contact
office: 1-90D Boggs Building
phone: 404.385.3908
fax: 404.894.9958
email: deirdre at gatech dot edu
mail
837 State St.
School of Physics
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta GA 30332-0430
Black holes, spacetime wrinkles and waves, understanding these and other aspects of gravity drives Deirdre Shoemaker’s research. Does this sound like science fiction? The Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves for the first time on September 14 2015. The astrophysical object that generated the gravitational wave was two black holes colliding billions of light years away from Earth. This first event, and the many that are following after, has used in the era of gravitational wave astronomy. We can confront our theoretical expectations, largely derived from Einstein’s theory of gravity, with observations of gravity acting in the universe. The strange and wondrous predictions of Einstein’s theory are playing out in the Universe and we are watching!
Deirdre joined the LIGO Scientific Collaboration in 2014 and the LISA Consortium in 2017. She has won the NSF Career award and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. She has been elected to the Executive Committees of the APS Division of Computational Physics and Topical Group on Gravity. In 2013, she was elected to the Chair-line of the APS Division of Gravitational Physics. She was appointed to the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisor Council in 2019.
Deirdre Shoemaker is the Dunn Family Professor of Physics. She received her B.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics from Penn State in 1994 and her PhD in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Penn State and Cornell University before joining the faculty at Penn State in 2004. She moved to the School of Physics at Georgia Tech in 2008 and is an adjunct Professor of the School of Computational Science and Engineering. She is one of the founding members of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics and its Director. In 2017, Deirdre took on the role of Associate Director for Research and Strategic Initiatives for the Institute for Data Engineering and Science.