I'm a gravitational-wave astrophysicist
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Gravitational waves (GWs) are ripples of space-time travelling at the speed of light originating from some of the most violent processes in the Universe, such as black hole mergers, which have just been detected.
As a gravitational-wave astrophysicist, I study low frequency GWs using Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs), a network of one or more radio telescopes used to regularly monitor a collection of millisecond pulsars. The pulsars beam radio waves to the Earth as they rotate, creating a lighthouse effect. These radio waves have very regular arrival times at the Earth, and deviations from the expected time of arrival could signal the presence of a GW. The main sources of these GWs in the frequency region monitored by PTAs are supermassive black hole binary systems with masses in the range of millions to billion of solar masses. If you're ineterested to find out more, check out my guest blog post for Scientific American. I currently hold a Marie Curie Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. Publications here. Bio here. |
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News updates11 May: Very honored to receive the MSCA 2017 "Communicating Science" Prize!
28 April: Gravity group lunch seminar, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (USA) 12-13 April: Colloquium at Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO (USA) 10 April: I am honoured to be selected as one of the 10 shortlisted promising scientists in the category ‘Communicating Science’ of the MSCA 2017 Prizes. 3-7 January: I am giving an invited talk, and a contributed talk, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, TX (USA) Prize announcement: I am very honoured to be the November 2016 American Physical Society "Woman Physicist of the Month". 12 November: WashU OWN IT discussion panel member, Washington University in St. Louis, 10 November: Visiting Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 7-9 November: Visiting Columbia University, NY, NY 2-4 November: Visiting the Perimeter Institute (Waterloo, Ont), giving Strong Gravity seminar. 24-27 October: Colloquium visit at Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. 17-21 October: Visiting Northwestern for collaborations with CIERA group members, and giving a colloquium + public talk at the Adler Planetarium 4 September: I'm in Zurich for the LISA Symposium, giving an invited talk on Friday. 29 August: I'm at Northwestern University for the Fellows at the Frontiers conference. 21 July 2016: "The Hidden Science of the Missing Gravitational Waves" : A great new overview of pulsar timing arrays by Sarah Scoles for Nautilus Magazine, is now live. I spoke to Sarah about how PTAs work, and what the current non-detections mean for supermassive black hole binaries. 16 June 2016: I talked to Shannon Hall about black hole spins, for Sky & Telescope 15 June 2016: I was interviewed by Popular Mechanics about the new gravitational wave detection :) 31 May 2016: Horizons Magazine has highlighted my Marie Curie Project, GW ASAP, in their "What’s next for gravitational waves?" article |
Interview with Megan Amram for Amy Poehler Smart Girls! |
