He Gao successfully defends his PhD and will move on to Penn State.

Dr. Gao arrived at UNLV in 2010 as member of Professor Zhang's group. He has been quite productive, publishing five first author papers and coauthoring seven more. Next year he will begin a postdoctoral position at Penn State working with Peter Meszaros. Below is the abstract to his thesis defense held earlier today:

Physics of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs): Gamma-ray bursts are most luminous explosions in the universe. Their ejecta are believed to move towards Earth with a relativistic speed, and a certain fraction of its kinetic energy will be released in electromagnetic channel, both in prompt gamma-ray emission and in late time broad-band afterglow emission. This part of the thesis first invents a new signal process method to study the GRB prompt light curves, then gives a review for a complete reference of all the analytical synchrotron external shock afterglow models and finally makes a detailed discussion about radiation mechanism for GRBs. Milti-messenger signals from double neutron star merger: As the technology of gravitational-wave and neutrino detectors becomes increasingly mature, a multi-messenger era of astronomy is ushered in. Since double neutron star merger serves as the top candidate for ground-breaking discovery of gravitational wave signals with advanced gravitational wave detectors, this part of the the thesis studies the possible electromagnetic (EM) and neutrino emission counterparts of this intriguing scenario, especially when the post-merger product is magnetar instead of black hole. Observational strategy and likely evidence for the relevant EM counterpart are also discussed.

PhD Student Tim Waters receives a summer school fellowship at Los Alamos.

A fourth-year graduate student working with Daniel Proga, Tim was admitted into the 4th Los Alamos Space Weather Summer School, where he will attend lectures and undertake a research project on plasma instabilities with a Los Alamos scientist. The school lasts for seven weeks and Tim will receive a $10,000 fellowship.