Dr Hong Qi
Lecturer in Mathematical Sciences
Email: hong.qi@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: MB-326
Website: www.hongqi.space
Office Hours: Spring 2024: Tuesday 1-2pm in the School Social Hub MB-B11.
Profile
I am an astrophysicist, focusing on gravitational wave detection and analysis within the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) since late 2013 and been a full LSC member since 2015. Gravitational waves are the last prediction of Einstein's theory of General Relativity, portraying as "ripples" in spacetime generated by accelerated matter. On September 14, 2015, for the first time in human history, the LSC directly detected a gravitational wave from the collision of two black holes, using a pair of 4-km long LIGO detectors. This event was named GW150914, and its detection won three LSC leaders the Nobel Prize of Physics in 2017. By April 2020, the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations had collaboratively detected 90 gravitational waves.
Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) was admitted to the LSC in February 2022, initiated by Dr. Tessa Baker. I joined QMUL in Jan 2023 as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the School of Mathematical Sciences and became the lead of QMUL's LSC Group in Oct 2023. I am interested in all aspects of gravitational wave astronomy and multimessenger astrophysics. Particularly, my current research focuses on developing novel data analysis methods to accelerate gravitational wave detection and parameter estimation.
Before joining QMUL, I was a Senior Postdoc from March to December 2022 working on detector characterization with Prof. Gaby Gonzalez at Louisiana State University, which is 40 minutes drive from the LIGO Livingston detector site. From Sep 2018 to Mar 2022, I worked as a Research Associate at Cardiff University's Gravity Exploration Institute, focusing on accelerating gravitational wave inference with Dr. Vivien Raymond and dark matter direct search with Prof. Patrick Sutton and Prof. Hartmut Grote. Prior to that, for working on gravitational wave cosmology as well as detection and inference software in the Leonard E Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology, and Astrophysics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I received my PhD degree in Physics under the supervision of Prof. Patrick Brady in May 2018.