Tiffany Nichols
"I am a historian of science and have reconstructed the history of LIGO's site selection. My research began with much curiosity around why the LIGO sites are Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington. While doing this, I also became interested in how the surrounding environment influences and shapes LIGO's experiment and efforts, especially related to things like noise mitigation. In undergraduate school, I focused on control theory and electrical engineering and I remember thinking, I would not want to be an engineer on LIGO due to the complex challenges of designing and operating precision instruments. That thought fueled my curiosity about the LIGO endeavor. I recently learned that the Cosmic Explorer Siting Team used my dissertation to prepare for their review of a candidate site. The PI mentioned that the site hadn't changed much from what I provided in my history of LIGO's site selection. It was really nice hearing that my history of science diss...
