JD Merritt

"I grew up climbing in the mountains of Wyoming, leading tons of traditional and ice climbing when I was in high school. After college I worked seasonally as a solar installer, and travelled to alpine climb. I lucked out hard with great mentorship from Steve House, one of the world’s leading alpinists. I’ve established hard first ascents in every discipline: bouldering, traditional, sport, ice, mixed, and alpine. I’ve also climbed through hallucinations on an 80 hour push with no sleep, drank coffee filtered through a dirty sock, and forged lasting friendships on four continents. After getting scared and cold on uncountable occasions, I had a change of heart and decided to pick up physics again and go to grad school in Oregon. I can still be found climbing and skiing Cascadian volcanoes or putting up new rock routes in obscure places whenever I have free time."

JD Merritt is a graduate student at The University of Oregon. When he isn't enjoying the great outdoors, he works on estimating the parameters of detected black holes and neutron stars and on modeling "glitches" (i.e. transient noise) in the LIGO detectors. JD is a metalhead and his favorite band is Converge. He also loves glitch and drone music, like Autechre or Tim Hecker. You can't find JD on social media, but you can probably find him on the top of a mountain.