Welcome to the UMass-URI Gravity Research Consortium (U2GRC).
The U2GRC is a collaboration between the gravity research groups at UMass Dartmouth and the University of Rhode Island. The research areas of interest to the group members include: black holes, gravitational waves, multi-messenger astronomy, astrophysics and quantum gravitation. Most members are part of the LIGO Science Collaboration or the LISA Consortium. Research efforts in the U2GRC are funded through multiple National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, NASA and private foundations (FQXi and others).
U2GRC members collaborate externally with other research groups including the Simulating Extreme Spacetimes (SXS) Collaboration (Caltech & Cornell), Kavli Institute for Astrophysics (MIT), Black Hole Initiative & Center for Astrophysics (Harvard), Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Germany), Texas Tech, Penn State University and Louisiana State University.
News
Deborah, Derek & Rob are famous 😉 - Our own Deborah, Derek and Rob are credited in LIGO’s 10th anniversary of the first detection media blitz! https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/ten-years-later-ligo-is-a-black-hole-hunting-machine and even the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/science/gravitational-waves-ligo-black-holes.htmlAnd here as well .. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ringing-black-hole-test-hawking-kerr Congratulations folks! Wow!!
Congratulations Dr. Feroz Shaik - Feroz just passed his PhD dissertation defense! Congratulations Dr. Shaik! The title of Feroz’s dissertation is “High-Precision Gravitational Wave Data Analysis“. Advisor: Dr. Scott Field, Department of Mathematics. Committee: Dr. Alfa Heryudono, Department of Mathematics, Dr. Gaurav Khanna, Department of Physics, Dr. Sigal Gottlieb, Department of Mathematics, and Dr. Vijay Varma, Department of Mathematics
Sarah awarded tenure! - We are thrilled to share that our own Sarah Caudill has been awarded tenure and a promotion to Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth! Congratulations, Sarah!
U²GRC Students win multiple awards - Congratulations to multiple U²GRC students on their remarkable achievements. Undergraduate Morgan Beck has been honored with URI’s Undergraduate Student Research and Scholarship Excellence Award and will serve as an A&S Fellow in Summer 2025. Alumnus Tousif Islam (Ph.D. ’24) received an honorable mention in the GWIC-Braccini Thesis Prize — an annual award from the Gravitational […]
Michael publishes in Nature! - https://www.uri.edu/news/2025/03/machine-learning-algorithm-analyzes-gravitational-waves-from-merging-neutron-stars-in-the-blink-of-an-eye/