Aaron Jones

"I love art, it is such an important part of our humanity! I love spending time in The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, an art gallery with work dating back several centuries. It's a great place to go when I'm all out of ideas and need to solve a problem. I've actually had the privilege to explore the art-science boundary myself during my PhD. Some highlights include conversations with the artist Cosmos Rose for her album 'After Apollo' and developing the 'Gravity Synth' with artist Leon Trimble. The Gravity Synth uses the signal from a model Michelson interferometer and a synthesizer to produce music. It's such a fun project to be involved with and it's really accessible because so many people are interested in music! I've also really enjoyed developing the Chirp app. This is a database that listens to global gravitational-wave alerts sent out by the LIGO and Virgo detectors. I'm just stunned that I can be notified about the merger of two black holes within minutes of the detection."

Aaron Jones is a postdoctoral research scientist at University of Western Australia. Aaron develops instrumentation for gravitational wave detectors, and is specifically interested in understanding the effect of defects within the lasers used. He mainly focuses on building sensors to access this information directly, but also does some modeling work to understand the detectors better. In his free time, Aaron likes rock climbing with his friends from work. He also likes cycling and walking through the British countryside, and is particularly fond of the landscapes of Scotland and Wales. You can follow Aaron on Twitter as @phyaaron or through his website.