News

  • First fall semester U²GRC meeting at URI! - Yesterday, Sept 20th, U²GRC held its first in-person meeting of the fall ’24 semester at URI!  We met at AstroSpace — a dedicated wing of URI’s East Hall for U²GRC to house faculty, students and hold collaboration meetings. Almost the entire UMass Dartmouth gravity group: Scott, Vijay, Bhaskar, Manas, Som, Adhrit, Anushka, Abhishekh, Veranya, Swati and Pranav drove in […]
  • New U²GRC faculty position at URI — Sept 30 deadline! - The University of Rhode Island (URI) is hiring a tenure-track, assistant professor position in the broad area of gravitational wave astrophysics (theory, data analysis, or computational). URI runs a regional gravity research consortium with UMass Dartmouth that includes Sarah Caudill (UMassD), Rob Coyne (URI), Scott Field (UMassD), Bob Fisher (UMassD), Doug Gobeille (URI), Gaurav Khanna […]
  • Multiple funded PhD positions available at the U²GRC - Multiple funded PhD positions are available at the UMass Dartmouth and University of Rhode Island gravity research group.  We seek candidates for multiple, fully-funded PhD positions at UMass Dartmouth and the University of Rhode Island in the broad area of gravitational-wave science.  Gravitational physics researchers at both universities have recently established the UMass-URI Gravity Research […]
  • Manas Vishal’s first paper was published in PRD - Congrats to Manas Vishal, whose paper “Toward exponentially-convergent simulations of extreme-mass-ratio inspirals: A time-domain solver for the scalar Teukolsky equation with singular source terms” was recently accepted for publication in Physical Review D. You can find about more about this work here.
  • Welcome Aidan Chatwin-Davies — New Faculty at URI - The U²GRC welcomes Aidan Chatwin-Davies! Aidan is joining URI as an Assistant Professor starting Fall semester (2024). His research interests lie in quantum information and quantum gravity, and he generally works on problems in which these fields intersect. These days Aidan is particularly interested in exploring connections among quantum error correction, cosmology, gauge theories, and other […]
  • Productive summer! Many new papers by the U²GRC group - High-Precision Ringdown Surrogate Model for Non-Precessing Binary Black Holes arXiv:2408.05300 Adding higher-order spherical harmonics in non-spinning eccentric binary black hole merger waveform models arXiv:2408.02762 Gravitational wave surrogate model for spinning, intermediate mass ratio binaries based on perturbation theory and numerical relativity arXiv:2407.18319 Gravitational waves from black hole emission arXiv:2407.16989 Non-Axisymmetric Gravitational “Hair” for Extremal Black […]
  • Som & Gaurav’s work on black hole “hair” gets some media attention! - https://theconversation.com/black-holes-are-mysterious-yet-also-deceptively-simple-a-new-space-mission-may-help-physicists-answer-hairy-questions-about-these-astronomical-objects-222228
  • Come view the Eclipse with us! - https://www.uri.edu/news/2024/04/dont-be-left-in-the-dark-uri-professor-provides-lowdown-on-mondays-total-solar-eclipse/
  • Several new papers from U²GRC - Searching for gravitational-wave signals from precessing black hole binaries with the GstLAL pipelineAuthors: Stefano Schmidt, Sarah Caudill, Jolien D. E. Creighton, Ryan Magee, Leo Tsukada, Shomik Adhicary, Pratyusava Baral, Amanda Baylor, Kipp Cannon, Bryce Cousins, Becca Ewing, Heather Fong, Richard N. George, Patrick Godwin, Chad Hanna, Reiko Harada, Yun-Jing Huang, Rachael Huxford, Prathamesh Joshi, James […]
  • Approved space-based ESA/NASA LISA Mission supported by U²GRC. - UMass Dartmouth PR: https://www.umassd.edu/news/2024/lisa-mission.html URI PR: https://www.uri.edu/news/2024/01/european-space-agency-green-lights-mission-on-space-based-observatory/
  • LISA Mission Progresses Ahead! - Today, ESA’s Science Programme Committee approved the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, the first scientific endeavour to detect and study gravitational waves from space. https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Capturing_the_ripples_of_spacetime_LISA_gets_go-ahead
