Nergis Mavalvala

Nergis Mavalvala is the Curtis (1963) and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics and Dean of the MIT School of Science. Her research focuses on gravitational wave detection via the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and quantum measurement science, including quantum metrology and squeezed light applications. She contributed to LIGO’s historic 2016 discovery of gravitational waves from colliding black holes.

Education: B.A. in Physics from Wellesley College (1990), Ph.D. in Physics from MIT (1997). Postdoctoral research at Caltech before joining MIT’s Physics faculty in 2002. Served as Associate Department Head of Physics (2015–2020) before becoming Dean of Science in 2020.

Research Interests: Pioneering experiments in quantum measurement, including squeezed states of light and laser cooling of macroscopic objects. Her work advances gravitational wave astronomy and human-scale quantum phenomena observation.

Awards: Recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship (2010), Gruber Cosmology Prize (2016), and National Academy of Sciences membership (2017). Recognized for contributions to LIGO’s sensitivity improvements and quantum metrology.

Grants & Labs: Principal investigator of the ERC Synergy Grant (2022). Leads MIT’s LIGO Group and Advanced LIGO initiatives. Affiliated with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics & Space Research.