Dr. Reinhard Prix

Senior Scientist
Continuous Gravitational Waves
Location Hannover
+49 511 762-17154

Main Focus

Since joining the AEI in 2003, my main focus has been the search for continuous gravitational waves from deformed spinning neutron stars. My core effort lies in developing more sensitive and performant search methods and designing more promising searches and tools to investigate and characterize signals once we can detect them.

I am one of the founding developers of the Einstein@Home project, which was launched by Bruce Allen at the AEI in 2005, and which continues to be one of our most powerful search platforms for continuous gravitational waves.
I have contributed to the first discovery of gravitational waves from a black-hole merger in 2015 as a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), in particular by finding and characterizing the black-hole ringdown signal following this merger.

Curriculum Vitae


Scientific Appointments

  • 2007 -         : Senior Scientist, Albert-Einstein Institute, Hannover
                         Methods development and searches for continuous gravitational waves
  • 2003 - 2007: Postdoctoral researcher at the Albert-Einstein Institute, Golm
                         Working with M.A. Papa, C. Cutler on the search for continuous gravitational waves
  • 2000 - 2003: Research Assistant at the University of Southampton, collaborators
                         EU Network project: Sources of gravitational waves
                         Working with N. Andersson on superfluid/multifluid neutron star models

Degrees and Education

  • 1997 - 2000: PhD at the DARC, Observatoire de Paris, Meudon (Université de Paris XI),
                         Thesis: Aspects of superfluid hydrodynamics in neutron stars
                         Advisor: Brandon Carter
  • 1996 - 1997: Master degree DEA "theoretical physics" at École Normale Supérieure de Paris
  • 1992 - 1996: Undergraduate study of theoretical physics at Karl-Franzens and Tech. Univ. Graz, Austria

Scholarships and Awards

  • 2016: Gruber Cosmology Prize (shared with the LSC)
  • 2016: Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (shared with the LSC)
  • 1997-2000: Allocation de Recherche (French government Ph.D. scholarship)

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