Dr. Nergis Mavalvala

Nergis Mavalvala, an immigrant from Pakistan, is the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics and the Associate Head of the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A physicist whose research focuses on the detection of gravitational waves and quantum measurement science, she is a longtime member of the celebrated scientific team that announced in 2016 the first direct detection of gravitational waves from colliding black holes by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO).