My research spans free-floating planets, gravitational waves, and astrophysical tests of particle physics.
I work with Elisabeth Newton on distinguishing stellar flares from the brief brightening caused by gravitational microlensing. We’re developing a way to tell them apart in the first season of Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey.
I work with Raman Sundrum and Surjeet Rajendran in the theoretical physics groups at Maryland and Johns Hopkins. My research there uses astronomical observations to test physics beyond the Standard Model.
I collaborate with David Bennett and the microlensing group on preparations for Roman. I also chair the Roman Free-Floating Planet Working Group, which is preparing the search for planets that drift between stars.
I worked with Stefano Profumo on astrophysical signatures of new physics and mentored graduate students working on microlensing and dark plasmas. I founded the Santa Cruz Organization for Outreach in Physics and served as its president.
I visited the QUP research center as a guest of Volodymyr Takhistov.
With Peter Graham as my advisor, I studied how stars and supernovae could reveal new particles. I also led discussion sections for undergraduate physics and graduate general relativity.
I worked on particle physics experiments at CERN and Fermilab and received Yale’s Howard L. Schultz Award for my senior thesis.
William DeRocco