Nergis Mavalvala

Nergis Mavalvala is the first female Dean of Science at MIT. She’s a 2010 MacArthur “genius” fellow, and a key collaborator with Rai Weiss and the Caltech/MIT LIGO team, which won the 2017 Nobel Prize for the first successful detection of gravitational waves. As you can hear in SEARCHING part 3, Albert Einstein predicted in 1915 that such waves should exist, but thought they would always be too faint to ever be detected. Amazing innovations in instrumentation and computers allowed Nergis, Rai and their team to succeed - after four decades of very hard work! Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Alan asks Nergis if that makes the LIGO project smarter than Einstein… and Nergis has the perfect answer. Despite the background hum from computers in the MIT High Bay workshop, this was one of the most lively and engaging conversations we captured for the mini-series, and now we’re very pleased we’re able to offer Nergis’ extended comments in this podcast. Enjoy!