In this award funded by the Chemical Structure, Dynamics, and Mechanisms Program of the Chemistry Division, Prof. Brooks H. Pate and his graduate students at the University of Virginia will collaborate with Dr. Michael C. McCarthy and a postdoctoral research associate at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to develop new tools to discover chemistry in astronomical environments through laboratory broadband microwave spectroscopy and next-generation radio astronomy observations. Both radio astronomy and laboratory microwave spectroscopy have been revolutionized by high-speed digital electronics that have increased data rates by order-of-magnitude. The assembled research group will develop new approaches that exploit these technological advances to increase the rate of discovery of interstellar molecules. They will also develop computational algorithms to extract chemical information from chemical images from ALMA and JVLA including exploring techniques to test proposed interstellar reaction mechanisms through multispecies spatial correlations in radio astronomy images.
The broader impact of this work is the initiation of a research program in chemistry that explores ways that data enabled science can lead to new insight about the formation of molecules in astronomical and terrestrial environments. Pate and McCarthy will continue to work with the VA NC Alliance (an NSF LSAMP program) to recruit early career undergraduates in under-represented minority groups for summer research in the area of the chemistry of the universe.