  • New full-time computational facilitator positions! - Two new full-time computing facilitator positions available at UMass Dartmouth and URI: https://hyperspace.uni-frankfurt.de/2023/11/21/alternative-career-permanent-ai-computing-facilitator-position-at-university-of-rhode-island-usa/ and https://hyperspace.uni-frankfurt.de/2023/12/03/alternative-career-computing-faculty-position-dartmouth-ma-usa/
  • Ritesh’s new paper on BBH phenomenology - Binary Black Hole Coalescence Phenomenology from Numerical Relativity Richard H. Price, Ritesh Bachhar, Gaurav Khanna arXiv:2312.15885 (2023)
  • Paper in honor of Jorge Pullin’s 60th anniversary - Comparing numerical relativity and perturbation theory waveforms for a non-spinning equal-mass binary Tousif Islam, Scott E. Field, Gaurav Khanna arXiv:2312.01636 (2023) Published: Universe article https://www.mdpi.com/2631056
  • Multiple U²GRC members contribute to LISA mission waveform modeling white paper - Waveform Modelling for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna arXiv:2311.01300 (2023)
  • Manas’ paper on exponentially-convergent simulations of extreme-mass-ratio inspirals - Towards exponentially-convergent simulations of extreme-mass-ratio inspirals: A time-domain solver for the scalar Teukolsky equation with singular source terms Manas Vishal, Scott E. Field, Katie Rink, Sigal Gottlieb, Gaurav Khanna arXiv:2307.01349 (2023)
  • Congratulations Dr. Tousif Islam - Tousif just passed his PhD dissertation defense! Congratulations Dr. Islam! The title of Tousif’s dissertation is “From Source Modeling to Data Analysis with Numerical Relativity and Perturbation Theory“. Advisor: Dr. Scott Field, Department of Mathematics. Committee: Dr. Zheng Chen, Department of Mathematics, Dr. Robert Fisher, Department of Physics, and Dr. Gaurav Khanna, Department of Physics, […]
  • U²GRC PhD students and faculty gain new insights on binary black holes - UMass Dartmouth PhD students Tousif Islam (lead author) and Feroz H. Shaik, alongside Assistant Professor Vijay Varma and Associate Professor Scott Field (mathematics), recently published findings that include the identification of a binary black hole system that was most likely formed through dynamical capture and whose collision produced the second fastest-moving black hole observed (denoted GW191109 by astronomers). Full story here: https://www.umassd.edu/news/2023/binary-black-holes
  • U²GRC Featured in the MGHPCC Booth at Supercomputing ’23 Conference - The MGHPCC will be showcasing several computational projects from UMass and URI at their Booth in the large Supercomputing ’23 Conference in Denver next month. The U2GRC is prominently figured in multiple panels. The details can be seen at the virtual booth here: https://sc23.mghpcc.org/project/the-umass-uri-gravity-research-consortium-u2grc/
  • Tousif’s new paper on GWTC-3 - Analysis of GWTC-3 with fully precessing numerical relativity surrogate models Tousif Islam, Avi Vajpeyi, Feroz H. Shaik, Carl-Johan Haster, Vijay Varma, Scott E. Field, Jacob Lange, Richard O’Shaughnessy, Rory Smith arXiv:2309.14473 (2023)
  • Assistant Professor — QIS / gravity - The Physics Department at the University of Rhode Island (URI) invites applications for a full-time tenure-track position of an Assistant Professor of Physics beginning in the fall of 2024, specifically for a theorist or computational physicist working in the field of Quantum Information Science (QIS). The Department has recently established multiple new QIS-related degree programs and […]
  • Many papers out over the summer months! - On the approximate relation between black-hole perturbation theory and numerical relativity Tousif Islam, Gaurav Khanna arXiv:2307.03155 — Interplay between numerical-relativity and black hole perturbation theory in the intermediate-mass-ratio regime Tousif Islam arXiv:2306.08771 — Interplay between numerical relativity and perturbation theory : finite size effects Tousif Islam, Gaurav Khanna arXiv:2306.08767 — White dwarf mass-radius relation in theories beyond […]
  • 23rd EGM participants widely covered the north-east region! - The 23rd Eastern Gravity Meeting was held at URI on June 9th and 10th. This annual regional meeting is open to researchers of all levels, from undergraduate students to faculty, in all areas of gravitational physics, including classical, quantum, theory, observation, and computation. The purpose of the conference is to encourage the interaction of researchers […]
  • Caroline’s paper covered by Scientific American - Is Time Travel Possible? The laws of physics allow time travel. So why haven’t people become chronological hoppers? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-travel-possible/
  • Eastern Gravity Meeting at URI in June! - Find out details at the meeting link below:
  • Gaurav’s new paper on Aretakis charges in Kerr - Aretakis Hair for Extreme Kerr Black Holes with Axisymmetric Scalar Perturbations Lior M. Burko, Gaurav Khanna, Subir Sabharwal arXiv:2304.06210 (2023)
  • Aubrey Laity selected as NASA RI Space Grant Graduate Fellow - Congratulations to Aubrey Laity, who just this week was selected as a recipient of the NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Graduate Fellowship for academic year 2023 – 2024. As a part of this fellowship she will contribute directly to LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA’s upcoming fourth observing run, set to begin this spring and continue throughout the term of […]
  • Michael Puerrer publishes new pySEOBNR model with Max Planck collaborators - pySEOBNR: a software package for the next generation of effective-one-body multipolar waveform models Deyan P. Mihaylov, Serguei Ossokine, Alessandra Buonanno, Hector Estelles, Lorenzo Pompili, Michael Pürrer, Antoni Ramos-Buades arXiv:2303.18203 (2023) Laying the foundation of the effective-one-body waveform models SEOBNRv5: improved accuracy and efficiency for spinning non-precessing binary black holes Lorenzo Pompili, Alessandra Buonanno, Héctor Estellés, Mohammed Khalil, Maarten van de Meent, Deyan P. Mihaylov, Serguei Ossokine, Michael Pürrer, Antoni […]
  • Tousif Islam’s KITP postdoctoral fellowship - Congrats to Tousif Islam, who recently accepted a postdoctoral fellowship position at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at UC Santa Barbara. These internationally competitive postdoctoral positions allow for full scientific freedom in carrying out a research agenda, and most enviable of all, a beautiful beach is right next to the KITP building.
  • Bob’s Supernova Research Featured in Quanta - Here is a Quanta story featuring the research of former and current UMass Dartmouth graduate students Niranjan Roy, Vishal Tiwari, Daniel Kosakowski, and Dr. Rahul Kashyap:https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-lights-the-universes-standard-candles-20230208/ The results featured were published in an Astrophysical Journal Letter earlier this year with Niranjan as lead author and the other current and former students as co-authors along with […]
  • Sarah’s new paper on template banks for novel compact binaries - Gravitational-wave template banks for novel compact binaries Stefano Schmidt, Bhooshan Gadre, Sarah Caudill arXiv:2302.00436 (2023)
  • Manas passes his doctoral thesis proposal defense! - Congrats to Manas for passing his thesis proposal with flying colors! Discontinuous Galerkin method for simulating gravitational waves from merging black holes with extreme masses by Manas VishalJanuary 20, 2023 – CSCDR (Textiles 105) –– 10:00am. With the detection of first gravitational waves in 2015 by Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatories (LIGO), which was recently […]
  • Tousif’s new paper on black hole remnant properties and impact on perturbation theory waveform models - Remnant black hole properties from numerical-relativity-informed perturbation theory and implications for waveform modelling Tousif Islam, Scott E. Field, Gaurav Khanna Preprint: arXiv:2301.07215 (2023)
  • Dr. Amos Ori visits the U²GRC - Professor Amos Ori from the Technion in Israel visited URI on January 12th. He engaged in several detailed discussions all day on wide-ranging topics including the binary black hole problem, black hole perturbation theory, Kerr hole interior and astrophysical charging black holes immersed in a strong magnetic field. Tousif, Manas and Ritesh made in-depth presentations […]
  • U²GRC member to lead new research center at URI - Gaurav chosen to lead the new Center for Computational Research at URI!
