Isaque Dutra, a Ph.D. student in physics in Yale’s Graduate of Arts and Sciences, recently won a NASA FINESST award for graduate student-designed research projects for his proposal “Probing the Invisible Universe with Cluster Strong Lensing”.
The Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) competition, which recognizes research projects across five divisions of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, provides up to $150,000 in funding for the winning projects, spread over three years. This year, FINESST received 456 proposals for astrophysics — and selected 24 of them to support.
Dutra’s proposal, which will be overseen by Priyamvada Natarajan, the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor and Chair of Astronomy and professor of physics in FAS, will probe the fundamental nature of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter, which has yet to be detected, is theorized to constitute the majority of matter in the universe; dark energy is a theorized force that appears to defy gravity and is believed to be powering the measured accelerating expansion of the universe.
While the mechanics of dark matter and dark energy are not known, researchers like Dutra, Natarajan, and their collaborators suspect they may be at the heart of several persistent, small-scale discrepancies in the Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmological model (the current standard model for understanding the universe’s evolution) — such as cases where observed gravitational lensing signals have drastically exceeded theoretical predictions. Likewise, recent data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument hint at the need for new physics beyond the standard model.
Dutra and Natarajan plan to use observed strong lensing by galaxy clusters as astrophysical laboratories to simultaneously probe the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Dutra will compare high-resolution simulations with data to constrain alternatives to cold dark matter. He and Natarajan will also leverage observations to probe the time evolution of dark energy, one of the fundamental open questions in cosmology.
Natarajan commented, “I am delighted at Isaque being awarded this prestigious FINNEST award for his thesis project on cosmography with clusters.”
This story is taken from the Yale News Insights & Outcomes report of September 9, 2025, written by Karen Guzman and Jim Shelton. See below for a link to the original story and to the NASA document announcing the selected projects.