The Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (IGC) is dedicated to fostering the highest quality education and research in cosmology, general relativity, gravitational wave astronomy, particle astrophysics, quantum gravity and string theory, focusing on the highest energy phenomena and fundamental issues in the Science of the Cosmos. At Penn State it has synergistic interactions with the Schreyer
Honors College, the College of Information Science and Technology, the World University Network and four departments in the Eberly College of Science. Abhay Ashtekar, holder of the Eberly Chair in Physics serves as the IGC Director and Doug Cowen, Professor of Physics, as the Associate Director. The Institute integrates the theoretical and observational research carried out in its three centers: the Center for Fundamental Theory (https://sites.psu.edu/centerfundamentaltheory/), headed by Murat Gunaydin, Professor of Physics; the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology (https://sites.psu.edu/ctoc/), headed by Don Schneider, Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics; and the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics (https://sites.psu.edu/cmma/) by Peter Mészáros, the Eberly Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Chief Theorist for the Swift GRBE mission.
