REU Site: Gravitational-Wave Astrophysics in the LIGO Project

REU 站点：LIGO 项目中的引力波天体物理学

• 批准号: 1062293
• 负责人: Alan Weinstein
• 金额: $ 27.4万
• 依托单位: California Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-07-15 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1062293&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: REU; Site; Gravitational; Wave; Astrophysics

This award supports the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experience for Teachers (RET) site at the California Institute of Technology. The site is associated with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project at Caltech. LIGO provides a unique and exciting opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in the opening of an entirely new observational window on the Universe. REU participants work closely with individual LIGO scientists on summer research projects involving many aspects of detector hardware development, data analysis, and source modeling. The RET component of this proposal involves high school teachers that are local to the LIGO sites in rural Washington and Louisiana. RET participants take part in research projects alongside the REU students at the sites, and they also work on creating classroom activities that bring the foundations of LIGO science to their own students. Students and teachers work with professional scientists from around the globe, at all stages in their careers, and learn first-hand how large projects are organized and operate. They also acquire new skills that are applicable in a broad range of technical careers, as they work on projects involving optics, lasers, electronics, servo controls, mechanical systems, data analysis, and software development, with an ever-present focus on pushing engineering systems to calculated physical noise limits.

该奖项支持加州理工学院的本科生研究经验（REU）和教师研究经验（RET）网站。 该站点与加州理工学院的激光干涉引力波天文台（LIGO）项目有关。LIGO为本科生提供了一个独特而令人兴奋的机会，让他们参与打开一个全新的宇宙观测窗口。REU的参与者与LIGO的科学家们在夏季研究项目中密切合作，这些项目涉及探测器硬件开发、数据分析和源建模的许多方面。这项提案的RET部分涉及华盛顿和路易斯安那州农村地区LIGO站点的高中教师。RET的参与者与REU的学生一起参加研究项目，他们还致力于创建课堂活动，将LIGO科学的基础带给自己的学生。 学生和教师在职业生涯的各个阶段与来自地球仪的专业科学家一起工作，并直接了解大型项目的组织和运作方式。他们还获得适用于广泛技术职业的新技能，因为他们从事涉及光学，激光，电子，伺服控制，机械系统，数据分析和软件开发的项目，始终专注于推动工程系统计算物理噪声限制。