The McWilliams Center for Cosmology at Carnegie Mellon University joins research efforts in astrophysics, particle physics, computer science, statistics, and other disciplines to unravel the mysteries of the universe. More than 95 percent of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter plays a key role in the formation of large scale structure of the universe, and dark energy is responsible for its accelerating expansion. The Center supports the multidisciplinary quest of faculty and students to understand the makeup of the universe and how it evolved to its current state.

New members of the McWilliams Center are encouraged to review our onboarding document to learn about resources and communication channels available to Center members.

Some of the  most extreme events in the Universe are also yet to be explained.  How black holes form, mathematically the simplest and yet through their effects the most complex objects, responsible for some of the most energetic events in our universe, and how they become some of the fundamental players  in our Universe are not yet understood.

Over the next decade, a range of complementary observations—from radio to gamma rays, gravitational waves (GW), and neutrinos will enable investigations in previously inaccessible regimes, and allow us to address some of these fundamental open questions  in our current understanding of the Universe.