work as part of a larger team. She is taking a postdoc position in Las Vegas, Nevada, later this summer.

Breakthrough Birmingham is an organization dedicated to educational equality. Over the last ten years, they have improved the prospects of many students in the Birmingham area by providing an engaging experience in mathematics and science to marginalized communities. Last Friday the Physics and Astronomy Department and PAGSA partnered with them to teach their students about optics, electromagnetism, and mechanics. Pictured in the gallery above are PAGSA members, professors, and students performing hands-on experiments and viewing the 16" telescope on campus.

We really enjoyed the opportunity to meet aspiring young scholars, and hope to work with Breakthrough Birmingham again in the future!

Shahram Talei graduated this summer with a PhD in astronomy! During his studies he developed the hydrodynamic code CoSANG (Coupling Semi-Analytic and N-body Galaxies). This program uses a combination of N-body simulations to model dark matter and semi-analytic models to describe baryonic matter. This makes the things much simpler computationally, as hydrodynamics are what take the most time to simulate. Dr. Talei says creating new models to solve problems and seeing how they can be used by other scientists is one of his favorite parts of his job.

Dr. Talei is Intel AI/ML certified and a NatGeo certified educator. In August he will be joining the faculty at Georgia College with a teaching position. If you see Shahram around campus be sure to tell the new doctor congratulations!