VILLANOVA PHYSICS PROFESSOR AWARDED NSF GRANT TO ADVANCE EARLY SCIENCE WITH RUBIN OBSERVATORY

Villanova, Pa — Every night for the next decade, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will capture hundreds of images of the Southern Hemisphere sky, creating a high definition time-lapse movie of our changing universe. To help make sense of this extraordinary stream of data, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Villanova University Assistant Professor of Physics Becka Phillipson, PhD, a $289,158 Mathematical and Physical Sciences Ascending Faculty Catalyst Award for the project, “Preparing for Early Science with Rubin Observatory: Intrinsic Variability of Accreting Compact Objects.”

Dr. Phillipson’s work centers on time domain astronomy, examining how compact objects such as neutron stars, dense remnants of exploded stars, and black holes change over time. These stars and black holes display a dramatic range of brightness that varies over time. By studying these variability patterns, called “light curves,” with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera—the largest digital camera ever built, generating 10 terabytes of data each night—the project will help improve our understanding of these exotic sources.

Dr. Phillipson will use simulated LSST data and archival observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to generate synthetic light curves of active galactic nuclei and X-ray binaries—which are both luminous systems involving a compact object. She will then be able to develop a classifier for the light curves in preparation for the abundance of data from the Rubin Observatory.

“It’s amazing that the National Science Foundation sees the value in doing early science with the Rubin Observatory and supports this effort,” says Dr. Phillipson. “This grant is especially impactful to me as a second-year faculty member building a research team.”

The grant supports a team of researchers, including Villanova postdoctoral faculty member Alexander Messick, PhD, who is developing an algorithm to identify new active galaxies using LSST data, and undergraduate students, who will be analyzing supernova data and contributing to the study of the universe’s expansion.

Dr. Phillipson, a member of The Villanova One Sky Center for Astrophysics, is committed to mentoring the next generation of astrophysicists and expanding access to information and opportunities in the field. As part of the grant project, she will organize a two-day workshop at Villanova University on using Rubin data and full day hackathon to a regional network of Rubin users.

In addition to the NSF award, Dr. Phillipson recently earned a $66,000 grant for the project, “Democracy Now: Accessible and Rapid Alerts for the Astronomical Community,” aimed at compressing and streamlining the enormous volume of LSST alert data processed each night and making it readily available to researchers worldwide. Financial support for this project results from Scialog grant #SA-LSST-2025-110b from Research Corporation for Science Advancement and Heising-Simons Foundation.

Dr. Phillipson earned a bachelor’s degree in Astronomy from the University of Colorado Boulder and a bachelor’s degree in Physics from Colorado State University. She went on to complete both a master’s degree and PhD in Physics at Drexel University.

About Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Since its founding in 1842, Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been the heart of the Villanova learning experience, offering foundational courses for undergraduate students in every college of the University. Serving more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students, the College is committed to fortifying them with intellectual rigor, multidisciplinary knowledge, moral courage and a global perspective. The College has more than 40 academic departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences, and natural and physical sciences.