Colloquium Announcement

Detections of gravitational waves (‘ripples in space-time’) produced by colliding black holes and neutron stars continue to reveal new insights about the nature of the high energy Universe.  We are beginning to answer fundamental and long standing questions about the nature of black holes, neutron stars, gravity, and even the origins of the heaviest elements found in nature. 

Enabling these discoveries are interferometers capable of measuring exquisitely small strains produced by passing gravitational waves.  In this presentation, I’ll give an overview of gravitational-wave astrophysics, highlight some of the most exciting discoveries, and discuss how we detect gravitational waves with LIGO. I’ll also discuss the plans gravitational-wave for the coming decade and beyond. 

David Reitze is the Executive Director of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech and a Research Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. As the LIGO Laboratory Executive Director, he is responsible for leading the LIGO Observatories at Hanford, WA and Livingston LA and the LIGO Caltech and MIT campus-based research labs. His research is focused on the development of instrumentation for current and future large-scale gravitational-wave detectors. Previously, Dr. Reitze held previous positions as a Professor of Physics at the University of Florida (2003-2021) and the Spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (2007-2011). Dr. Reitze is a Fellow of the Optica, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He jointly received the National Academy of Science Award for Scientific Discovery in 2017, and has won several awards as a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, including a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2016, the Gruber Prize for Cosmology (2016), and the American Astronomical Association Bruno Rossi Prize (2017). Dr. Reitze received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas, Austin.