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Collaboration

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

LISA will be a large-scale space mission designed to detect one of the most elusive phenomena in astronomy - gravitational waves. With LISA we will be able to observe the entire universe directly with gravitational waves, learning about the formation of structure and galaxies, stellar evolution, the early universe, and the structure and nature of spacetime itself. [Text and image from https://www.elisascience.org/. Image © NASA/JPL-Caltech/NASAEA/ESA/CXC/STScl/GSFCSVS/S.Barke (CC BY 4.0)]

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Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Michael Eracleous Michael Eracleous Faculty Astronomy mxe17@psu.edu +1 814 863 6041 414 Davey Laboratory CMA, CTOC Black Holes, Multimessenger Astrophysics, Quasars, Dynamic Universe
Peter Mészáros Peter Mészáros Faculty Astronomy, Physics nnp@psu.edu 814-863-4167 504 Davey Laboratory CMA Gravitational Waves, Multimessenger Astrophysics, Neutrinos
Kaitlyn Szekerczes Kaitlyn Szekerczes Graduate Student Astronomy kas7882@psu.edu 814-865-0418 445A Davey Laboratory IGC Gravitational Waves, Multimessenger Astrophysics
About our wordmark
Monica Rincon Ramirez

The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez while she was a graduate student at the Institute. Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work included general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds; her thesis focused on effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope of research at the IGC. The base represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity — approaches studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle shows galaxies embedded in a smooth surface characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the larger physical scales studied at the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology. The top curves to an extreme representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet, with a binary black hole pair nearby — the high-energy phenomena studied at the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics.