University of Washington Bothell
Sigma Pi Sigma, the National Physics Honor Society, recently welcomed several new members from the UWB community! Cheng Qian, Daniel McKnight, Dr. Erin Hill, Ernie Enkhzaya, Gogo Huang, Jomardee Perkins, Matthew Marriott, and Tija Tippett were all officially inducted into this prestigious group on Monday, April 23.
Congratulations!
Jojo Perkins, senior at UWB and longtime member of the GWA research group, has been named a 2018 UW Bothell Founders Fellow Scholar for her work in the field of gravitational wave astronomy! Her project focuses on “Classifying Transient Noise in LIGO Data Using Detector Characterization Tools.” For more information on the scholarship and this year’s other Fellows, click here. Congratulations, Jojo!
You’re invited to a talk by Joseph Simon from Caltech on Wednesday, April 25 12-1pm in DH 256! Coffee, tea, and cookies will be provided.
“Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) are galactic-scale low-frequency (nHz – μHz) gravitational wave (GW) observatories, which aim to directly detect GWs from binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Binary SMBHs are predicted products of galaxy mergers, and are a crucial step in galaxy formation theories. Understanding the link between binary SMBHs and the gravitational radiation detected by PTAs is crucial to the community’s capability of making meaningful scientific statements using PTA observations. In this talk, I will explain how recent PTA upper limits on the gravitational radiation in the nanohertz frequency band are impacting our understanding of the binary SMBH population, and show what can be implied about galaxy evolution as PTAs gain more sensitivity.”
Representatives from the Gravitational Wave Astronomy Research Group presented to 6th-8th grade students last weekend at the UWB’s 2018 Inspire STEM Festival. Their astronomy workshop, “Messengers from a Long, Long Time Ago,” was one of many activities geared towards getting young students (particularly girls and first-generation students) excited about the possibilities of learning and working in various STEM fields. For more information about the Festival, click here!
Students and faculty from both UW and UWB took a trip down to Oregon this past weekend to attend the American Physics Society’s 2018 Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics. The APS CUWiP is an annual event gathering together female students and faculty from institutions across the country to present research, network, and share knowledge. As you can see, the UW students were not at all shy about repping their home campus at the event, and in fact UW will be hosting the gathering next year!
The University of Washington Bothell gravitational wave astronomy team is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and contributed to the recent LIGO discoveries, read more.
Drs. Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish have been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for leading the LIGO Scientific Collaboration’s discovery of gravitational waves!
This thrilling award honors over 40 years of work by these three individuals that has led to the pioneering of gravitational wave astronomy, a new field of science. Thanks to the leadership of Dr. Weiss, Dr. Thorne, and Dr. Barish, LIGO and the LSC have proved Einstein’s theory of relativity, measured previously unknowable anomalies with cutting-edge detectors, and gained an entirely new understanding of the workings of the universe.
For all the exciting details, including more information on the three recipients and the history of the LIGO-Virgo project, click here for the New York Times article on the award. And for info straight from the official website of the Nobel Prize, click here.
Congratulations to these distinguished recipients!
LIGO Hanford will be holding a post-eclipse celebration on August 21st! Featuring speakers, a tour of the facility, and more, this event is the perfect way to cap off a remarkable experience. There will also be a few UWB GWA students attending as volunteers. Click here for more information!
Save the date – Dr. Francesco Pannarale of Cardiff University will be giving a presentation on the astrophysics of LIGO on Tuesday, August 8, from 1:30-2:30pm! The event is open to everyone and will take place in DISC 368 on the UWB campus. Don’t miss out!
Dr. Key is one of a distinguished ensemble of scientists attending the Kavli Summer Program in Astrophysics as a senior participant in Copenhagen this summer. The annual program is organized by UC Santa Cruz and “brings together scientists with a wide breadth of technical skills and research interests to solve topical outstanding problems in astrophysics,” according to the program’s website. This year the focus of the event is gravitational wave astronomy and its scientific ramifications, so we can expect a good amount of problem-solving and question-answering to take place before the conclusion of the program on August 18th. More information on KSPA and this year’s projects can be found here!