Eve Chase

"I first joined my high school astronomy club because the planetarium seemed like a nice place to take a nap. My eyes would close beneath the artificially starry sky descending into 45 minutes of blissful sleep. I repeated this tradition month after month, with a near perfect attendance at astronomy club, or as I called it: nap time. But one meeting, as I nestled into the worn reclining chair, I suddenly perked up. The astronomy club president was discussing black holes and neutron stars, which kept me awake and intrigued throughout the presentation. A year later, I was president of the same astronomy club, and three years after that I gave a presentation of my own at the American Astronomical Society meeting about mass transfer onto neutron stars in binary star systems. Now, as a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and graduate student at Northwestern University, I get to study black holes and neutron stars every day."

Eve Chase is a PhD student at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics at Northwestern University. She uses high performance computing and data science to discover the underlying astrophysics in each LIGO and Virgo detection. In her free time, she enjoys viewing impressionist art at the Art Institute of Chicago, watching films at independent theaters, and listening to live music. You can follow Eve on Twitter at @EveAChase.