Space research facilities at Pitt can be found across most of the schools and many of the departments on campus, often organized in the form of a research center or laboratory with a group of faculty members supporting and working with a group of outstanding students. Some of our more prominent facilities for space research and workforce development are highlighted below.
- Trivedi Institute for Space and Global Biomedicine
Pitt’s new Trivedi Institute for Space and Global Biomedicine is focused on “one of the audacious future directions for health and biomedical research,” Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for health sciences said at an event announcing the institute on Jan. 29, 2026. The institute is funded with a $25 million joint investment from the Trivedi Family Foundation plus University funding. The foundation was started by Ashok Trivedi, a Pittsburgh-based entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist, after he sold the tech company IGATE. The institute is led by Dr. Kate Rubins, who came to Pitt in October as a professor of computational and systems biology after a a 16-year career as a NASA astronaut that included two long-duration missions and a total of 300 days in space. She is joined by Dr. Chris Mason, genomics researcher and space biologist who serves as the institute's deputy director, Dr. Afshin Beheshti, director of its Center in Space Biomedicine, and Sylvain Costas, director of its Center for Space Biomanufacturing, Synthetic Biology, and Digital Health.
- NSF SHREC Space Center
The NSF Center for Space, High-performance, and Resilient Computing (SHREC) is the nation’s foremost academic research center on space research and workforce development featuring topics in electrical and computer engineering. SHREC was founded in 2006, is headquartered at Pitt with partner sites at Brigham Young University, University of Florida, and Virginia Tech, and features about 30 government, industry, institute, and academic partners, including many of the leading organizations in the US space community. SHREC conducts basic and applied research on a wide range of topics. It leads and supports a broad range of space missions and experiments, including CASPR, which completed its 4-year mission on the International Space Station in Dec. 2025, and VANTAGE, which is scheduled for launch to ISS in Q3 of 2027. For questions, please contact the director, Prof. Alan George.
- Allegheny Observatory
The Allegheny Observatory, which is part of the Physics and Astronomy Department, is the oldest and most historically consequential space research facility on campus. The observatory has a long rich history in a variety of areas, and it became especially well-known for its astrometric parallax research program, which set the standard for measuring the distances to nearby stars. It currently serves as a laboratory for a variety of student education and research experiences. It has always supported public viewing with the telescopes and with other scientific experiences. For questions, please contact the director, Prof. David Turnshek.
- Astronomy and Cosmology Group
The Astronomy and Cosmology Group, which is part of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, consists of about a dozen faculty members conducting research and advising graduate students on topics in space science. Their focus areas are cosmology (properties and evolution of the universe, growth of large-scale structure), galaxy evolution (how galaxies grow and change over time), and supernovae (causes of Type-Ia supernovae, modeling the spectrum of emitted light, use as standard candles to measure expansion of the universe).
- Image Visualization and Infrared Spectroscopy Facility
The Image Visualization and Infrared Spectroscopy (IVIS) Facility, which is part of the Geology and Environmental Science Department, is comprised of three laboratories (Image Lab, Planetary Lab, Spectroscopy Lab) and has been awarded grants totaling more than $10M dollars from NASA, NSF, and NGS in the past decade alone. The labs are designed to function as a state-of-the-art resource for visible through thermal infrared spectroscopy, and image analysis. The IVIS group has extensive experience in processing and interpreting data from Earth orbiting platforms at different scales, and planetary datasets acquired from Venus, the Moon, and Mars. Furthermore, the Spectroscopy lab contains several experiments designed to acquire reflectance and emissivity spectra of geologic materials at a range of temperatures and under different atmospheric compositions to better simulate the conditions found on other worlds. A major focus of the group more recently is developing multispectral infrared cameras for volcano and wildfire science and PI-driven NASA proposals for future orbital missions. For questions, please contact the group leader, Prof. Michael Ramsey.
- Petersen Institute for NanoScience and Engineering
The Petersen Institute for NanoScience and Engineering (PINSE) and it's Nanoscale Fabrication and Characterization Facility (NFCF) features the world-class facilities, personnel, and expertise necessary to design, fabricate, test, and evaluate new nanoscale devices in electronics and photonics for the harsh and resource-constrained environment of space. For questions, please contact the director, Prof. David Waldeck.
- Pittsburgh Center for Interdisciplinary Bone and Mineral Research
The Pittsburgh Center for Interdisciplinary Bone and Mineral Research (PCIBMR) develops and facilitates interdisciplinary research, training, and information transfer related to musculoskeletal function in normal and disease states, and during regeneration and repair. Research activities include a broad range of research studies and experiments involving the harsh environment of space. For questions, please contact the co-director, Prof. Giuseppe Intini.
- Pittsburgh Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Cosmology Center
The Particle Physics Astrophysics and Cosmology Center (PACC) coordinates and enhances local activities in experimental, observational, and theoretical particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. Observational efforts focus upon the use of large survey datasets, augmented with data from large telescopes both on the ground and in space. Theoretical efforts encompasses a wide range of topics, from the physics of the early Universe, to the formation of the Milky Way Galaxy, to Supernovae and Stellar Physics. For questions, please contact the associate director, Prof. David Turnshek.
- Center for Research Computing and Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center
Our university is one of few in the nation to feature both a university supercomputer center, the Center for Research Computing (CRC), and a national supercomputer center, the world-famous Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center (PSC). Resources and personnel in these high-performance computing centers support a broad range of compute-intensive research activities related to space research, such as training of various AI tools for use in inferencing for autonomous sensor processing on spacecraft, and simulation modeling of complex space systems and activities.
