Gravitational-wave astronomy: listening to the dark side of the universe

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 17th April 2025 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Meeting Room

 Join us for an exciting talk by Gabrielle Vianente as he explores how gravitational waves are transforming our understanding of the cosmos. Discover how these ripples in spacetime reveal unseen cosmic events, from black hole mergers to neutron star collisions, and what the future holds for this ground-breaking field of astronomy.

Join the meeting online HERE if you can't attend in person

Speaker: Gabriele Vajente

Gabriele studied as a theoretical physicist for his B.S. and M.S., and paved his career in the field of experimental Gravitational Wave (GW) research during his doctoral work. 

He has extensive experience in the design, construction and commissioning of GW detectors. 

He designed and built several R&D instruments related to GW, most notably: to probe non-linear behaviours in materials used for seismic vibration isolation systems; to find low thermal noise materials for the next generation of mirror coatings; and to prototype the application of machine learning techniques to the GW detector control systems.

Gabriele has also developed and deployed novel algorithms and techniques to characterize and improve GW detector sensitivity by applying signal processing and machine learning techniques.

He is currently the Deputy Head of System Science and Engineering of the LIGO Laboratory, and also responsible for the coordination of the LIGO Laboratory R&D program. 

Gabriele has a passion for teaching, and has mentored many graduate and undergraduate students, taught basic physics classes, and served as an invited lecturer at several graduate-level international schools.

Learn more about Gabriele Vajente