Professor Nahee Park

Nahee Park

Assistant Professor

Faculty, Particle Astrophysics, Astronomy, Astrophysics & Relativity

Physics, Engineering Physics & Astronomy

Arts & Science

Degree

PhD from Ewha Womans University at South Korea (Republic of Korea)

Graduate Opportunities

Prof. Park has an opening for a new graduate student.

See Applicants for how to apply.

Research Areas and Interests

I am interested in the dynamics of high-energy particles generated in astrophysical source sites throughout the Universe. For over a hundred years, we have known that high-energy particles known as cosmic rays originating from outside the Solar System bombard the Earth continuously. The energies of some of these particles are enormous鈥攐ver a million times higher than what can be achieved in the most powerful human-made particle accelerators.

Yet, despite more than a century of observations, key questions about cosmic rays remain unsolved:

  • What types of sources accelerate them?
  • How do they attain such extreme energies?
  • And how do they propagate from their sources to the Earth? 

Through multi-messenger observations that synthesize the results of high-energy neutrino, gamma-ray, and cosmic-ray observations, I am determined to find the origins of these particles in order to answer these persistent questions. Thanks to recent advances in high-energy neutrino and gamma-ray detectors, we are on the cusp of finally solving the mystery of the cosmic rays. The nascent field of neutrino astronomy is especially exciting as existing and future neutrino telescopes are poised to provide key observations in the multi-messenger approach.

As a member of several international collaborations, including HELIX(for cosmic rays), VERITAS (for gamma rays), and P-ONE, IceCube, and IceCube-Gen2 (for neutrinos), I am currently working on analyzing data from existing experiments and developing new detector technology to enable the next generation of experiments seeking to identify the sources of the most energetic particles in the Universe.