Associate Faculty Member Niayesh Afshordi Wins Early Researcher Award

August 23, 2011


Associate Faculty member wins Early Researcher Award from the Ontario MInistry of Research and Innovation.

Perimeter Institute Associate Faculty member Niayesh Afshordi has won an Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI) of Ontario.

PI Director Neil Turok commented, "This is a wonderful endorsement of Dr. Afshordi's exceptional potential. He is a highly creative and talented young scientist whose research may well shed new light on the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy in the universe."

The Early Researcher Awards program (ERA) helps promising, recently-appointed Ontario researchers build their research teams of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research assistants and associates. The goal of the program is to improve Ontario's ability to attract and retain the best and brightest research talent from around the world. Each researcher receives $140,000 funding through the program. Dr. Afshordi won this ERA for his proposal, "Astrophysical Windows into Fundamental Physics."

Almost three-quarters of the cosmic energy budget appears to be comprised of a mysterious dark energy accelerating the universe's expansion that is some sixty orders of magnitude lighter than theoretical expectations. Likewise, gravity on galactic scales is dominated by dark matter, which has evaded detection for more than half a century.

With an overall goal of identifying the unknown components of our universe, Dr. Afshordi's research program will look at data from current and upcoming space probes to develop a better understanding of the nature and dynamics of dark matter and dark energy. It aims to develop new computational methods to test theories, combining leading-edge theory with scientific computing, and numerical and data analysis, and will interface with major international experiments.

Further Exploration

  • Phenomenology of Gravitational Aether as a solution to the Old Cosmological Constant Problem, Siavesh Aslanbeigi, Georg Robbers, Brendan Z. Foster, Kazunori Kohri, Niayesh Afshordi, arXiv:1106.3955
  • Neutron Stars and the Cosmological Constant Problem, Farbod Kamiab, Niayesh Afshordi, arXiv:1104.5704
  • Prospects for Detecting Dark Matter Halo Substructure with Pulsar Timing, Shant Baghram, Niayesh Afshordi, Kathryn M. Zurek, arXiv:1101.5487
  • Stellar Black Holes and the Origin of Cosmic Acceleration, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Niayesh Afshordi, Michael L. Balogh, arXiv:0905.3551

About Perimeter Institute

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is an independent, non-profit, scientific research organization working to advance our understanding of physical laws and develop new ideas about the very essence of space, time, matter, and information. Located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, Perimeter also provides a wide array of research training and educational outreach activities to nurture scientific talent and share the importance of discovery and innovation among students, teachers, and the general public. In partnership with the Governments of Ontario and Canada, Perimeter is a successful example of public-private collaboration in scientific research, training, and outreach. http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/

For more information, contact:

Lisa Lambert
Manager, External Relations and Public Affairs
llambert@perimeterinstitute.ca
(519) 569-7600 x5051

Perimeter Institute Associate Faculty member Niayesh Afshordi   In this artists conception, dark energy is represented by the blue grid above, and the gravity by the green grid below. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)