  • Ritesh’s new paper on angular momentum in black hole binaries - Ritesh just posted his new paper on angular momentum in black hole binaries on the arXiv. The paper is collaborative work with Prof. Richard Price at MIT. Angular Momentum for Black Hole Binaries in Numerical Relativity Ritesh Bachhar, Richard Price, Gaurav Khanna Preprint: arXiv:2301.01185 (2023)
  • Sarah’s paper on a new template bank for CBCs - Template bank for compact binary mergers in the fourth observing run of Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA  Shio Sakon, Leo Tsukada, Heather Fong, Chad Hanna, James Kennington, Shomik Adhicary, Kipp Cannon, Sarah Caudill, Bryce Cousins, Jolien D. E. Creighton, Becca Ewing, Patrick Godwin, Yun-Jing Huang, Rachael Huxford, Prathamesh Joshi, Ryan Magee, Cody Messick, Soichiro Morisaki, Debnandini Mukherjee, Wanting Niu, Alex Pace, Cort Posnansky, Surabhi Sachdev, Divya Singh, Ron Tapia , et al. Preprint arXiv:2211.16674  (2022)
  • Michael’s paper on adapting inference to changes in detector noise - Adapting to noise distribution shifts in flow-based gravitational-wave inference Jonas Wildberger, Maximilian Dax, Stephen R. Green, Jonathan Gair, Michael Pürrer, Jakob H. Macke, Alessandra Buonanno, Bernhard Schölkopf Preprint: arXiv:2211.08801 (2022)
  • U²GRC member wins Postdoc award of the State of Brandenburg - Vijay Varma, who will be joining as a faculty member in Fall 2023, won the postdoc award of the State of Brandenburg. With this award, the state of Brandenburg honors outstanding research work by postdocs at universities and non-university research institutions. The prize is endowed with 20,000 euros. Vijay was honored with this award for […]
  • U²GRC featured at MGHPCC Booth at Supercomputing ’22 - The Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) is a collaboration of the five major research universities in Massachusetts including Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern and UMass. The collaboration built a dedicated data center in 2012 located in Holyoke, MA that hosts the research computing infrastructure of these universities. In addition, the MGHPCC also leads other activities that enhance research computing in the region […]
  • U²GRC celebrates Scott’s tenure accomplishment! - At the U²GRC meeting at URI yesterday, we celebrated Scott Field’s major accomplishment — the award of tenure and promotion at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth! Scott is now a tenured Associate Professor. Congratulations Scott! We got Scott a card, a personalized mug and a coffee maker. And thoroughly embarrassed him in the process, of […]
  • U²GRC member Rob Coyne on WPRI-12 News! - University of Rhode Island astrophysicist Rob Coyne joined 12 News at 4 Thursday to discuss the recent Starlink satellite launch and several upcoming astronomical events. Watch the full video here: https://www.wpri.com/news/local-news/community-focus/community-focus-uris-rob-coyne/
  • Collin’s paper on validation of the detection of a sub-dominant quasi-normal mode in GW190521 - Statistical validation of the detection of a sub-dominant quasi-normal mode in GW190521 Collin D. Capano, Jahed Abedi, Shilpa Kastha, Alexander H. Nitz, Julian Westerweck, Yi-Fan Wang, Miriam Cabero, Alex B. Nielsen, Badri Krishnan Preprint arXiv:2209.00640 (2022)
  • Collin’s paper on coincident GW and GRBs - Search for Coincident Gravitational Wave and Long Gamma-Ray Bursts from 4-OGC and the Fermi-GBM/Swift-BAT Catalog Yi-Fan Wang, Alexander H. Nitz, Collin D. Capano, Xiangyu Ivy Wang, Yu-Han Yang, Bin-Bin Zhang Preprint Ap. J. Letters 939, L14 (2022)
