At the LSC-Virgo September Meeting near Geneva, Switzerland, graduate student Eve Chase won the best poster award in the Data Analysis/Theory category.
The meeting took place August 28 – September 1, 2017 at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) is a collaboration of international physics institutes and research groups dedicated to the search for gravitational waves. Virgo is an interferometer gravitational wave detector in Pisa, Italy.
Eve is a second-year astronomy graduate student who is part of Vicky Kalogera’s group. Eve studies computational and data analysis techniques related to gravitational wave astronomy. Her poster, titled “Gravitational-Wave Localization in the LSST Era,” focused on using the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope to search for electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational waves. Eve took home 150 Swiss Francs as her prize.
Co-authors on Eve’s project include Sam Imperato and Monica Rizzo (along with Chris Pankow, Scott Coughlin and Vicky Kalogera, all from Northwestern). Sam is a high school student who contributed heavily to tracking improvements to GW source localization as additional detectors are commissioned. Monica Rizzo is a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) student from the Rochester Institute of Technology. She spent her summer modeling expected light curves from gravitational-wave counterparts, such as kilonovae.
Congratulations, Eve!