Mehr Un Nisa

Particle Astrophysicist. Assistant Professor at MSU.
My work spans gamma-ray and neutrino astronomy, and astrophysical searches for the particle nature of dark matter. I am affiliated with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-ray Experiment, the Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO) and the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE).

Research

My main focus these days are multimessenger searches for sources of astrophysical neutrinos, and, constraining beyond-the-standard-model Physics with TeV gamma rays.

Neutrino Astronomy

My group works with IceCube collaborators on tools to enhance our sensitivity to point- and extended-source searches, and cross-correlating very-high-energy gamma-ray data with neutrinos. Our current projects include resolving the diffuse neutrino emission from the galactic plane, and studying the signatures of dark matter annihilation in dwarf spheroidal galaxies. We are also using machine-learning to improve the directional reconstruction of neutrino events, and project sensitvities for future neutrino telescopes like P-ONE.

Very-High-Energy Gamma rays and Cosmic rays

As part of the HAWC and SWGO collaborations, my group is working on understanding some of the highest energy emitters in the galaxy, and optimizing source-search techniques for water-Cherenkov telescopes. Our current projects include constraining dark matter annihilation in the galactic center, and measuring extra-galactic diffuse emission in the TeV regime.

List of Publications

         ORCID     INSPIRE     ARXIV

Background

I finished my Ph.D at the University of Rochester in 2018, working as a member of the HAWC Collaboration. I joined the particle astrophysics group at the Michigan State University as a postdoc in 2019. In 2023, I joined the faculty in the same department as an assistant professor. I am originally from Islamabad, Pakistan🏏

Get in touch

If you're a physicist, you would know why or how to reach me. If you're a student, an aspiring physicist or a generally curious soul -- especially a woman or under-represented minority in Physics -- send me an email and I would be happy to chat about navigating both particles and people in the world of research.