Eberly News

With support from a prestigious NSF CAREER award, Subhasish Mandal, an assistant professor in the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences Department of Physics and Astronomy, is working to discover new materials that can make high-speed quantum computing a reality.

A team of Eberly College researchers is the recipient of a $749,990 U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission grant that will be used to develop an artificial intelligence platform that could transform scientists’ ability to predict and engineer microbial communities.

West Virginia University researchers are developing new laser-based techniques to observe plasma behavior in unprecedented detail, opening a window into interactions that shape technologies ranging from computer chips and spacecraft engines to next-generation fusion energy systems.

Backed by $5.9 million in National Science Foundation funding, West Virginia University researchers are using stars that function like celestial clocks to search for spacetime ripples known as gravitational waves. The sources of those ripples could be supermassive black holes. They could be “cosmic strings” — cracks in the universe that have only been theorized. They could even be reverberations from the Big Bang. “Or there could be a huge surprise,” said Maura McLaughlin, Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy and recipient of the Shaw Prize in Astronomy.

Fowler, a research assistant professor at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and a member of the WVU Center for Kinetic Plasma Physics, said MAVEN’s observations advance scientists’ understanding of how the sun interacts with the solar system and especially with unmagnetized bodies like comets, Saturn’s moon Titan, Venus and Mars.

Thirty-eight graduates were inducted as lifelong members into the WVU Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, a national honor society that recognizes outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences, and champions freedom of thought. 

Three Eberly College students,  Daniel Campa, Rebecca Ozbolt, and Samuel Stalnaker have joined the ranks of the nation’s top emerging researchers after earning prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. 

For the first time, West Virginia University has four recipients of the Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s premier undergraduate scholarship in mathematics, engineering and natural sciences that supports students with a strong commitment to research careers.

Each year, at the direction of the Office of the Provost, the Academic Advising Council selects honorees for the Nicholas Evans Awards for Advising Excellence in recognition of outstanding advising and mentoring provided by faculty and professional advisers at WVU. The 2026 recipients from Eberly College include Carolyn Kitchens, teaching associate professor from the C. Eugene Bennett Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biology; and Mikel “Micky” Holcomb, associate professor from the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

West Virginia University physicist Subhasish Mandal has been selected as a member of the 2026 class of Cottrell Scholars by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement.