Biography:

Niels is the Spokesperson for the LISA Consortium, a scientific collaboration whose members work to support the LISA mission. He is also a Lecturer/Assistant Professor at University College Dublin (UCD) in Ireland. During his postdoctoral life held three fellowships: a Royal Society - Research Ireland University Research Fellowship at UCD, and Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and UCD, and an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCD. He completed his PhD at the University of Southampton.

Abstract:

When compact objects are captured by supermassive black holes they slowly spiral inwards before crossing the event horizon. As the compact object “in-spirals” the binary emits gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time, that can be measured by the future space-based gravitational wave detector LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna). In this talk I will discuss what we can learn from these systems, how we model them, and why that modelling underpins the science that LISA will carry out. I will also give an overview of the discoveries that await from the observation of a wide array of sources with LISA.