GRITTS

In order to foster more regular interaction between scientists at the MIT LIGO Lab and the MIT Kavli Institute, we are starting a new weekly afternoon tea-time series from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM on Wednesdays, to be hosted at the LIGO Lab (NW22-268). The General Relativity Informal Tea-Time Series will be a forum for regular discussion between the gravitational-wave experiment, theory, and astrophysics communities at MIT and beyond. Every week, we aim to have an informal discussion of recent research topics. Occasionally, visitors will be invited to give a presentation.

Contact

The current organizers of GRITTS are listed below:

Salvatore Vitale —
Victoria Grinberg —
Slawomir Gras —

If you, or a visitor or colleague of yours would like to give a GRITTS seminar about one of the topics of interest for the GRITTS (such as -- but not restricted to -- gravitational waves and multiwavelength follow ups, general relativity, GW detectors, or big data), please contact us at gritts-info AT ligo DOT mit DOT edu. We are also on Twitter @GRITTS_MIT ! Follow us by clicking on the link on the left of the page for the latest news and forthcoming events!

Schedule and location

This is the current schedule, for Spring 2016.
We plan on meeting every Wednesday, from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

When	Where	Who	What
May 2nd	NW22	Ho Jung Paik (University of Maryland )	Superconducting Tensor Gravitational Wave Detector and Mitigation of Newtonian Noise
April 5th	NW22	Christopher Hilweg (University of Vienna)	Testing the quantum and gravity interface with single photons

Past schedule

Fall 2015 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
December 6th	NW22	Adam Libson (MIT)	Quantum Optomechanics: Moving Macroscopic Objects with Light
November 27th	NW22	Chad Hanna (Penn State)	The GSTLAL search algorithm
November 18th	NW22	Hsin-Yu Chen (U. Chicago)	Optimizing Electromagnetic Follow-up of LIGO-Virgo Events
October 28th	NW22	Katerina Chatziioannou (Montana State University)	Modeling and Extracting Information from Spin-Precessing Compact Binary Inspirals
October 22th	NW22	Georgia Mansell (ANU)	An in-vacuum squeezed light source with in-vacuum homodyne detection
October 7th	NW22	Archisman Ghosh (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research)	Parameter estimation and cosmology with gravitational waves

Fall 2014 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
December 12nd -- 2PM	NW22	Claudia Lazzaro (INFN Padova - UMass)	Waveform reconstruction in coherent WaveBurst
December 3rd	NW22	Niels Warburton (MIT)	The self-force approach to the general relativistic two-body problem
November 19	NW22	Laura Sampson (Montana)	Testing Relativity with the parameterized post-Einsteinian framework
November 12 - 4.15PM	NW22	Robert Penna (MIT)	Black Hole Jets and the Membrane Paradigm
October 22	NW22	Jeff McClintock (Harvard)	Measuring the Spins of Accreting Black Holes
October 15	NW22	Daniel Sigg (LIGO Hanford)	Status of commissioning at LIGO Hanford
October 1	NW22	Victor Pankratius (MIT Haystack)	Computer-Aided Discovery: Scalable Machine Assistance for Big Data Science
September 17	NW22	Duncan Brown (Syracuse)	Searching for binary mergers with spin
September 3	NW22	Victoria Grinberg (MIT)	X-ray studies of the properties of black holes: relativistic iron lines

Spring 2014 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
March 5	Marlar Lounge	Sean McWilliams (WVU)	Prospects for Detecting Stochastic Gravitational Waves from Supermassive Black-Hole Binaries with Pulsar Timing Arrays
March 7	NW22	Kai Hwang (USC)	Cloud Analytics for Big-Data Intelligence in Scientific Discovery and Social Application
March 12	NW22	Rob Simcoe (MIT)	Thoughts on Vertical Integration and the role of MIT's OIR Resources for Gravitational Wave Astrophysics
March 25	NW22	Lizhe Wang (IRSDE-CAS)	Data-intensive Scientific Discovery in Digital Earth
March 26	NW22	Evan Ochsner (UWM)	Speeding up parameter estimation of compact binary coalescences
April 2	Marlar Lounge
April 9	NW22	Maria Alessandra Papa (AEI)	Searches for continuous gravitational wave signals
April 16	NW22	Thomas Cotbitt (LSU)	Recent progress with micro-fabricated mirror oscillators
April 23	NW22	Jameson Rollins (Caltech)	aLIGO Guardian progress and status
April 30	Marlar Lounge
May 7	NW22
May 14	Marlar Lounge	Sveta Shah (Radboud University)	Gravitational-wave astrophysics of eLISA Galactic binaries
May 21	NW22	David Blair (UWA)	TBD
May 23	NW22	Nora Luetzgendorf (ESA)	Intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters
May 28	NW22	Charlie Dufort (MIT)	Characterization of low-frequency seismometers signal in the Cambridge-MIT environment
June 6	NW22	Takaaki Yokozawa (OCU)	Supernova detection study: Investigation of progenitor core rotation with Gravitational Wave and Neutrino detector

