Program Overview

Overview

Undergraduate students in physics, astronomy and engineering are invited to participate in the development of gravitational-wave astronomy through the Caltech LIGO Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program. This intensive summer program takes place each year at Caltech or one of the LIGO observatory sites, funded in part through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program of the National Science Foundation. Undergraduate students from all institutions (both U.S. and foreign) are invited to apply to the Caltech LIGO SURF program. Research awards cover travel to the research site, housing, and a summer stipend.

LIGO

The LIGO Laboratory is an NSF-supported endeavor to design, build, and operate an astrophysical observatory for the detection and study of gravitational radiation. LIGO is a joint Caltech-MIT endeavor. The observatory includes two sites (Hanford, Washington and Livingston Parish, Louisiana) with laser interferometric detector systems. (Learn more about LIGO.) The aim of the Caltech LIGO Summer Undergraduate Research Program is to organize the participation of undergraduate students in research associated with the LIGO Laboratory.

Mentors

Caltech LIGO Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows will pursue research projects under the mentorship of one or more LIGO Laboratory scientists and/or engineers: faculty, postdocs, graduate students, scientific and engineering staff members, and expert visitors. They are all actively pursuing research and development in the science of gravitational waves, the astrophysics of their sources, and their detection via high-precision metrology. You can count on your mentor being an expert in their field, passionate about their work, and enthusiastic about developing your research skills.

Students who are accepted into the program will be matched with a mentor based on their research interests as part of the admissions process. Students do not need to identify a mentor before they apply.

Research Projects

LIGO research projects may cover many areas of science and engineering related to the detection of gravitational radiation, including:

• Laboratory projects in mechanical, laser, optical, and electronic systems
• Modeling and analysis of optomechanical systems
• LIGO Data analysis projects, including searching for and analyzing gravitational wave signals from astrophysical sources
• Modeling of astrophysical sources

Locations

Students in the Caltech LIGO Summer Program reside either at Caltech in Pasadena, California, one of the LIGO sites near Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana. Applicants may also be accepted to a partner program at UC Riverside.