Nergis Mavalvala
Nergis Mavalvala | |
|---|---|
| File:MAVALVALA-3.JPG | |
| Born | 1968 (age 55–56) |
| Nationality | Pakistan and United States |
| Known for | Interferometric gravitational waves, quantum measurement |
| Awards | 2013 Joseph F. Keithley Award for Advances in Measurement Science Recipient, MacArthur Fellows |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astrophysics |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Nergis Mavalvala, PhD is a Pakistani American[1] astrophysicist known for the role played by her research in the detection of gravitational waves. She is the Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is also the associate head of the physics department.[2] She is the only woman to have been part of the team which made the first direct gravitational wave observation.[3] She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.[4]
Born and raised in Pakistan, Mavalvala attended the Convent of Jesus and Mary, a Catholic high school in Karachi. She moved to the United States (US) in 1986 to attend Wellesley College and later moved to MIT where she conducted her doctoral work under Dr. Rainer Weiss.[5] As a graduate student, Mavalvala developed a prototype laser interferometer for detecting gravitational waves.[6]
She joined the physics faculty at MIT in January 2002. Before that, she was a postdoctoral researcher and then a research scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), working on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).[7] Her focus of study is on gravitational waves using the results from the LIGO.[8]
Personal life
Mavalvala was born in Karachi and attended the Convent of Jesus and Mary. She received her Bachelors in Physics and Astronomy from Wellesley College in 1990 and her Ph.D. in Physics from MIT in 1997. news|last1=Venkatraman|first1=Vijaysree|title=Just Herself|url=http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2012_06_01/caredit.a1200061%7Cwork=Science%7Cdate=1 June 2012|doi=10.1126/science.caredit.a1200061}}</ref>
References
- ^ http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2012/06/just-herself/
- ^ http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/mavalvala_nergis.html
- ^ "Einstein's gravitational waves found at last". Nature News & Comment. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
- ^ http://www.macfound.org/fellows/35/
- ^ "Just Herself". www.sciencemag.org. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
- ^ "Nergis Mavalvala — MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
- ^ "MIT Department of Physics". web.mit.edu. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
- ^ http://space.mit.edu/people/mavalvala-nergis
Venkatraman, Vijaysree (1 June 2012). "Just Herself". Science. http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2012_06_01/caredit.a1200061
External links
- Nergis Mavalvala, MacArthur Fellows Program
- Ali, Saleem H. "How Pakistan treats its scientists", The Express Tribune, November 4, 2010.
- 2013 Joseph F. Keithley Award for Advances in Measurement Science Recipient
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- 1968 births
- Living people
- Parsi people
- American Zoroastrians
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