Profile
Christopher Karwin
Physics and Astronomy
Assistant Professor
Kinard Lab 104 [Office]
Educational Background
Ph.D., Physics, University of California, Irvine, 2019
M.S., Physics, University of California, Irvine, 2017
B.S., Physics, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 2013
Profile/About Me
Dr. Chris Karwin is an assistant professor at Clemson University in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He joined the faculty as a recipient of the prestigious Scientific Software Research Faculty Award from the Simons Foundation. Before coming to Clemson, Dr. Karwin was a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Research Interests
Dr. Karwin specializes in observational gamma-ray astronomy. He works with a wide range of telescopes, from current missions such as Fermi-LAT to upcoming missions like COSI and Starburst, as well as future mission concepts including GALE and AMEGO-X. His research focuses on understanding diffuse gamma-ray emission in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, searching for dark matter, and studying faint source populations. He also plays a leading role in the development of future MeV missions, with particular expertise in building data analysis pipelines and simulation tools that run on high-performance computing clusters.
Selected Publications
Atmospheric Response for MeV Gamma Rays Observed with Balloon-Borne Detectors
Karwin, C. M., Kierans, C., Shih, A., Martinez-Castellanos, I., Lowell, A., Siegert, T., Roberts, J., Gallego, S., Zoglauer, A., Tomsick, J., and Boggs, S. E., The Astrophysical Journal 974.1 (2024): 146.
Legacy Analysis of Dark Matter Annihilation from the Milky Way Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies with 14 Years of Fermi-LAT Data
McDaniel, A., Ajello, M., Karwin, C. M., Di Mauro, M., Drlica-Wagner, A., and Sánchez-Conde, M., Physical Review D 109.6 (2024): 063024.
Probing the Galactic Diffuse Continuum Emission with COSI
Karwin, C. M., Siegert, T., Beechert, J., Tomsick, J., Porter, T., Negro, M., Kierans, C., Ajello, M., Martinez-Castellanos, I., Shih, A., Zoglauer, A., and Boggs, S. E., The Astrophysical Journal 959.2 (2023): 90.
Gamma Rays from Fast Black-Hole Winds
Ajello, M., ..., Karwin, C. M., and 103 additional authors, The Astrophysical Journal 921 (2021): 144.
Dark Matter Interpretation of the Fermi-LAT Observations Toward the Outer Halo of M31
Karwin, C. M., Murgia, S., Moskalenko, I. V., Fillingham, S., Burns, A, and Fieg, M., Physical Review D 103.2 (2021): 023027.
Fermi-LAT Observations of Gamma-Ray Emission Towards the Outer Halo of M31
Karwin, C. M., Murgia, S., Campbell, S., and Moskalenko, I. V., The Astrophysical Journal 880.2 (2019): 95.
Dark Matter Interpretation of the Fermi-LAT Observations Toward the Galactic Center
Karwin, C. M., Murgia, S., Tait, T. M. P., Porter, T., and Tanedo, P., Physical Review D 95.10 (2017): 103005.
Selected Talks
COSPAR 2024
July 13-21, 2024
Busan, Korea
invited talk: Probing the Galactic Diffuse Continuum Emission with COSI
invited talk: Soft Gamma-Ray Polarimetry with the Compton Spectrometer and Imager
American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting
February 15-17, 2024
Denver, Colorado
invited talk: Three Ways Scientist are Searching for Dark Matter
invited guest on The Economist Podcast: How to detect the undetectable–new ideas in the hunt for dark matter
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematic of the Universe
August 9, 2023
Kashiwa, Japan
invited talk: Anomalies in the Galactic Diffuse Gamma-Ray Continuum Spanning the MeV and GeV Bands
Wurzburg Dark Matter Workshop
May 11, 2023
Wurzburg, Germany
invited talk: Indirect Dark Matter Searches with Fermi-LAT
20th Divisional Meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division
March 26 - 30, 2023
Waikoloa, Hawaii
invited talk: Gamma rays from Fast Black-Hole Winds
Theory Meeting Experiments (TMEX-2023)
Jan 5 - 11, 2023
Quy Nhon, Vietnam
invited talk: The All-Sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory eXplorer (AMEGO-X) Mission Concept
Tenth International Fermi Symposium
Oct 9 - 15, 2022
Johannesburg, South Africa
invited talk: Indirect Dark Matter Searches with Fermi-LAT
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Fermi Speakeasy
July 14, 2022
Greenbelt, Maryland
invited talk: Probing the Galactic Diffuse Continuum Emission in the MeV Gap with the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI)
Memberships
Member of the GALE team, Jan 2023 - present
Member of the COSI collaboration, Jan 2021 - present
Member of the AMEGO-X team, Jan 2020 - present
Member of the American Physical Society (APS), Mar 2019 - present
Member of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Jan 2019 - present
Member of the Fermi-LAT collaboration, Jan 2016 - present
Honors and Awards
Scientific Software Research Faculty Award, Simons Foundation (Sep 2025– Aug 2030)
NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellowship, NASA (Sept 2022 - Aug 2025)
