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Miguel Mostafa

Miguel Mostafa — Associate Dean for Research and Innovation — Faculty
Office: 517 Whitmore Laboratory
Address: 104 Davey Lab, University Park, PA 16802 US
mam1264@psu.edu
+1 814 863 8252
Miguel Mostafa
Astronomy Physics AMON Multimessenger Astrophysics CMA

Miguel Mostaf ́a is professor of physics and of astronomy & astrophysics at the Pennsylvania State University, the director of the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics at the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, and the associate dean for research & innovation at the Eberly College of Science.

After obtaining his Ph.D. in high energy particle physics (measuring W bosons with the DØ detector at Fermilab) from Instituto Balseiro in Argentina, he was a fellow of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Italy, and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of New Mexico. He was also Assistant Professor at the University of Utah, and associate professor of physics at Colorado State University before joining Penn State in 2013.

His research interests are in high energy particle astrophysics, including the origin of cosmic rays, acceleration mechanisms, particle physics at energies above terrestrial accelerators, gamma-ray astronomy and the structure of the Galaxy, and the nature and properties of dark matter. He is studying the most powerful accelerators in our galaxy using gamma-ray observations [PRL 124 (2020) 021102], and cosmic ray anisotropies [Astrophys. J. 891 (2020) 142] and particle interactions [Astrophys. J. 886 (2019) 98] using a unique multimessenger approach [Nat. Rev. Phys. 2 (2020) 446] at energies well beyond the reach of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful man-made particle accelerator. His h-index is over 80, he has 10 renowned papers (with more than 500 citations), and more than 2,000 citations per year since 2018.

He was elected fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016, and his teaching awards include the C.I. Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching sponsored by the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society at Penn State, Best Teacher Award from the Colorado State University’s Alumni Association and the Student Alumni Connection, the Outstanding Mentor Award presented by the Students as Leaders in Science also at Colorado State University, and the Students Choice Award sponsored by the Associated Students of the University of Utah. He is also the Chair of the Mid-Atlantic Section of the American Physical Society.

Publications
  1. M. Aartsen, others “Multimessenger observations of a flaring blazar coincident with high-energy neutrino IceCube-170922A.” Science 361 6398 (2018) doi:10.1126/science.aat1378
  2. B. Abbott, others “Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger.” Astrophys. J. Lett. 848 2 (2017) doi:10.3847/2041-8213/aa91c9
  3. Alexander Aab, others “The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory.” Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 798 (2015) doi:10.1016/j.nima.2015.06.058
  4. J. Abraham, others “Measurement of the Energy Spectrum of Cosmic Rays above 10^18 eV Using the Pierre Auger Observatory.” Phys. Lett. B 685 (2010) doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.02.013
  5. J. Abraham, others “Measurement of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers above 10^18 eV.” Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 (2010) doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.091101
  6. J. Abraham, others “Observation of the suppression of the flux of cosmic rays above 4× 10^19eV.” Phys. Rev. Lett. 101 (2008) doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.061101
  7. J. Abraham, others “Correlation of the highest energy cosmic rays with nearby extragalactic objects.” Science 318 (2007) doi:10.1126/science.1151124
  8. V. Abazov, others “The Upgraded D0 detector.” Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 565 (2006) doi:10.1016/j.nima.2006.05.248
  9. V. Abazov, others “Observation and properties of the X(3872) decaying to J/ψπ^+ π^- in pp̅ collisions at √(s) = 1.96 TeV.” Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 (2004) doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.162002
  10. J. Abraham, others “Properties and performance of the prototype instrument for the Pierre Auger Observatory.” Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 523 (2004) doi:10.1016/j.nima.2003.12.012

Miguel Mostafa's research group

Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Kara Whitaker Kara Whitaker Graduate Student Physics kbw5490@psu.edu – 114 Osmond Laboratory IGC Cosmic Rays, Multimessenger Astrophysics
Seonghyeon Yu Seonghyeon Yu Graduate Student Physics sjy5345@psu.edu --- 204 Osmond Laboratory CMA Cosmic Rays
About our wordmark
Monica Rincon Ramirez

The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez while she was a graduate student at the Institute. Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work included general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds; her thesis focused on effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope of research at the IGC. The base represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity — approaches studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle shows galaxies embedded in a smooth surface characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the larger physical scales studied at the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology. The top curves to an extreme representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet, with a binary black hole pair nearby — the high-energy phenomena studied at the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics.