Graduate Study

Graduate students actively participate in LIGO’s research and development. While furthering their education in a research environment, students also make important contributions to LIGO. Graduate students benefit from the diversity of scientific and engineering skills represented by the LIGO project's technical staff, including faculty, senior scientists, and engineers who provide individual guidance and supervision to students.

Opportunities for students span a broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines, including: gravitational physics, astrophysics, metrology, optics, lasers, mechanical systems, controls, and electronics. Students are involved in detector development, modeling, and analysis, as well as open detector operations, observations, and data analysis. Research takes place on the Caltech and MIT campuses as well as at the detector sites in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA. For more information on graduate study programs, please visit Physics Research at Caltech, which includes LIGO research, or The LIGO project at MIT

Other graduate school opportunities may exist at universities that are members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. For a complete list of collaborating universities, please visit LSC member institutions.