Amanda Farah

"I always loved biology, and I almost became a medical doctor, but decided to do gravitational wave research instead. Part of why I love science is just the awe of nature, which is why I spend a lot of time with my plants. Plants are a nice way to remember how cool nature is every day, especially when you live in a city and can't just go hike all the time. All of my work is data analysis, and it can feel like black holes just exist on my laptop or on computing clusters. Sometimes you can forget that these are real things happening in the Universe, whereas plants are right there. I spend a lot of time with my plants and learning about how they work, experimenting with what different types of plants need, and propagating them. Taking care of them is my way to do hands-on science every day and remember that science is actually part of the real world, it doesn't just exist on your computer."

Amanda Farah is a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, working on population analyses of black holes and neutron stars as well as gravitational-wave cosmology. She is currently focusing on using the population we infer from the LVK's detections to measure properties of dense star clusters. In her spare time, Amanda enjoys taking care of her plants and drinking boba. You can find Amanda on their website at amandafarah.me.