...where the Universe is our laboratory.
The Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics (WCA) looks to the cosmos to solve the greatest mysteries of the universe. Here, world-class researchers and students come together in an atmosphere of curiosity, creativity and collaboration; exploring our cosmic origin to truly understand the physical processes at work in the Universe. From black holes to cosmology, we aim to understand what lies beyond the Earth. The possibilities for new discovery are limitless.
News
Will Percival receives New Frontiers in Research funding
Will Percival has been awarded funding through the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) 2025 Exploration Competition for research into Dark Energy. Over the next two years, Percival and his interdisciplinary team will adapt methodological expertise from the fields of biostatistics and computational statistics and apply these tools to cosmological data.
Exploration grants through the NFRF are intended to support high-risk, high-reward research. They support projects that push boundaries into new and exciting areas by bringing disciplines together and exploring new concepts that, while bold, have potential for significant impact.
A special birthday gift
On April 30, residents of Luther Village on the Park stepped into the cosmos without leaving home. The retirement home hosted the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics (WCA) to an afternoon that paired cutting-edge astrophysics with an immersive journey through space inside Waterloo’s portable planetarium, the Astro-Bubble.
Professor Michel Fich awarded Dunlap Award for Innovation in Astronomical Research Tools
Professor Emeritus Michel (Mike) Fich of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Associate Member of the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics has been awarded the 2026 Dunlap Award for Innovation in Astronomical Research Tools by the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA).
Events
Astroseminar - Supranta Boruah
"Optimal weak lensing and galaxy clustering analysis with field-level inference"
Supranta Boruah is a Center for Particle Cosmology fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. He works on developing statistical and machine learning methods for cosmological analysis.
Astroseminar - Rachel Bezanson
Rachel Bezanson is Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She is an observational astronomer interested in empirical studies of massive galaxies, both today and in the early Universe. Her research aims to disentangle and interpret the morphological, structural, and dynamical evolution of massive galaxies through cosmic time. She is interested in understanding how and when galaxies form, how star-forming galaxies turn off - or “quench” - their star-formation, and the physical processes that drive the evolution of early galaxies into the bimodal and well-behaved galaxy populations observed in the local Universe.