Monthly Meeting

A decade ago, scientists detected gravitational waves for the first time: a tiny “chirp” in spacetime from two colliding black holes. Since then, gravitational-wave astronomy has opened a new way to study the invisible universe. This talk will highlight major discoveries from the past ten years, from black-hole mergers and neutron-star collisions to the growing catalog of compact-binary detections observed by LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA. Along the way, we will explore what these signals reveal about stellar death, black-hole formation, and the future of astronomy.

Speaker: Shanika Galaudage 

Dr. Shanika Galaudage is a CIERA–Adler Postdoctoral Fellow in gravitational-wave astrophysics at Northwestern University and the Adler Planetarium. Her research focuses on compact binaries: systems made of black holes and neutron stars whose collisions produce gravitational waves. She is a member of the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Collaboration and an affiliate researcher with OzGrav, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery in Australia. Shanika earned her BSc and PhD from Monash University (Melbourne, Australia).

This event is open to the public and free of charge.