麻豆传媒

Jocelyn Read is an astrophysicist who studies neutron stars 鈥� the remnant cores of dead stars that didn't quite have enough mass to end up as black holes. A leading binary neutron star expert, she focuses on how matter behaves at the extremely high densities inside neutron stars and how this might be measured from astronomical observations of X-rays, gamma-ray bursts and gravitational waves. 

She and her students work to understand and model how neutron stars interact, collide and radiate energy to learn more about their structure and composition. 

Read joined Cal State Fullerton in 2012 and has received numerous grants for her research. Most recently, she was awarded nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation to lead a project to recruit and support underrepresented students, in particular Latino students, in gravitational-wave science. The grant supports CSUF and Citrus College students engaged in undergraduate research, as well as CSUF alumni in the doctoral program in gravitational-wave astrophysics at Syracuse University.

A native of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Read earned her doctorate in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She completed postdoctoral work at the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany and at the University of Mississippi. 

Read, a member of the聽LIGO Scientific Collaboration, serves as associate director of CSUF's Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center. She is the recipient of the 2017 "Women of the Year" award in聽the category of science and technology from state Sen. Josh Newman.聽

For additional CSUF materials and resources, please visit these websites:
鈥�	CSUF 麻豆传媒 Center: http://news.fullerton.edu
鈥�	CSUF Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center: http://physics.fullerton.edu/gwpac/
鈥�	CSUF Scientists Contribute to First Discovery: http://news.fullerton.edu/gravitational-waves/default.aspx

Astrophysicist Patrick Brady at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee yesterday began his duties as spokesperson for the international scientific collaboration that studies gravitational waves using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) speaks on behalf of the 1,300 scientists in 20 countries who are engaged in gravitational wave research with data from observatories located in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. Brady, a UWM professor of physics and director of the Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics, is sixth in an elite group of scientists who have served as LSC spokespersons since the LSC formed in the late 1990s. Former spokespersons were Nobel Prize winner Rainer Weiss (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Peter Saulson (Syracuse University), Dave Reitze (Caltech), Gabriela Gonzalez (Louisiana State University) and David Shoemaker (MIT). Brady’s research focuses on the analysis and interpretation of data from the network of gravitational-wave detectors. He served on the executive committee of the LSC from 2004-2006, and has co-chaired the LSC Inspiral Analysis Group and chaired the LSC Data Analysis Software Working Group. He joined the UW-Milwaukee faculty in 1999, after a fellowship at Caltech. In 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and he shared in the 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize. Video from 2017: https://www.pbs.org/video/measuring-gravity-waves-with-ligo-vkft6w/

Ben Farr is a recipient is a recipient of a 2022 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the NSF鈥檚 most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. As member of the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration, Farr co-developed the parameter estimation software used to characterize compact binary mergers from their gravitational wave signatures. More generally, Farr is interested in applying Bayesian forward-modeling techniques to astronomical data sets. Farr received his Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from Northwestern University. He has been on the UO faculty since 2017.