Dr Greg Mendell will talk about all of LIGO’s exciting discoveries, including the observation of ten binary black hole mergers and one binary neutron star collision. The latter occurred in NGC 4993, and produced a gamma-ray burst and fireball that was followed up by over 70 telescopes around the world and in space.

Dr Mendell received a PhD from Montana State University in 1986, where he began his work on relativistic astrophysics. Since 2000 he has worked as a Scientist/Senior Scientist at LIGO Hanford Observatory. At the observatory he has worked on the data analysis systems, detector studies, and gravitational-wave detection. He considers himself also lucky to have been directly involved in all of LIGO’s discoveries, as part of collaboration of over 1000 persons.