Graduate Theological Union alum Kirk Wegter-McNelly (Ph.D. 2003) and colleague Dr. Ray Chiao are one of five interdisciplinary teams to be awarded $100,000 through the Center for Theology and the Natural Science’s (CTNS) Program, STARS (Science and Transcendence Advanced Research Series), funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Co-principal investigators Dr. Wegter-McNelly, Assistant Professor of Theology, Boston University School of Theology, and Dr. Raymond Chiao, Professor of Natural Sciences and Engineering, UC Merced, will construct a small-scale detector of “gravitational waves” to investigate different scientific models of the universe and shed new light on the universe’s origin and contingency — whether or not the universe depends on something beyond itself for its own existence and order. Their work will take our scientific understanding of the universe to a new level and is likely to reshape age-old philosophical and theological debates about its origin. Stay tuned!

Established in 1982, CTNS is an affiliate of the Graduate Theological Union.
For more information, visit www.ctnsstars.org.
Read the press release.