Hunter Gabbard

"My interest in science started back when I was in the Boy Scouts. I remember spending endless hours at night on camp outs with the rain-fly off watching the stars (didn't ever end up getting much sleep on those). It just felt so immense and humbling. In undergrad (at the University of Mississippi, USA), I found out about LIGO through a random research poster on the wall in the physics department. Went in to the neighboring office and found my future undergraduate research advisor, Marco Cavaglia. He was a big reason why I got interested, because he made it sound like such an audacious experiment.  I think that because LIGO covers so many broad topics in science, that it's sometimes just hard to keep track of it all. Fortunately, that's also partly what makes this work so exciting. I love doing the science, but I think my favorite aspect of LIGO has to be the people. Everyone is so dedicated to what they are doing and truly are interested in it because they are simply curious. On a less profound note, I think everyone is also just incredibly fun to hang out with. "

Hunter Gabbard is a Graduate student exploring various applications of Machine Learning towards Gravitational wave data analysis at the University of Glasgow, UK (where he also loves to hike). After a long hard day of coding, you may find him strumming his guitar or buried inside a book.  You can follow Hunter on Twitter at @hg_phys.