Fall 2013 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
Nov. 6	NW22 conference room	Leo Singer (Caltech)	The Needle in the Hundred-Square-Degree Haystack: from Fermi GRBs to LIGO Discoveries
Nov. 13	MKI Marlar lounge	William Yam (MIT)	LIGO: The Basics
Nov. 20	NW22 conference room
Nov. 27	MKI Marlar lounge	Bruce Allen (AEI Hannover)	Einstein@Home
Dec. 4	NW22 conference room	Rainer Weiss (MIT)	A Trio of Unintended Null Experiments - why graduate students might take the long view
Dec. 11	MKI Marlar lounge	Andres Guzman (CFA)	High-mass stars and their formation: sources of exciting phenomena
Dec. 18	NW22 conference room

Spring 2013 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
Feb. 13	NW22 conference room	Emil Mottola (LANL)	New Horizons in Gravity: Dark Energy and Condensate Stars
Feb. 20	MKI Marlar Lounge	Dmitry V. Bisikalo (INASAN)
Feb. 27	NW22 conference room
March. 6	MKI Marlar Lounge
March 13	NW22 conference room
March 20	MKI Marlar Lounge
March 27	NW22 conference room
April 3	MKI Marlar Lounge	Lisa Barsotti (MIT)	Beyond Advanced Gravitational Wave Detectors: beating the quantum limit with squeezed states of light
April 10	NW22 conference room
April 17	MKI Marlar Lounge	Krishna Venkateswara (UW)	A mechanical absolute rotation sensor for Advanced LIGO
April 24	NW22 conference room	MKI postdoc symposium	No seminar
May 1	MKI Marlar Lounge	Lu Feng (MIT)	Short Gamma-Ray Bursts Observable with the Murchison Widefield Array
May 8	NW22 conference room	Fabrice Matichard (MIT)	Tilt-Free Inertial Sensing Concept and Tilt-Horizontal Coupling Attenuation Experiment
May 15	NW22 conference room	Michael Kesden (NYU)	Spin alignment in stellar-mass black-hole binaries: a diagnostic of compact-binary formation
May 22	NW22 conference room	Nevin Weinberg (MIT)	Tides in Coalescing Neutron Star Binaries
May 29	NW22 conference room	Ron Remillard (MIT)	Finding X-ray Counterparts for the Sources of Gravitational Waves
June 5	NW22 conference room	Sasha Buchman (Stanford)	LISA 2020; A medium size gravitational wave observatory
June 19	NW22 conference room	Sharon Rapoport (CFA)	Narrowing down the progenitor and explosion parameters space for GRB-SN.
July 9	NW22 conference room	Edo Berger (Harvard)	Short GRB 130603B: The first detection of a kilonova?
August 12	MKI Marlar Lounge	Lee Lindblom (Caltech)	Solving the Relativistic Inverse Stellar Structure Problem

Fall 2012 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
Sept. 18	NW22 conference room	Rana Adhikari (Caltech)	Recent paper: "Sub-40-mHz-linewidth laser based on a silicon single-crystal optical cavity"
Sept. 26	NW22 conference room	Richard Mittleman (MIT)	Control loops primer.
Oct. 3	MKI Marlar Lounge	Reed Essick (MIT)	Gravitational Bursts with Memory: Phenomenology and Proposed Search.
Oct. 10	NW22	Informal discussion
Oct. 17	MKI Marlar Lounge	Ruslan Vaulin (MIT)	Can machine learning improve gravitational-wave searches?
Oct. 24	No GRITTS	Einstein Fellows Symposium
Oct. 31	MKI Marlar Lounge	Cancelled
Nov. 7	NW22	Herman Marshall (MIT)	X-ray Surveys
Nov. 15 1:30 p.m.	MKI Marlar Lounge	Mario Diaz (UTB)	The TOROS project
Nov. 19 10:00 a.m.	MKI Marlar Lounge	Bruce Allen, AEI	New blind-search gamma-ray pulsar discoveries
Nov. 28		Cancelled
Dec. 5	NW22	Jennifer Andrews (Umass Amherst)	Stellar Clusters as Useful Probes of the Initial Mass Function
Dec. 12		Cancelled
Dec. 19	NW22	Paul Green (SAO)	Haystack Needles: Finding and Characterizing Rare/Extreme Celestial Objects

