Gabriela Gonzáles works on gravitational wave detection with the LIGO Collaboration, which searches for gravitational waves produced by the merging of compact objects. She works on the instrumental characterization and calibration of LIGO data and was the spokesperson for the LIGO collaboration during the announcement of the first discovery of gravitational waves in 2015.
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Researcher's background:
Gabriela Gonzáles was born in Córdoba, Argentina in 1965 and attended the National University of Córdoba, where earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in physics.
She moved to the US to pursue a PhD at Syracuse University, which she earned in 1995. Gabriela has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since 1997 and joined the faculty at Louisiana State University in 2001.
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Societal relevance of work:
Gabriela Gonzáles’ contributions to LIGO enabled the discovery of gravitational waves, which had long been predicted in Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
The signals observed by LIGO are incredibly small compared to the noise they observe. Understanding the systematics of the instrument and ensuring that it is well calibrated is crucial to being able to detect gravitational waves. Without the work of Gabriela Gonzáles and her research group, this discovery would not have been possible.
LIGO’s discovery of gravitational waves earned the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2016 and the Nobel prize in 2017.
As of 2025, LIGO is currently in its fourth observing run after 10 years of science operations and has detected over 300 gravitational wave signals from merging compact objects.
Introductory: fit a waveform to a gravitational wave signal
Advanced: use a matched filter algorithm to reproduce the key plots in A guide to LIGO-Virgo detector noise and extratraction of transient gravitational-wave signals" (arXiv:1908.11170) and detect GW150914, the first gravitational wave signal!
