Ben Lorenz has a lot going on.
Maybe he worked with his professors on a new breakthrough in his research into the night sky and tiny “cosmic lighthouses” called pulsars. Maybe he just won a race, which he did six times in 2025 alone as a record-breaking senior on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee swim team. Maybe he finished presenting at UWM’s annual undergraduate research symposium, with his teammates in the audience.
“I was like, ‘Hey guys, if any of you are eggheaded enough, feel free to come out and watch,’” he remembers telling them. “It was great to be able to share the small piece of science that I’m working on.”
Lorenz, a physics major with an astronomy emphasis and a computer science minor, earned a Senior Excellence in Research Award in 2024-2025, one of just eight students selected across the university. He won the award for his research on the detection of gravitational waves, ripples in space caused by violent cosmic events like exploding stars.
Lorenz’s work focuses on pulsars, the dense cores of stars that remain after they’ve exploded. These pulsars emit radio waves at precise intervals. Studying these intervals can help reveal the origins of gravitational waves — shedding light on deep space features like black holes and extreme gravity, as well as the early universe itself.
Studying the stars at UWM
Coming out of Homestead High School in suburban Milwaukee, Lorenz got a perfect 36 on his ACT. He was all-state in swimming. He had already started astronomy research with the Ice Cube Particle Astrophysics lab in Madison.
At UWM, he found a school where he could thrive in all his pursuits.
“I looked around for places that were close to home, affordable and had fantastic programs in astronomy and astrophysics,” he said. “UWM satisfies all those, with the added benefit that I was able to swim and get an athletic scholarship.”
Some with Lorenz’s broad ambitions may have scaled back once realities of college hit. But he didn’t: His entire college career, he swam for hours a day with teammates at practice and meets. He volunteered at a shelter. He immersed himself as a student researcher under the mentorship of physics professor David Kaplan.
In his undergraduate career, Lorenz’s research focus shifted somewhat, from searching for evidence of new pulsars to closely studying the behavior of existing pulsars within the Milky Way galaxy. His hectic schedule invigorates him.
“When you’re balancing research and school and athletics, you’re kind of constantly doing something, but it’s never the same thing,” he said.
Telescoping from 414 to deep space
Lorenz found his academic home at the Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics. The sprawling research operation allows researchers to collect data provided by partner telescopes housed in rural West Virginia and Australia. Studying that data has yielded important breakthroughs in understanding gravitational waves and the mysteries of deep space, as well as its effects on our world.
“Large international collaborations are being done here,” Lorenz said. “I was pleasantly surprised by all the vibrant research work in Milwaukee.”
Patrick Brady, a physics professor and director of the Parker Center, credits UWM leaders with early investments in studying gravitational waves. The discovery of gravitational waves — a collaboration between hundreds of scientists across the globe, including Brady and three other UWM scientists — was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 2017.
That discovery paved the way for even more breakthroughs. Brady points to Lorenz’s efforts involving pulsars as ripe for new discoveries.
“The field is brand new,” Brady said. “The promise that we were opening a new window into the universe by seeing it through gravitational waves is now being realized.”
Lorenz hopes to continue his study of gravitational waves in a doctoral program, and eventually as a tenured professor. For now, he’s working as an informal STEM tutor to his swimming teammates and has presented his research findings in public forums.
“I find it really rewarding getting to participate in another person understanding a difficult concept,” he said. “I really love doing research, and there’s few jobs that effectively marry those two interests other than a professorship.”
