Graham Doskoch

@astrohde.bsky.social

853 Followers 193 Following

Astronomy PhD candidate at WVU working on pulsars and gravitational wave detection with PTAs. Runner, avid reader, Astrobites alum.

Photo from a watchtower on a hill overlooking grassy fields and a road under a rising Sun.

Photograph of the unassembled telescope in its case, lying on a table. It's white with black accents and is packed in styrofoam.

Photo taken at Green Bank, with the Green Bank Telescope in the background in front of the mountains. There are pine trees on the left side and grass in the foreground.

Photograph of the Beckman Institute at Caltech, seen from ground level. The building is a creamy white, with windows and an interior courtyard with ivy and small trees. In the foreground is a long decorative pool with blue, white and red tiles. A mostly blue sky caps off the view.

Photograph of an adult-sized tricycle in a crowded storage room. The tricycle is blue and grey and has an attachment at the rear to strap a fire extinguisher onto.

The cover of Bruce Springsteen's album Born to Run, which features Springsteen's name and the album title in black letters, along with a black-and-white photo of Springsteen holding a guitar, wearing a leather jacket and leaning against the shoulder of an unseen second man, all with a white background.

Photograph of the right rear part of the shrimp tank, looking diagonally from the tank floor. In the foreground are plants; in the background is the tank filter, covered in greenery and with an orange shrimp near the top. In between all of this is a thin vertical stick of driftwood, with an orange and white shrimp climbing it.

Gracie Hines was preparing to accept a pharmaceutical-sciences doctoral program offer at West Virginia University when on March 3, the university rescinded her admission. The email notifying her of the withdrawal cited unforeseen budgetary challenges from proposed federal research-funding cuts.

“It felt like all the work I’ve put in these last few years was worth nothing,” said Hines, 20, who is finishing her undergraduate degree at WVU in biochemistry. “I was really heartbroken and sad about it.”

She has since received an offer to start a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at WVU—in a department unaffected by the federal budget cuts—or to work in the health-sciences lab until she can pursue her original plan. Without a graduate degree, she said she would be limited to lab-technician work or teaching, rather than her goal of developing vaccines or cancer medicines.

WVU spokeswoman April Kaull confirmed that candidates who hadn’t yet accepted Ph.D. offers had those offers revoked. She said university leadership is working to reverse the proposed NIH cuts. Without the funding, she said, “our nation’s research universities cannot maintain research programs essential for continued national prosperity.”

Photograph of the shrimp tank, about 20 gallons in size, with a filtration and heating system, miscellaneous plants, stone, driftwood, and substrate on the bottom.

Photograph of city buildings at the University of Pittsburgh in the evening, taken about 40 feet off the ground and looking west. It's a bit past sunset and there are some wobbly streaks of clouds in a pale blue sky tinged with gray and red.

Photograph taken from the passenger seat of a car driving on a road. Two large, ~15-meter radio dishes are seen to the left and ahead, pointing to the side. In the background are hills, bare trees and a grey, cloudy sky.

And it is more than monetary harm that is at stake here. As Justice Anthony Kennedy reminds us, “Liberty is always at stake when one or more of the branches seek to transgress the separation of powers.” Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 449–50 (1998) (Kennedy, J. concurring)

WVU provides update regarding DEI

West Virginia University has been diligently reviewing Gov. Morrisey´s Executive Order No. 3-25 while actively engaging with members of the campus community and key stakeholders and providing internal guidance and talking points to assist with initial questions or concerns.

The University administration genuinely appreciates the patience being shown as this work continues.

While it will take time to determine the full scope of the Executive Order, as well as the subsequent federal executive order issued by President Trump, the University is taking immediate steps to comply.

This includes closing the current WVU Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. A new unit - the WVU Division of Campus Engagement and Compliance - has been established with a redefined mission. This unit will focus on ensuring the University adheres to federal and state guidance and fulfilling the needs of our campus community, including compliance with Title IX and the Americans with Disabilities Act which is its primary focus. This is not a rebranding, but a shift in focus that will align with the Governor´s directive.