  • Michael’s new paper on fast and accurate GW inference with Max Planck collaborators - Neural Importance Sampling for Rapid and Reliable Gravitational-Wave Inference Maximilian Dax, Stephen R. Green, Jonathan Gair, Michael Pürrer, Jonas Wildberger, Jakob H. Macke, Alessandra Buonanno, Bernhard Schölkopf Preprint: arXiv:2210.05686 We combine amortized neural posterior estimation with importance sampling for fast and accurate gravitational-wave inference. We first generate a rapid proposal for the Bayesian posterior using neural networks, and then attach importance weights […]
  • Sarah’s papers on Virgo detector characterization - Virgo Detector Characterization and Data Quality: results from the O3 run & Virgo Detector Characterization and Data Quality: tools F. Acernese, M. Agathos, A. Ain, S. Albanesi, A. Allocca, A. Amato, T. Andrade, N. Andres, M. Andrés-Carcasona, T. Andrić, S. Ansoldi, S. Antier, T. Apostolatos, E. Z. Appavuravther, M. Arène, N. Arnaud, M. Assiduo, S. Assis de Souza Melo, P. Astone, F. Aubin, S. Babak, F. Badaracco, M. K. M. Bader, S. Bagnasco, J. Baird , et al. Preprint arXiv:2210.15634  & […]
  • Sarah’s paper on a binary tree approach for GW searches - A binary tree approach to template placement for searches for gravitational waves from compact binary mergers Chad Hanna, James Kennington, Shio Sakon, Stephen Privitera, Miguel Fernandez, Jonathan Wang, Cody Messick, Alex Pace, Kipp Cannon, Prathamesh Joshi, Rachael Huxford, Sarah Caudill, Chiwai Chan, Bryce Cousins, Jolien D. E. Creighton, Becca Ewing, Heather Fong, Patrick Godwin, Ryan Magee, Duncan Meacher, Soichiro Morisaki, Debnandini Mukherjee, Hiroaki Ohta, Surabhi Sachdev, Divya Singh , et al. Preprint arXiv:2209.11298 (2022)
  • Sarah gives the opening presentation at MGHPCC HPC Day - The Massachusetts Green HPC Center HPC Day is an annual event that brings the entire New England region computational science community together for a series of talks and informal gatherings. This year, this event was held at UMass Lowell on Sept. 9th with details available here: https://www.uml.edu/conferences/hpc-2022/ U2GRC’s own Sarah Caudill was the opening speaker […]
  • U²GRC welcomes new faculty and students for Fall 2022! - We are thrilled to announce that an exceptional cohort of faculty and students have joined us this Fall! We have 3 new faculty members and 5 new graduate students this semester and an additional faculty member slated to join us in Fall ’23. Below are some of the details: Faculty: Collin Capano has joined UMassD […]
  • Colin’s paper on an updated Open Gravitational-Wave Catalog - 4-OGC: Catalog of gravitational waves from compact-binary mergers Alexander H. Nitz, Sumit Kumar, Yi-Fan Wang, Shilpa Kastha, Shichao Wu, Marlin Schäfer, Rahul Dhurkunde, Collin D. Capano Preprint arXiv:2112.06878 (2022)
  • Dr. Rob Coyne and Dr. Kavitha Arur in a commemorative selfie at the end of the first offering of their workshop on effective communication The U²GRC at AAS240 - Dr. Rob Coyne was representing the U²GRC at the 240th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held June 12th through 16th in Pasadena, California. While there he ran a professional development workshop (“How to give great presentations: a scientist’s guide to effective communication”) alongside longtime collaborator Dr. Kavitha Arur from the Georgia Tech Center for […]
  • Matthew Maini receives RI Space Grant Fellowship - Incoming U²GRC graduate student Matthew Maini has been awarded a Rhode Island Space Grant research fellowship covering both the summer and the fall semester. He will receive $26,000 to begin his MS research efforts at URI. Matthew’s research advisor is Dr. Robert Coyne. Congratulations, Matthew!
  • First in-person meeting of U²GRC at URI - Yesterday, June 6th, U²GRC held its first in-person meeting at URI! We met at the newly built AstroSpace — a dedicated wing of URI’s East Hall for U²GRC to house faculty, students and hold collaboration meetings. Almost the entire UMass Dartmouth gravity group: Collin Capano, Scott Field, Connor Kenyon, Katie Rink, Bhaskar Verma, Manas Vishal […]
  • Kevin Gonzalez-Quesada to Join Case Western’s PhD Program! - Congrats to Kevin Gonzalez-Quesada, who recently defended his MS thesis Scalar and Gravitational Transient Hair for Near-Extremal Black Holes. Kevin will be starting a PhD program at Case Western in Fall 2022.
  • Computational Relativity Workshop and Summer School - U²GRC faculty and students will be organizing and participating in an Advances in Computational Relativity reunion event to take place at ICERM (Brown University) over the Summer of 2022. As part of this 3-week long event, there will be a numerical relativity summer school for graduate students and postdocs. Those interested in participating should apply!
  • U²GRC Students Profiled in URI A&S News! - U²GRC students Sam Adams and Oliver Carey were profiled in a URI A&S news story. The article is a great read! Congratulations Sam and Oliver! Sam and Oliver work with Dr. Doug Gobeille.
  • Michael St. Pierre receives RI Space Grant Summer Fellowship! - U²GRC student Michael St. Pierre just received word that he has been awarded the Rhode Island Space Grant summer research fellowship! He will receive $10,000 to continue his own PhD research efforts over the summer months. Michael PhD advisor is Dr. Robert Coyne. Congratulations, Michael!
  • Katie offered Provost Fellowship at UT Austin! - Great news to share today! Our own Katie Rink was just offered the Provost Fellowship at UT Austin for their Physics PhD program. This is an exceptionally competitive program with top applicants from all over the world. Congratulations, Katie! We wish you the best as you begin the next stage of your career at UT […]
  • Kevin’s paper published in Physical Review D! - Kevin’s MS thesis paper just got published and can be found here: Phys. Rev. D 105, 044032 (2022) Scalar and gravitational transient hair for near-extremal black holes We study the existence and nature of Aretakis charge and its potentially observable imprint at a finite distance from the horizon (Ori coefficient) in near-extremal black hole backgrounds. Specifically, […]
  • Paper on discovery of gravitational recoil - https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/a-swift-kick-sends-a-black-hole-careening Multiple members of UGRC collaborated with others in the field to make this major discovery — gravitational recoil or “kick” from a black hole binary merger. Congrats, Scott, Tousif and Feroz! Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 191102 (2022) [Featured, Editor’s Suggestion] Check out a news story from UMassD about this discovery here: https://www.umassd.edu/news/2022/scott-field-black-hole-discovery.html
  • Scott Field’s New Paper in Phys.Org! - UGRC faculty member, Scott Field, along with collaborators at U. Mississippi and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developed a new methodology using artificial intelligence for learning about black hole dynamics from gravitational wave measurements. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-machine-derive-black-hole-motion.html
  • UGRC Research Featured on the OpenStorageNetwork - The Open Storage Network (OSN) is an NSF funded, distributed storage network for research data. The OSN project recently featured EMRI Surrogate on their site and also as part of their BoF presentation at Supercomputing 2021. See below: https://www.openstoragenetwork.org/gravitational-wave-model/
  • Gaurav Khanna elected as an APS Fellow! - Our own Gaurav Khanna was elected as an APS fellow for his outstanding contributions and pioneering work in computational relativity, including innovative supercomputing techniques, computations of gravitational perturbations of black holes, gravitational waveforms from extreme mass-ratio binaries, classical black hole physics, and quantum gravity.
  • Another baby in our gravity group! - Congratulations to Rob and Kristen for their new arrival — a beautiful and healthy baby girl! Both Mom and baby are doing well .. and so is Dad!
