E-Mail IMAGE: David Moutard, graduate student, Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wayne State University view more Credit: David Moutard DETROIT - The Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science has announced the selection of 78 graduate students representing 26 states for the Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program's 2020 Solicitation 2 cycle. Wayne State University Department of Physics and Astronomy graduate student David Moutard was one of the recipients for his project, "Experimental Research in High Energy Physics." Moutard's research project is in conjunction with Alex Kim, Ph.D., at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, California. According to Moutard, in the very near future, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will begin collecting spectra of galaxies. The international DESI Time Domain Working Group will use these spectra to attempt to detect and classify transient astronomical events. These events are expected to either be supernovae -- explosive deaths of stars -- or tidal disruption events (TDES) -- occurrences of a star that wanders too close to a black hole, causing tidal forces to rip the star apart. Since DESI only provides spectra, photometric follow-up of these objects is necessary to develop a more complete picture.