Andrew Renshaw wins Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Research

HOUSTON — Every year, the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics awards a faculty member at the rank of assistant professor the NSM Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Research. The institution created the award in 2015 to acknowledge faculty for their great potential in research and scholarship.

Andrew Renshaw, an assistant professor of physics, accepted the 2021 award, a $5,000 check and plaque, as nominated by his colleagues. Renshaw also received the 2021 University of Houston Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, or Creative Activity for an assistant professor.

“I feel very honored. I know there are many other talented researchers within NSM and even just within the physics department. For my department to put me up as a nominee, that was already really great. It’s very humbling they consider me at this level, because I consider some of my colleagues to be at the very top level of what they do,” said Renshaw.

Renshaw is a founding member of the HUNTER Collaboration (Heavy Unseen Neutrinos from Total Energy-momentum Reconstruction), which aims to study the heavy sterile neutrinos that could explain the existence of dark matter. He is also a member of the DUNE neutrino experiment. His research group is in charge of the development and fabrication of a liquid argon purity monitoring system for the detectors. The current project he is most involved in is DarkSide, which seeks and examines dark matter and neutrinos from the sun and supernova bursts.

When the pandemic broke out, members of the DarkSide team used their expertise in gas control to design a mechanical ventilator made from readily available components and received FDA approval.

Renshaw and his graduate student Alejandro Ramirez, who received an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship, are taking the same detector technology from DarkSide and apply it to medical positron emission tomography or PET scanning.

Renshaw has amassed the esteem of colleagues in the particle physics community, including Queen’s University Professor Emeritus Arthur B. McDonald, co-recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics.

“I have witnessed Professor Renshaw’s leadership during the development of the DarkSide-20K experiment over the past three years and am very impressed with his ability, creativity and performance on the experimental team,” McDonald wrote in his letter of recommendation.

When asked about his future research career, Renshaw said he plans to see the result of the project in real-life applications, including the construction of an upcoming dark side detector.

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