Once the University´s review is complete, administrators will have a better understanding of the impact and will provide more specific, unit-level guidance at that time. The University is committed to keeping the WVU community informed throughout this process and will continue to provide regular communication and feedback as it works to ensure it is in compliance with any and all obligations.

Those with questions should contact Vice President Meshea Poore and Associate Vice President Travis Mollohan.

Photograph of a bend in the Monongahela River in Morgantown. In the background are downtown and a hilly residential neighborhood. This part of the river is about 90% covered with ice and some snow. On the banks are leafless trees, with more snow on the land.

Screenshot of text from acknowledgments section of a paper:
"OK and RJN thank Michigan Technological University for their support during the production of this work. ChatGPT-4 has been used
to generate some of the code used in this work and was subsequently
checked by the author."

Photograph of a small artificial Christmas tree (about 3 feet high), standing on a red stool. Behind it are two blackboards. The tree is covered with blue, silver and gold ornaments, as well as computer cables and several unusual ornaments. On top, instead of a star, is a model of a single-dish radio telescope built from office supplies, a paper plate and a paper cup.

Photograph of the book "The Universe Around Us", by James Jeans. It's dark blue, with the title and author listed as "Sir James Jeans" in gold print on the cover.

Screenshot from an email sent by Rick Pill, chair of WVU's Board of Governors:

"Students and faculty are serving the land-grant mission to help the state through these research opportunities.

Biochemistry major Zach Ellis is presenting his groundbreaking Huntington disease research nationwide, while our faculty are leveraging funding to pioneer trailblazing research and share a growth of knowledge in 76 countries across six continents.

Shaw Prize recipients Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin contribute to that worldclass research reputation through the discoveries of fast radio bursts and the detection of gravitational waves, while assistant professor Chris Ramezan is leading a first-of-its-kind, $1.5 million center to improve the cybersecurity and cyber-resilience of businesses across the Mountain State."

The part about the Shaw Prize recipients -- two professors from the physics and astronomy department -- is circled in red.

Photograph looking out a window overlooking a river winding through a valley. There are hills on both sides, lightly dusted with snow, with plenty of trees and some buildings. A bridge is in the distance, by a small downtown area. The sky is cloudy and actively (but lightly snowing). The vibes are already those of mid-winter.

Three plots. One shows the distribution of dispersion measures, which looks a little like a decaying exponential. The second shows the distribution of signal-to-noise ratios, which has a peak around ~20-30 and then falls off. The third plots the coordinates of the events, which lie across the northern hemisphere of the sky.

Photograph of a rainbow in a partly cloud sky. Below and to the side are academic buildings, and in the background are hills.

Photo of a drawer with boxes of small cassette tapes.

Screenshot from part of the paper:
"Recently, NRAO has been developing an autonomous telescope self-reporting system, the Operational Data Sharing (ODS, Nhan et al. 2024) system, to provide near real-time telescope operational information queryable by satellite operators to be incorporated into their satellite tasking algorithms, including some of the telescope avoidance schemes."

Photograph of a group of people standing in a line on a grassy field. Most are high schoolers and college students, with some grad students and professors sprinkled in. It's a partially cloudy day; in the distance can be seen the Green Bank Telescope, a white barn, trees, and the mountains of Pocahontas County.

Screenshot of table from the paper. One RRAT, J1104+14, has an estimated distance of 25000 pc . . . with a lower error of 21000 pc.

Photograph of the bottom part of some tomato plants in a raised bed. Partially visible is the nest constructed by some rabbits for their babies, covered in miscellaneous grasses and fluff.

Photograph from the top of a ~6-story building looking south over downtown Morgantown. Downtown consists of miscellaneous small buildings, often of brick, with the Monongahela River to the right and hills all round.