WVURAIL

West Virginia University  ·  Radio Astronomy Lab

Instruments that
listen to the distant universe.

RAIL designs and builds the telescopes, analog front ends, and digital systems that survey the radio sky — chasing cosmology, fast radio bursts, and pulsars.

Explore our work Meet the lab

Analog systems / Digital signal processing / Radio astronomy

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Research & engineering

We build the systems behind wide-field radio telescopes

RAIL works from the first low-noise signal at the feed to the computing systems that turn raw voltages into measurements of the universe.

01 · Hardware

Capture faint signals

Low-noise analog front ends, calibration, clock distribution, and field-ready telescope systems.

02 · Computing

Process the radio sky

FPGA correlators, high-throughput networking, control software, and analysis pipelines.

03 · Discovery

Measure the universe

Cosmology with neutral hydrogen, fast radio burst localization, and pulsar science.

Research & telescopes Our collaborators

Recognition Members of RAIL are part of the CHIME/FRB team, recipient of the 2022 Berkeley Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy.

People

Who's in the lab

A multidisciplinary group in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering — part of WVU's Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology — working across engineering and astronomy.

Current team

Kevin M. Bandura, Ph.D.

Kevin M. Bandura, Ph.D.

  • Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
  • Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy

kevin.bandura@mail.wvu.edu Faculty page & CV

Dylan J. Gormley

Dylan J. Gormley

  • Ph.D. Candidate

This could be you

We take on undergraduate and graduate researchers every year. Write to Prof. Kevin Bandura to talk about joining.

kevin.bandura@mail.wvu.edu

Meet the full lab & alumni

Publications

What the instruments found

Members of the lab are authors on 69 publications from their time at WVU, across CHIME, CHIME/FRB, HIRAX, and the outrigger stations — including the pair of companion papers that made the cover of Nature in February 2019.

All 69 publications

Science education

Teachers build radio telescopes too

DSPIRA — Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy — began as an NSF Research Experiences for Teachers site run by the lab with the WVU Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology and the Green Bank Observatory. Three documented in-person cohorts built working horn radio telescopes in 2017–19. Beginning in 2020, participants concentrated on making the curriculum and collaboration available online.

Two DSPIRA teachers operating a small horn radio telescope in a field at dusk

Free classroom materials

Build and use a 21 cm radio telescope

44 classroom-ready lessons cover radio astronomy, GNU Radio, electronics, antennas, and observing the Milky Way. The original RET award was seed funding: contributors still maintain the collection, while NSF Award 2511256 carries DSPIRA receivers into a more robust outreach lab.

44 lessons, free to use About DSPIRA

Join the lab

Students build real
instruments here.

If you're a graduate or undergraduate student who wants hands-on work with radio telescopes — analog front ends, FPGA signal processing, or the software that turns raw voltages into science — we'd like to hear from you.

Email the lab See our code
  • Lab Advanced Engineering Research Building, Room 304
    WVU Evansdale Campus, Morgantown, WV
  • Department Lane Department of Computer Science
    and Electrical Engineering