I am a gravitational-wave astrophysicist
I am a gravitational-wave astrophysicist, looking to understand how supermassive black holes in the centers of massive galaxies merge. I do this by predicting their nanohertz gravitational-wave signatures, which will soon be detected by pulsar timing array experiments. With pulsar timing data, I look for both individual supermassive black holes in binary systems, and for the gravitational-wave background which should be generated by their cosmic merger history.
I am an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, and an associate research scientist at the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) at the Flatiron Institute. Before joining the CCA I was a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellow at Caltech and at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. I completed my PhD in 2014 at the University of Birmingham (UK) with Alberto Vecchio. If you're ineterested to find out more, check out my guest blog post for Scientific American. ![]() News updatesJanuary 14th 2021: Here is my interview with BBC World Service about the first "hint" of the gravitational-wave background in the NANOGrav 12.5-yr data!
At the AAS we presented the new gravitational-wave background results from the NANOGrav 12.5-yr data! Punchline: there is something there, but we're not yet convinced it's the background. We need more data! Press release here, I've co-authored a few new papers!
A few recent talks:
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Interview with Megan Amram for Amy Poehler Smart Girls! |