  • Open faculty position at UMass Dartmouth - The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Professor level beginning in September 2022. We seek an expert in scientific computing with a strong record of research in the area of general relativity including gravitational wave astrophysics (theory, data analysis, or source modeling), computational relativity, or computational relativistic […]
  • Two open positions: computational scientist & faculty position at URI - URI is searching for 2 positions that may be of interest to researchers in the broad area of computational physics including gravity. (i) a non tenure-track, but permanent “computational scientist” https://jobs.uri.edu/postings/8215(ii) a tenure-track faculty position in quantum information/computing https://jobs.uri.edu/postings/8169  Feel free to reach out with any questions!
  • Arrival of the newest (and youngest) group member - Everett Gaige Field, was born at 5am on June 2nd. His middle name is pronounced the same way as “gauge” (of course!). Congratulations to the Field family!
  • Quanta Magazine story on EMRISurrogate! - Quanta Magazine just published a detailed story about EMRISurrogate. The story features Scott and Gaurav, but also includes quotes by many researchers in our field. https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-black-hole-math-closes-cosmic-blind-spot-20210512/
  • UGRC research highlighted in NSF MathInstitutes.org - Multiple research efforts completed by UGRC researchers were just featured in NSF Mathematical Sciences Institutes highlights: https://mathinstitutes.org/highlights/eccentric-binary-black-hole-surrogate-models-for-the-gravitational-waveform-and-remnant-properties-comparable-mass-nonspinning-case/ https://mathinstitutes.org/highlights/gravitational-hair-for-extreme-kerr-black-holes-using-a-gpu-accelerated-mixed-precision-weno-method/ https://mathinstitutes.org/highlights/orbital-dynamics-of-binary-black-hole-systems-can-be-learned-from-gravitational-wave-measurements/
  • Congrats to Manas for receiving the Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship at UMassD! - Huge congratulations to Manas Vishal for being awarded the Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship in the Engineering & Applied Sciences PhD program at UMass Dartmouth! This prestigious fellowship offers a generous stipend and a guaranteed 4 years of support alongside complete flexibility on the research area and topic that the awardee wishes to pursue. Manas will join […]
  • Congrats to Tousif for being selected as a KITP graduate fellow! - Huge congratulations to Tousif Islam for being selected for the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) graduate fellowship! The purpose of the Graduate Fellowship Program is to offer a unique opportunity for a select group of physics doctoral students to spend a minimum period of 5 months (and up to 6 months) at the KITP, […]
  • Department of Energy tweets about research in our group! - The DOE Science team just tweeted about our project that uses ORNL’s Summit — the fastest supercomputer in the US. See the tweet below!
  • Paper on Gravitational Hair in Quanta Magazine - Prof. Khanna’s “Letter” paper on gravitational “hair” of extremal black holes gets coverage in Quanta Magazine! https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-violation-of-einstein-black-holes-might-have-hair-20210211/
  • Manas offered PhD position at AEI Hannover - Summer ’20 intern, Manas Vishal has just been offered a fully funded PhD position at Albert-Einstein-Institute (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics) in Hannover, Germany. Congratulations, Manas!
  • Extreme black holes have hair that can be combed - Black holes are considered amongst the most mysterious objects in the universe. Part of their intrigue arises from the fact that they are actually amongst the simplest solutions to Einstein’s field equations of general relativity theory. In fact, black holes can be fully characterized by only three physical quantities: their mass, spin and charge. Since they have no […]
  • ICERM semester program closes with Nobel laureate Kip Thorne - ICERM@Brown Fall 2020 semester program titled “Advances in Computational Relativity” led by Scott Field and Gaurav Khanna closed with a Q&A event with 2017 Nobel laureate Dr. Kip S. Thorne. The event drew in nearly 400 participants! The recording of the event is available here.
  • URI Director of Research Computing awarded time on United States’ fastest supercomputer
  • Graduate student aids in quest to understand black holes - Nur Rifat, currently a masters student in the Department of Physics at UMass Dartmouth, works on computational models used to simulate so-called template signals from systems like binary black holes. Until now, it was difficult to make predictions of what the gravitational wave signal was like during the merger of two black holes when one […]