Graduate Studies

UO LIGO Group

Graduate Projects in the Institute for Fundamental Science

IFS is located in Willamette Hall, a building designed specifically for physics that adjoins the chemistry building. All of our research groups offer compelling research opportunities for graduate students, some with hands-on investigations at off-campus research facilities.

Significant grant funding has equipped our labs with up-to-date computing equipment and high-speed connections that allow our graduate students to work on the international ATLAS and FASER Experiments. Many of our students have the opportunity to live in the Geneva area and work in the international community of particle physicists at CERN. Others spend time at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California and Fermilab outside Chicago.

Students in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) group work on the direct detection of gravitational waves. Many spend time on-site at a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Hanford, Washington or Livingston, Louisiana.

In Pine Mountain Observatory’s “Asteroid Light Curve” Project, students learn to operate PMO’s research-grade telescopes and dive into the realm of data analysis.