Joe Zalesky, a junior at New Philadelphia High School, participated in the International Pulsar Timing Array 2011 Student Workshop and Science Meeting held at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va. This workshop is typically for undergraduate and graduate students.

Zalesky is currently working on a project, entitled Assessing Radio Luminosity and Spin Parameters for Millisecond Pulsars, with Dr. Jim Cordes and Dr. Shami Chatterjee at Cornell University. This is an independent research project and is advised by Debbie French, physics teacher at NPHS.

Zalesky is using archived data obtained from the Australia Telescope National Facility to determine if a correlation exists between the brightness of a pulsar and any of the factors that influence the pulsar’s spin, such as the magnetic field and the rate at which energy is being lost. The goal is to identify 50-100 pulsars with very stable rotational periods. The significance of this work is that once these pulsars have been identified, they may be used as a space-based gravitational wave detector. Gravitational waves have only been indirectly observed and are the result of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

He is the son of Joseph and Lisa Zalesky of New Philadelphia.