NSF ANNOUNCES NEW GRAVITATIONAL WAVE FINDINGS, Oct 16, 2017, DC, 10:00-12:30 ET (webcast)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will hold a media event on October 16, 2017 at the National Press Club, Holeman Lounge, in Washington, D.C. from 10:00 am – 12:30 pm ET to announce new findings about gravitational waves from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave (LIGO), VIRGO and other observatories.

The event will be webcast.

Panel 1, 10:00 am ET:  France Cordova, Director, NSF, moderator

• David Reitze, executive director, LIGO Laboratory/Caltech
• David Shoemaker, spokesperson, LIGO Scientific Collaboration/MIT
• Jo van den Brand, spokesperson, Virgo Collaboration/Nikhef, VU University Amsterdam
• Julie McEnery, Fermi Project scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• Marica Branchesi, Virgo Collaboration/Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
• Vicky Kalogera, astrophysicist, LIGO Scientific Collaboration/Northwestern University

Panel 2, 11:15 am ET :  Jim Ulvestad, Acting Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, NSF, moderator

• Laura Cadonati, deputy spokesperson, LIGO Scientific Collaboration/Georgia Tech
• Andy Howell, staff scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory/UC-Santa Barbara
• Ryan Foley, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics, University of California-Santa Cruz
• Marcelle Soares-Santos, assistant professor, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory/Brandeis University
• David Sand, assistant professor in astronomy, University of Arizona
• Nial Tanvir, professor of astrophysics, University of Leicester, UK
• Edo Berger, professor of astronomy, Harvard University
• Eleonora Troja, research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Maryland
• Alessandra Corsi, assistant professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University

More information is in NSF’s press release.

Three U.S. physicists — Rainier Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish — just won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of gravitational waves.