Year-in-Review Honors for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration
In December, several prestigious honors were announced for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the team of scientists and engineers involved in the gravitational-wave discovery announced earlier this year. CIERA’s director, Vicky Kalogera, led the astrophysical interpretation of the discovery for the LIGO collaboration. Over the years, her group pioneered ways of making detection source rate predictions and developed methods for extracting information from gravitational-wave signals from binaries of spinning compact objects.
Foreign Policy Magazine Top 100 Global Thinkers (see image top left)
Across nine categories, Foreign Policy Magazine announced their top 100 global thinkers for 2016. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration is honored among “the chroniclers,” a group of leaders that includes filmmakers, novelists, and artists. The group is noted for producing “relevant, accessible, and urgent” work.
Read the citation for LIGO.
View all the Leading Global Thinkers honorees.
Physics World 2016 Breakthrough of the Year (see image right)
Physics World, the member magazine of the Institute of Physics, released their top 10 breakthroughs for 2016, naming the LIGO Scientific Collaboration’s gravitational wave discovery as Breakthrough of the Year. Nine runner-up achievements were also identified by the panel of Physics World editors and reporters. Criteria for selection is based on importance of research, advancement of knowledge, connecting theory and experiment, and general interest to all physicists.
Science News Top Science Story of 2016 (see image left)
Science News magazine named their top ten science stories of 2016, with the first direct detection of gravitational waves at the #1 spot. The ten selections are diverse and include the Zika virus, polar ice cap melting, and artificial intelligence, among other fascinating picks.
See the Science News Top 10 Stories of 2016.
Read the full article about the LIGO discovery.
Top APS Physics Highlight of the Year (see image right)
LIGO’s discovery of gravitational waves topped the APS Physics highlights of the year. The editors named it their favorite story. Physics provides daily online-only news and commentary about a selection of papers from the APS (American Physical Society) journal collection.
View the Physics Highlights of 2016.
Science Magazine’s 2016 Breakthrough of the Year (see image left)
Ripples in space time are Science’s Breakthrough of the Year, and second most popular choice among online visitors for story of the year. Science Magazine is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s oldest and largest general science organization. Its mission, among other goals, is to communicate the value of science to the public.
View the Science Breakthrough of the Year Video.
Read the full article on Science’s 2016 Breakthrough.
Congratulations Northwestern LIGO team!