Physics junior Niyousha Davachi has already accomplished a lot during her undergraduate career. She’s given presentations on exomoons and lagrangians and has won a slew of awards for her work.

Now Niyousha has been been given a new task in her mission to understand the universe. She’ll be working at Texas A&M this summer to research dark matter, which is a relatively mysterious concept in cosmology or the study of the evolution of the universe.

Scientists, including Niyousha, still don’t know much about dark matter, but research to understand it is ongoing.

“Dark matter is a particle that has not been discovered, but people believe it does exist as there are good number of evidences for its existence,” she said.

Dark matter particles are invisible but — if it exists — it interacts gravitationally with the universe. This is that’s how scientists could understand and confirm its existence. The substance may also explain the motion of stars in galaxies as well as the distribution of their mass.

This new position as an assistant researcher will give Niyousha new insights on the mysterious particle. After the job, she hopes to return to UTA with plan to graduate.