Mandel Lecture, UCSC: Gravitational Waves and Black Holes

More than 100 years ago, Einstein predicted that there were ripples in the fabric of space-time traveling at the speed of light: gravitational waves. In 2015, gravitational waves created by the merger of two black holes were detected for the first time by the LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. These observations marked the beginning of gravitational wave astronomy. Jess McIver is a postdoctoral scholar in experimental physics with the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech in Pasadena, California. She first began work on gravitational wave research with the LIGO detectors at Syracuse University where she earned bachelor's degrees in physics and journalism in 2009. She graduated with a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2015. Jess is one of the leaders of the international, award-winning LIGO Scientific Collaboration.