Amanda Farah



Graviational-Wave Astrophysicist
NSF Graduate Research Fellow | University of Chicago



About





I am a PhD student at the University of Chicago working to use gravitational waves to learn about astrophysics and cosmology. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of our universe, and they carry information about the accelerating objects that cause them. The systems that experiments are sensitive to right now are collisions of neutron stars and black holes.


I am most interested in what populations of gravitational wave sources can teach us about the universe. Looking at each detection of gravitational waves as part of a larger collection reveals insights that individual events alone never could. You can learn more about these topics by clicking through this site.


My PhD advisor is Daniel Holz, and I am a member of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Scientific Collaboration. I am a NRT DSEER fellow and a NSF Graduate Research Fellow.


In my free time, I like to hike, take care of plants, and spend time by Lake Michigan.


Image credit: Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Corinne Mucha for Symmetry Magazine



Publications



Farah, Amanda M., Maya Fishbach, and Daniel E. Holz. 2023. “Two of a Kind: Comparing big and small black holes in binaries with gravitational waves.” arXiv:2308.05102


Farah, Amanda M., Bruce Edelman, Michael Zevin, Maya Fishbach, Jose María Ezquiaga, Ben Farr, and Daniel E. Holz. 2023. “Things that might go bump in the night: Assessing structure in the binary black hole mass spectrum.” The Astrophysical Journal 955 (2): 107 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aced02


Farah, Amanda M., Maya Fishbach, Reed Essick, Daniel E. Holz, and Shanika Galaudage. 2022. “Bridging the Gap: Categorizing Gravitational-Wave Events at the Transition Between Neutron Stars and Black Holes.” The Astrophysical Journal 931 (2): 108 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac5f03​


Essick, Reed, Amanda Farah, Shanika Galaudage, Colm Talbot, Maya Fishbach, Eric Thrane, and Daniel E. Holz. 2021. “Probing Extremal Gravitational-wave Events with Coarse-grained Likelihoods.” The Astrophysical Journal 926 (1): 34 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac3978


Farah, Amanda M., Reed Essick, Zoheyr Doctor, Maya Fishbach, and Daniel E. Holz. 2020. “Counting on Short Gamma-Ray Bursts: Gravitational-Wave Constraints of Jet Geometry.” The Astrophysical Journal 895 (2): 108. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab8d26.


Secco, Lucas F., Amanda Farah, Bhuvnesh Jain, Susmita Adhikari, Arka Banerjee, and Neal Dalal. 2018. “Probing Self-Interacting Dark Matter with Disk Galaxies in Cluster Environments.” The Astrophysical Journal 860 (June): 32. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aac271.


LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration Papers to which I have made significant contribution:

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration, 2021. “The Population of Merging Compact Binaries Inferred Using Gravitational Waves through GWTC-3.” ArXiv:2111.03634 [Astro-Ph, Physics:Gr-Qc], November. http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.03634.


The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration, 2021 “Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with Gamma-Ray Bursts Detected by Fermi and Swift during the LIGO-Virgo Run O3a.” The Astrophysical Journal 915 (2): 86. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abee15.




Curriculum Vitae





Full CV available here (updated August 2022)

Education

University of Chicago PhD Candidate October 2018 - present

Supervisor: Daniel Holz

University of Pennsylvania May 2018

BA Physics and Astronomy, departmental honors, magna cum laude


Fellowships

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship 2020-2025

National Science Foundation

Data Science for Energy and Environmental Research Fellowship 2019-2022

National Science Foundation Research Traineeship

McCormick Graduate Fellowship 2018-2019

University of Chicago


Invited Academic Talks

Gravitational-Wave Populations: What’s next? July 2023

How to identify population outliers and what to do with them

UWM Center for Gravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics Seminar March 2023

Astrophysical lessons learned from the mass distribution of gravitational wave sources

LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Paper Webinar December 2021

The population of merging compact binaries inferred from GWTC-3

KICP Special Seminar November 2021

The population of merging compact binaries inferred from GWTC-3

Environmental Data Science Lunch April 2021

Don't Just Leave-One-Out: Probing Extremal Gravitational-Wave Events with Coarse-Grained Likelihoods

University of Chicago Department of Geophysical Sciences Expo June 2020

The Wrath of the Jet Stream: Thermodynamic Effects Dominate Reduction of Projected Wintertime Temperature Variability


Public Talks and Outreach

Undergraduate "Black Holes" Course, Guest Lecture, University of Chicago February 2023

Undergraduate Astronomy Course, Guest Lecture, University of Chicago June 2022

Chicago Public Library, Lifelong Learning talk series April 2022

John Stanford International Elementary School, Invited Speaker, March 2022


Teaching

Instructor and Course Creator, Prison+Neighborhood Arts/Education Project

Introduction to Observational Astronomy Spring Semester 2023

Instructor and Coordinator, University of Chicago DSEER Bootcamps

Scientific Programming Workshop Summer 2020, 2021, and 2022

Teaching Assistant, Space Explorers Program

Weekly class and biannual institute for high schoolers Fall 2018 - Summer 2019

Teaching Assistant, University of Chicago

Introductory Physics Sequence Fall 2018 and Spring 2019

Teaching Assistant, University of Chicago

Modern Physics in the Everyday World Winter 2019

Teaching Assistant, University of Pennsylvania

Observatory instructor for all undergraduate astronomy courses. 2016-2018

Active Learning Instructor, University of Pennsylvania

Introductory Physics Sequence 2017 - 2018


Image credit: Aurore Simonnet (LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State) for Wired Magazine