Dr. Fredrick Jenet, Dr. Matthew Benacquista, Dr. Teviet Creighton, and Ms. Adrienne Rodriguez-Zermeno from the University of Texas Brownville (UTB) will partner with Arecibo Observatory and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The PI and collaborators will work with students to positively identify hundreds of radio pulsars. Some of these pulsars, specifically millisecond pulsars, can be used as indirect detectors of gravitational waves and provide a means with which to test the fundamental theories of gravity in strong fields. Additionally, the PI proposes to investigate white dwarf cooling and binary evolution, pulsar population studies (doubling the known number), exotic binaries, and transient emitters. Much of this work will be made possible because of surveys that are already underway at Arecibo and Green Bank Observatories.
The primary educational goal of the program is to produce a cadre of students, many from traditionally underrepresented populations, trained in pulsar search observing and data analysis techniques. This will be accomplished by recruiting talented students with scholarships and training them to use the Arecibo Remote Command Center (ARCC-1) at the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy (CGWA) at the University of Texas Brownville. This state-of-the-art center gives students the opportunity to make observations from Arecibo observatory remotely. The ARCC facility will also be expanded to other radio telescopes beginning with the Green Bank telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. All students will be encouraged to take ownership of their research by presenting seminars internally and presenting their work at national meetings.
The Arecibo Remote Command Center (ARCC) program is an integrated education and research experience for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Leveraging the unique properties of the Arecibo Radio Observatory, this new model for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education turned a department that was graduating one student every two years into one of the leading producers of Hispanic physics majors in the nation. Read on for more details, or see the paper located here. This program was founded in 2006 at the University of Texas at Brownsville, located at the southern tip of Texas. This is one of the poorest regions in the US and has one of the lowest percentages of college educated people. Very few opportunities or role models existed to encourage students to pursue a STEM career. Using seed money from NSF for research and student support, ARCC brought the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center's Arecibo radio telescope, to South Texas. The idea was to attract local students into serious research by enabling them to play a role in Arecibo-related science. The first cohort of students matriculated in 2008, and now, the ARCC program has become one of the top producers of Hispanic physics majors in the United States. All graduates of the program have gone on to further degree programs in STEM fields; one student from the first cohort has received his MS degree as part of an integrated 5-year Masters program, and is now pursuing PhD research. The ARCC students control many of the world's major radio telescopes in addition to Arecibo including the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank radio telescope, the Long Wavelength Array, and the Effelesberg Radio Telescope. The students are responsible for the discovery of over 60 exotic stars known as radio pulsars, including a double neutron star system, one of only ten ever discovered. They are typically responsible for over 10% of all pulsar discoveries worldwide. Students helped design and build the Low Frequency All-Sky Monitor, an array of radio antennas across the US designed to detect and study astrophysical radio transients. In addition, the ARCC program is being replicated at other universities across the US and Puerto Rico. There are many facets to the ARCC program that have played a key role in its success, the most important of which are presented below. The students are of course the heart of the ARCC program. NSF's Partnerships in Astronomy & Astrophysics Research and Education (PAARE) was used to create the ARCC Scholars, a group of students committed to obtaining their Bachelors degree in physics in four years, while pursuing avenues of astrophysics research more typically found in a graduate program. This program now includes both scholarship recipients and unfunded students attracted by both their interest in science and the appeal of working in a close-knit group of other students and faculty with a similar interest. Meaningful student research is vital both for student education and for returning scientific results from their efforts. As soon as they enter the program, students receive training in both conducting observations at Arecibo and other observatories, and in sifting through the resulting data to uncover signals from radio pulsars. Bringing human pattern recognition skills to bear on this problem, students are able to uncover signals that would elude more automated data analysis systems. In their junior and senior years, students turn their knowledge to their own research projects, either continuing in radio astronomy or pursuing other areas of physics. Every ARCC student completes a thesis on their research, as well as presenting their work at major national and international research conferences. Close mentorship of students helps both with retention and research productivity. Students in the ARCC program receive a level of faculty attention and research involvement more typically found in graduate programs. In addition to academics and research, students receive extensive training in technical writing and speaking. The ARCC program is still young, but just its first three cohorts of graduates place it among the top eight producers of Hispanic physics graduates nationwide. The ARCC model is being replicated with extension programs at other major research departments in the US and Puerto Rico, with proposals to extend it throughout Latin America. It is playing a key role in shaping the next generation of leaders in science and technology.
