Q&A with Penn State alumna, eminent astrophysicist Maura McLaughlin

Penn State alumna Maura McLaughlin is one of six Eberly College of Science alumni to have received the 2025 Outstanding Science Alumni Award. The award recognizes and rewards outstanding Penn State science alumni for their success as leaders in science and for the impact they have had on society and their professions.

McLaughlin, now Eberly Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University, earned her bachelor’s degree in astronomy and astrophysics from the Eberly College of Science in 1994 and was a Schreyer Scholar in the Schreyer Honors College. In 2001, she received her doctoral degree from Cornell. At West Virginia University, McLaughlin studies pulsars, compact neutron stars that can be detected with radio telescopes. Since 2015, she has served as the co-director of the North America Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves collaboration.

She previously served as a National Science Foundation distinguished research fellow at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in the U.K. and has received awards including a Sloan Fellowship, Cottrell Scholar Award, Southeastern Universities Research Association Distinguished Scientist Award, and Shaw Prize. McLaughlin is also an American Physical Society Division of Astrophysics fellow, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the co-founder of the Pulsar Search Collaboratory program, now the Pulsar Science Collaboratory.

We sat down with McLaughlin to chat about her time at Penn State and her impactful career as a physicist and astronomer.

Can you tell us about your time at Penn State?

McLaughlin: I loved my time at Penn State. While there, I was in the Schreyer Honors College, which I thought was great. Being in the honors college gave me a lot of flexibility to explore different types of classes. I chose the astronomy major because I had always been fascinated by space, mostly from reading lots of science fiction and astronomy books. I enjoyed my coursework but it wasn’t until I learned that Alex Wolszczan, a new faculty member at the time, had recently found evidence for the first extrasolar planets around a pulsar that I became interested in research.

In my small cohort, we had great comradery. There were seven astronomy majors in my year, two women and five men. I was also a member of the astronomy club, and I have great memories of going to the roof of Davey Laboratory at night and using the telescope. We would also host events for the public where kids could join, and it was so rewarding to see that same excitement that I had the first time that I looked through a telescope. It was really neat.

What was undergraduate research at Penn State like for you?

McLaughlin: I had never done any research before, and I remember being very nervous about it, but I went and knocked on Wolszczan’s door, introduced myself, and asked if there might be a possibility of doing research with him. He didn’t have any graduate students at the time, so he said, “Great, I would love to have an undergrad helping me with this project.”

One of my favorite memories from research as an undergraduate is getting to go with Wolszczan to the Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, over the summer. While there I learned how to operate the telescope, and I think that was the moment where my mind was blown, and I thought that this was just the coolest thing ever.

Is there a particular piece of advice you got from a Penn State faculty member that's stuck with you through the years?

McLaughlin: While I was an undergraduate, France Córdova was the chair of the astronomy and astrophysics department. There weren’t many women in physics and astronomy, so having a female department chair stuck with me, because I saw that and I thought, you know, this is something I can do. I remember meeting with her, and she was the one who pointed me in the direction of Alex Wolszczan. She always had time to talk to students and encourage them, and I think that was a big part of it for me. It was intimidating being in physics classes with nearly all men, but having the chair of the department be a woman was inspiring.

What advice would you give to current Penn State students?

McLaughlin: Don’t take yourself too seriously. I see a lot of students spend a lot of time ruminating on how to approach a faculty member, find the appropriate path, etc. My advice is to just talk to people, knock on doors, and approach faculty that you think are doing interesting work. If you hear a great talk, go up and ask about their research. You’ll be surprised by how many opportunities are out there. Don’t be afraid to wing it and follow an interest and see where it takes you. As an undergraduate student, you have the time to do that, and you never know where it will take you.

How did your time at Penn State shape your research career?

McLaughlin: I think I’m unusual in my career, in that I haven’t verged from my undergraduate research too far.

Now, I work in two main fields. Firstly, I work in transient radio astronomy, where I helped discover a new class of pulsars and co-discovered the first fast radio burst. In 2023, I was awarded the Shaw Prize with the FRB’s other co-discovers.

I also work on using pulsars as clocks to detect low-frequency gravitational waves; it’s a long-timescale project, nearly 20 years now. In June of 2023, we announced the first evidence for these low-frequency gravitational waves through this collaboration called the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, or NANOGrav, which I am the co-director of.

It is a huge honor to be recognized as an outstanding alumna. Thinking back to my time as an undergrad, I can’t believe how far I’ve come.

Can you tell me about the Pulsar Search Collaboratory and how high schoolers are integral to your success?

McLaughlin: When I started as a professor at West Virginia University in 2006, I wanted to form links with the nearby Green Bank Observatory. I was connected with Sue Anne Heatherly, who worked with myself and Duncan Lorimer to establish the Pulsar Search Collaboratory. We knew that, using the observatory, we would generate tons of data that would be time intensive and hard to process, so we sought to teach and include high schoolers who could help us with this data problem.

After writing an NSF grant for the program, we began our summer program. It was intimidating at first, not only teaching the science aspect but also managing a group of high schoolers outside of the research. But it became my favorite part of every summer, going to Green Bank and spending a few weeks with the students and teachers. These students have also found things such as pulsars and have demonstrated that they can do real, impactful research.

The program now has morphed to include undergraduate students, including a group at Penn State, and we’ve changed the name to the Pulsar Science Collaboratory, as students can now participate in all kinds of pulsar research through the program. I never would have thought I would have grown to be this big. Students are involved from all across the world, and some of the early students are now faculty in astronomy.