Bill Smith

Hometown: Lancaster, Pa

Undergraduate Institution: Gettysburg College

Current Stage and Institution: PhD student at Vanderbilt University    

Discipline/Track: Astronomy

Research: Bill's research uses gravitational wave observations and hydrodynamic simulations to better understand the universe's origins and evolution. Most stellar mass gravitational wave mergers seen by detectors like LIGO are dark sirens - objects whose distance can be measured by their gravitational wave signals. Crafty statistical methods have been developed to extrude astronomical and cosmological data by associating dark sirens with catalogs of galaxies. Bill's research focuses on utilizing hydrodynamic simulations to test these methods.