Humanity has discovered a great deal about the vast Universe in which we live and its mysterious origins, but there are many milestones yet to reach. The astronomical revolution launched by Copernicus has now reached a level of detailed understanding that allows us to ask ever more sophisticated questions. Drs. Jack Hughes (PI), Andrew Baker, Alyson Brooks, and their colleagues in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers University are advancing astronomical research in a variety of areas (e.g., the formation and evolution of galaxies, and the properties of dark matter and dark energy), while educating young scientists determined to understand and explain the wonders of the universe. Through partnerships with the rapidly developing research community in South Africa, the Rutgers faculty have added a new international dimension to their pursuit of knowledge and their training of students.

In 1994, the new administration of Nelson Mandela identified astronomy as one of a handful of scientific disciplines holding the greatest potential for the country, capable of strengthening human capital and technical infrastructure. Researchers at Rutgers University have since built multiple, close ties with the South African astronomical community, through involvement in world-class facilities like SALT and MeerKAT. As most of these contacts have been strictly at the faculty level, however, Drs. Hughes, Baker, and Brooks hope to support a vigorous, extensive, two-way exchange of students at the graduate level. With adequate funding, the collaborators will not only advance their cutting-edge astronomical research that encompasses both theory and observation at optical and radio wavelengths, but also support efforts to remedy past inequities of educational opportunity in South Africa and inspire the next generation of students in both countries to pursue education in technical fields.

Starting from a strong basic foundation in astronomical research, South Africa over the past 15 years has been developing two world-class astronomical research facilities aimed at catapulting it into the top ranks of nations pursuing astronomy. Current research programs at Rutgers include projects using both facilities:

• The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), the largest single-aperture optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, observes everything from exploding stars to distant clusters of galaxies to the internal motions of galaxies that reveal the properties of dark matter. Currently, Dr. Hughes is actively using SALT for observations of galaxy clusters, which are the largest gravitationally-organized systems in the Universe. Clusters grow with the passage of cosmic time, and thus an accurate census of the number of clusters throughout the Universe as a function of their mass will help measure the growth rate of structure in the Universe, providing insight into the nature of the mysterious "dark energy" that is the source of cosmic acceleration.
• MeerKAT is an array of 64 radio telescopes that, when completed in 2017, will be the most sensitive radio telescope in the southern hemisphere for the study of neutral atomic hydrogen gas in galaxies. Dr. Baker jointly leads one of the two highest-priority MeerKAT large surveys (Looking At the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array, or LADUMA), which will study neutral hydrogen over the last nine billion years of cosmic time. Neutral hydrogen can be used to trace the history of a galaxy's growth and represents a reservoir for the formation of its future stars, giving it a key role in the overall process of galaxy evolution whose study is a central theme of modern observational and theoretical astronomy.
• Supercomputer simulations are an important theoretical tool for interpreting observations of cosmic structure, including galaxies. Dr. Brooks uses state-of-the-art numerical simulations to study galaxy formation from a theoretical perspective, and the evolution and internal motions of galaxies with time. These simulations can both interpret observations and make new predictions for observational tests, yielding a synergistic relationship with the observational programs undertaken by Drs. Hughes and Baker.