Frank Ohme

"I loved the clarity of theoretical physics when I studied in school, and black holes sounded cool, so from there I couldn't avoid LIGO. I mean, actually finding black holes is even cooler than (just) modeling them. Understanding the statistics and logic we use to detect gravitational waves helps me a lot to be at peace with my other passion: water polo refereeing. After an enjoyable but only mildly successful career as a player, I am now lucky enough to be one of only few referees eligible to referee international events including World Championships and Olympics. And in every game, just like in gravitational wave analyses, I have to make a lot of decisions based on limited (noisy!) data. The only difference is that chatting with my LIGO colleagues about Bayesian logic is often fun for both of us. Explaining my internal prior and likelihood calculation to the player I just called a penalty against usually doesn't work that well. But if I need to let off steam, my 40 minutes bicycle ride home every day gives me plenty of opportunities. Admittedly, sometimes I listen to conference calls on the bike (I cycle through the country side - no one is put in danger by LIGO calls!), which is not always good for relaxing."

Frank Ohme is a Research Group Leader at the Albert Einstein Institute in Hannover. In his day job, he models the gravitational-wave signals seen in LIGO for different configurations of colliding black holes and neutron stars. Outside of science-ing, Frank spends time with his family and travels around the world refereeing water polo competitions. He relishes the moment when he lines up as a referee with the national teams he is about to officiate, and they sing their national anthems.