Spring 2012 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
Feb. 8	NW22 conference room	Ryan Lang (WUSTL)	Doing science with future gravitational wave detectors
Feb. 15	NW22 conference room	Eric Thrane (UMN)	Astronomy with the stochastic gravitational-wave background
Feb. 22	NW22 conference room	Salvatore Vitale	Various LIGO data analyses
Feb. 29	MKI 6^th floor conf. room	Jeff Kissel & co. (MIT)	AdLIGO design made simple
Mar. 7	NW22 conference room	Leo Stein (MIT)	GW phenomenology in quadratic gravity theories
Mar. 14	NW22 conference room	James Clark (UMass Amherst)	Implications for the origin of GRB 051103 from LIGO observations
Mar. 21	No GRITTS — LVC meeting.
Mar. 28	NW22 conference room	Brett Shapiro (MIT)	Adaptive Modal Damping of Advanced LIGO Suspensions
Apr. 4	MKI 6^th floor conf. room	Sheila Dwyer (MIT)	Fundamentals of Squeezing
Apr. 11	NW22 conference room	Alessandra Silvestri (MIT)	Cosmological Tests of General Relativity
Apr. 18	No GRITTS — head over to the MKI Postdoc symposium in Marlar (37-252) from 11:45am-1:30pm.
Apr. 25	NW22 conference room	Ruslan Vaulin (MIT)	Searching for Gravitational-Wave Transients and Their Electromagnetic Counterparts
May 2	MKI 6^th floor conf. room	Adam Libson (UT Austin)	General Control of Atomic Motion
May 9	NW22 conference room	Jeff Kissel (MIT)	Modelling Magnetic Coupling to Suspensions
May 16	No GRITTS — Sackler conference
May 23	NW22 conference room	Xiaoge Wang (Tsinghua University)	SVM in noise identification
May 30	MKI 6^th floor conf. room	Wen-Fai Fong (CfA)	Short GRB Afterglows

Fall 2011 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
Sept. 7	MKI Solarium	—	aLIGO status; LIGO beam tube baffles; career gossip
Sept. 14	NW22 Conf. room	Brian Metzger	What is the most promising electromagnetic counterpart of a neutron star binary merger?
Sept. 21	NW22 Conf. room	Chang-Hwan Lee	Possibilities of Supercritical Accretion in Neutron Star Binaries
Sept. 28	MKI Solarium	—	Electromagnetic counterparts
Oct. 5	NW22 Conf. room	Alexandre Le Tiec	Relativistic dynamics of coalescing black hole binaries
Oct. 12	NW22 Conf. room	Satya Mohapatra	Orbital hang-up in BBH coalescence and how it affects search algorithms
Oct. 19	MKI Solarium	Jolyon Bloomfield	Categorizing Models of Cosmic Acceleration
Oct. 26	Marlar Lounge	Bruce Allen	Status of Gravitational Physics Research at Albert Einstein Institute, Hannover
Nov. 2	NW22 Conf. room	Matt Evans	Low frequency GW detectors
Nov. 9	NW22 Conf. room	Umberto Cannella	Testing gravity with gravitational waves - a field-theoretical perspective
Nov. 16	MKI Solarium	Chanda Prescod-Weinstein	Doubly Special Relativity
Nov. 23	No GRITTS — enjoy Thanksgiving!
Nov. 30	NW22 Conf. room	Young-Min Kim	Neural Networks for Noise Hunting
Dec. 7	No GRITTS — consider instead this special seminar by Steve Giddings at 2:15pm in 6C-442.
Dec. 14	NW22 Conf. room	—	EOB

Spring 2011 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
Jan. 24	Marlar Lounge	Luke Kelley	studying NS birth kicks with LIGO
Jan. 31	NW22 Conf. room	—	Discussion [papers 1, 2, 3]
Feb. 7	Marlar Lounge	Jeff Kissel	seismic isolation
Feb. 9	NW22 Conf. room	Christian Ott	black-hole formation
Mar. 7	NW22 Conf. room	Tamara Bogdanovic	EM counterparts of MBH mergers
Mar. 21	NW22 Conf. room	Sanghoon Oh	EM followups of GW triggers
Mar. 28	Marlar lounge	Konstantin Yakunin	supernovae simulations and GW emission
Apr. 4	NW22 Conf. room	Hagai Perets	the formation of GW sources (for both LIGO and LISA) in triple systems
Apr. 25	Marlar lounge	Sam Waldman
May 2	NW22 Conf. room	Wen-Fai Fang	short gamma-ray burst observations
May 9	Marlar lounge	Bence Kocsis	dissecting accretion disks with gravitational waves
May 16	NW22 Conf. room	Nico Yunes	tests of GR with LIGO
May 23	NW22 Conf. room	Manuel Tiglio

Fall 2010 [toggle]

When	Where	Who	What
Oct. 13	NW22 Conf. room	Bruce Allen
Oct. 20	NW22 Conf. room	Ruslan Vaulin	combining searches
Oct. 25	Marlar Lounge	Nico Yunes	EMRIs and Massive Perturbers
Nov. 1	Marlar Lounge	Jeff Kissel	LIGO Calibration and Seismic Isolation
Nov. 8	NW22 Conf. room	Ilya Mandel	LIGO Detection Rate Predictions
Nov. 17	Marlar lounge	Nate Bode	the Evolution of Circumbinary Disks Following Super-massive Black Hole Mergers
Nov. 22	NW22 Conf. room	Bence Kocsis	Gas driven massive black hole binaries: signatures in the nHz gravitational wave background
Nov. 29	Marlar lounge	Manuela Campaneli
Dec. 6	NW22 Conf. room	Will Farr	The Mass Distribution of Stellar Mass Black Holes: Making the Kitchen Sink Approach Work Through Model Selection
Dec. 13	Marlar lounge	Shannon Sankar

Mailing list

If you would like to be notified about when the Series will take place, what the topics for discussion will be, and who any visitors will be, please consider joining our mailing list. To join, send an email to gritts-request@space.mit.edu with an empty subject line and the body: "subscribe".