Nergis Mavalvala

Nergis mavalvala (* 1968 in Karachi ) is a Pakistani-American physicist who significantly on LIGO a project laser - gravitational wave detector is involved.

Mavalvala (the Parsi 's origin and went to Karachi to school) studied at Wellesley College (Bachelor 1990) and in 1997 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Rainer (Rai) White doctorate. Afterwards she was a post-doctoral student and from 2000 a scientist on the LIGO project of a gravitational wave detector at Caltech . From 2002 she was a professor at MIT.

As a doctoral student at MIT, Mavalvala developed the alignment and control mechanisms for the prototype of a laser interferometer, which was then used in the LIGO project. She works on gravitational wave detectors of the next generation, for which she applies, for example, laser cooling processes to macroscopic objects and develops methods to compress laser light (squeezed state) and thus to reduce quantum mechanical noise.

In 2010 she became a MacArthur Fellow and Fellow of the American Physical Society , and in 2017 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences . For 2018 she was awarded the International Quantum Communication Award .

Web links

• Homepage at MIT
• Honored from the MacArthur Foundation
• Portrait at the APS
• Nergis Mavalvala in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Laser cooling brings large object near absolute zero , MIT News, 2007
2. ↑ Prototype gravitational wave detector uses squeezed light , physics world 2008 ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.