Leigh Smith

"In high school I defaulted to being a primary school teacher. I think this was always an easy choice, and obviously was a job I had seen a lot of when I was in primary school myself. I always enjoyed physics and astronomy as a subject, but it wasn't something I had ever considered doing until my teacher had asked why I wasn't going to pursue it at University. I always thought in order to study something at university, you needed to know what job you could get out of it at the end. Suddenly I realised that I could follow my interests even without knowing where it would lead me as a career, and I haven't looked back since! Glasgow has a big gravitational wave group, but it still feels like everyone knows eachother well and has a good idea of what others work on. This lets me learn basics of a lot of other areas on gravitational wave research that I would have no clue about otherwise, and I always find this really interesting."

Leigh Smith is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow. She works on data analysis of gravitational wave burst events, specifically for eccentric black hole encounters, and develops methods to improve sensitivity of short transient burst searches. In her free time she enjoys playing on her switch (Zelda and Pokemon are her current favourites), reading in the sun when the scottish weather allows, and occasionally drives a horse and cart at country shows. Her favourite event is the NSBH merger GW200105; she pictures NSBHs events as the 'experienced' black hole showing the 'baby' neutron star what to do, and always finds it funny. You can follow Leigh on twitter at @leighsmith_.