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CIERA’s Nancy Aggarwal Wins GWIC-Braccini Thesis Prize

Postdoctoral Fellow Nancy Aggarwal has won the 2019 GWIC-Braccini Thesis Prize for her thesis “A room temperature optomechanical squeezer.”

Nancy received her Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was nominated for the prize by her adviser, Nergis Mavalvala. There were 17 theses nominated for the honor, which is administered by the Gravitational Wave International Committee in conjunction with the Friends of Stefano Braccini. Each year, the prize recognizes an outstanding Ph.D. thesis in the field of gravitational waves.

Nancy’s thesis addresses theoretical and experimental aspects of optomechanical squeezing. The main aspects of the thesis are: (1) An experimental demonstration of audio-band squeezing from a room temperature optomechanical system and (2) A complete theoretical description of the aforementioned experiment.

Theses are judged on originality and creativity of the research, importance to the field of gravitational waves and gravitational wave detection, and clarity of presentation.

Nancy Aggarwal joined Northwestern as CIERA and Center for Fundamental Physics Postdoctoral Fellow in Spring 2019, and is working on building an axion detector with the ARIADNE collaboration. She is also looking at sources like primordial blackholes for a high-frequency gravitational wave detector, working with Profs. Andy Geraci, Shane Larson, and Vicky Kalogera.

Congratulations, Nancy!

Learn more about the GWIC-Braccini Thesis Prize, and view a complete list of past winners.