URI Physics Colloquium

The URI Physics department hosts an ongoing speaker series each academic year, which features physics experts from URI and other universities, as well as scientific organizations.

During the fall and spring semesters, colloquia are held in East Hall, Room 112. Refreshments are served about half hour before each talk.

All are welcome, and there is no fee to attend.

Schedule for Spring 2026 :

DateSpeakerAffiliationTitleLocationTime
January 23, 2026Sylvia BiscoveanuPrincetonThe First Ten Years of Gravitation-Wave Astronomy East 112 4:00 pm
January 30, 2026Student presentationsURI   4:00 pm
February 6, 2026Tom MaccaroneTexas TechUsing X-ray binary variability to understand relativistic jets  4:00 pm
February 13, 2026Andi BauerMIT   4:00 pm
February 20, 2026
February 27, 2026
March 6, 2026Louis St LaurentUniversity of Washington   
March 13, 2026Brian SwingleBrandeis   
March 27, 2026Marco CavagliaMissouri S&T   
April 3, 2026Glebys GonzalezMoffitt Cancer Center   
April 10, 2026World Quantum Day
April 17, 2026Nimmi Sharma CCSU   
April 24, 2026Yana Reshetnyak URI pHLIP Technology: from Biophysics to Medicine  

Abstracts:

The First Ten Years of Gravitation-Wave Astronomy

by Sylvia Biscoveanu

On September 14th 2015, the LIGO detectors opened a new window onto the universe with the first direct detection of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger. This first event alone had profound implications for tests of general relativity and our understanding of the formation and evolution of compact-object binaries. Ten years later, the catalog of gravitational-wave sources has grown to over 300 candidate events, including all possible combinations of merging black holes and neutron stars. We have learned that gravitational waves travel at speeds consistent with that of light, that binary neutron star mergers are an astrophysical site of heavy-element nucleosynthesis, and that black holes many tens of times the mass of the sun can form from stellar collapse. In this talk, I will review these findings and the other key astrophysical and cosmological insights we have gleaned from a decade of gravitational-wave discovery. I will conclude by highlighting what we can look forward to as we enter the second decade of gravitational-wave astronomy.

Using X-ray binary variability to understand relativistic jets

by Tom Maccarone
When black holes and neutron stars accrete mass, a small fraction is generally expelled in the forms of relativistic jets, streams of materials that move at substantial fractions of the speed of light.  These jets are among nature’s best particle accelerators, and also serve as key probes of relativistic magnetohydrodynamics.  They are easiest to study in binary systems with stellar mass black holes and neutron stars accreting gas from normal stars, as these systems vary on timescales that can be well-measured.  I will discuss some key results on how jets in X-ray binaries vary and their implications for understanding jet production and particle acceleration.

Past schedules

Fall 2025 Colloquium Schedule

Spring 2025 Colloquium Schedule