Helvi Witek

Helvi Witek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with a joint appointment at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). She joined UIUC in 2020 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2024. Previously, she held prestigious fellowships including a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at King’s College London (2018–2019) and a Marie-Curie Fellowship at the University of Barcelona (2016–2017).

Her research focuses on gravitation, cosmology, and astrophysics, specializing in numerical relativity, black hole dynamics, gravitational waves, and modified gravity theories. Key interests include:

• Scalarization in scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity
• Black hole hair growth and superradiant instabilities
• Neutron star mergers and viscous hydrodynamics
• Development of the numerical relativity library Canuda

Her recent publications emphasize black hole physics in modified gravity, with trends including dynamical scalarization in binary mergers, stability analysis of self-interacting fields, and gravitational wave modeling for future detectors like LISA. Theoretical and numerical innovations dominate her work, often bridging fundamental physics with astrophysical observations.

Awards and Honors:

• Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2018–2019)
• Marie-Curie Fellowship (2016–2017)

She leads the Witek Gravity Group and co-developed a $680,000 NSF-funded Einstein Toolkit. She teaches courses including Classical Mechanics and General Relativity, receiving “Excellent Teacher” rankings from students.