Research Highlights & Innovation

Albert F. Zahm built America’s first wind tunnel equipped with instruments for scientific study here in 1901.

Catholic University physics professor Clyde Cowan was co-discoverer, with Frederick Reines, of the elementary subatomic particle called the neutrino. For this discovery, first announced in 1956, Reines was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1995. He received the prize in both his and Cowan’s names.

Catholic University Provost Aaron Dominguez was a member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson particle in 2012. This “monumental milestone in particle physics” marked the start of a new era of research, according to Fabiola Gianotti, director-general of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

The University’s Vitreous State Laboratory (VSL), led by Ian Pegg, has been pioneering a nuclear waste management method through a process called vitrification, in which radioactive waste is transformed into a very durable glass using a 2,000-degree Fahrenheit melter. This method helps contain nuclear waste and prevent it from leaching into the surrounding environment, yielding a more environmentally-friendly way of handling nuclear waste.

University-affiliated NASA researchers are part of an international team that has proven the existence of a global energy field, which has eluded scientists for decades. The ambipolar electric field was first hypothesized 60 years ago to explain the mysterious force behind the “polar wind.” 

Justine Bayard Ward developed the groundbreaking Ward Method of music instruction in 1929, which had a profound effect on how music was taught in Catholic schools throughout the 20th century and even today.

Rev. Eugene Xavier Henri Hyvernat, a member of the University’s original faculty, began assembling resources for the study of Coptic languages as early as 1889, an effort that laid the foundation for the extraordinary collection of rare books, widely used today, in the Catholic University Semitics Library.