Profile: Peter Shawhan

Your personal background.
I am an assistant professor of physics at the University of Maryland, and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration--i.e. I'm an insider! Gravitational waves are my main area of research. I spend most of my time working on searches for gravitational wave "bursts", but I also follow the other types of analyses being done with data from LIGO, GEO 600 and Virgo. In fact, for a while I was the chair of the internal review committee that checks the validity of the Einstein@home analysis and other searches for continuous-wave signals.

I am not an astrophysicist by training; I got my Ph.D. working on a particle physics experiment at Fermilab, then decided to try something new and exciting. I'm glad I made the change; working on LIGO has been a rewarding experience. I look forward to the eventual observation of gravitational waves and the astrophysics we will learn from them, but I also think the journey to get there is fun in itself.
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant NSF-0200852 and by the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or the MPG.

Copyright © 2009 Bruce Allen for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration