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W. Niel Brandt

W. Niel Brandt — Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics — Faculty
Office: 514A Davey Laboratory
Address: 525 Davey Laboratory; University Park, PA 16802; USA
wnbrandt@gmail.com
+1 814 865 3509
W. Niel Brandt
Astronomy Physics SDSS XMM-Newton Black Holes Multimessenger Astrophysics Quasars Dynamic Universe CTOC

Niel Brandt has been at Penn State since 1997 and is currently a professor in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics. Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a graduate student at the University of Cambridge. Brandt uses a wide variety of astronomical facilities, often operating in the high-energy band, to study the physics, evolution, and ecology of active galaxies and other cosmic X-ray sources. He is an author of more than 600 research papers and leads a small research group including postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate students. He also regularly teaches courses on high-energy astrophysics, black holes, and active galaxies.

W. Niel Brandt's research group

Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Zhibo Yu Zhibo Yu Graduate Student Astronomy zvy5225@psu.edu +1 814 2329588 440 Davey Laboratory IGC Dynamic Universe
Fan Zou Fan Zou Graduate Student Astronomy fuz64@psu.edu – 535A Davey Laboratory IGC

W. Niel Brandt's former group members

Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Yasaman Homayouni Yasaman Homayouni Postdoc Astronomy ybh5251@psu.edu +1 814 865 0418 525, though working remotely until fall 2022. Davey Laboratory CTOC Black Holes
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.